page_title: Beverly Gray
section_title: Beverly Gray at the World's Fair
hierarchical_section_title: Beverly Gray / Books / Beverly Gray at the World's Fair
caption_attribution_description: Poster for Century of Progress World's Fair showing exhibition buildings with boats on water in foreground.
context_page_description: The Beverly Gray Mystery Stories, comprising 26 novels published between 1934 and 1955, were written by Clair Blank, pen name of Clarissa Mabel Blank Moyer. The series began as a series of school stories, and followed Beverly's progress through college, her various romances, and a career as a reporter before becoming strictly a mystery series.
  Beverly is portrayed as an extraordinarily determined individual, with "a driving ambition in her heart that would not let her idle her life away." Across 26 books, she leads "such a life of adventure as would tax the resources of any soap opera heroine".
context_section_description: Beverly Gray at the World's Fair, the sixth work by Blank, was issued for a short window from 1935 to 1938 before being dropped from the series. Because of fears that the book's setting would seem dated, publication of World's Fair was ceased after Grosset & Dunlap acquired the rights to the Beverly Gray books in 1938. Due to this limited printing run it is the scarcest of the 26 books.
  World's Fair sees Beverly travel with a coterie of friends to the 1933–34 Chicago World's Fair. After Lois departs to Paris, where she has won "an art contest" with "a year's free study" as the prize, Lenora and Connie travel by train to visit Virginia, who lives in Chicago with her aunt and uncle. Although Beverly initially has to stay behind and work, the very next day her editor assigns her to write "a series of feature articles" on the fair for "the Sunday magazine section." She flies out that day with Larry, who is coincidentally headed to Chicago, "and then points West," for his work with the Secret Service.
  Some days after joining forces in Chicago, the four girls witness the murder of a high diver, Paul Graham, during a show at the lagoon theater. Paul fails to surface following his "famous three somersault dive," and it emerges that he was "shot with a high powered air rifle." Suspicion falls on John Cummings, described as the "best friend" of the Grahams and their late uncle, and for whom Beverly harbors immediate misgivings. "There is something about him that makes me mistrust him," she tells Lenora. "He reminds me of a snake." Lenora resolves to "follow him like his shadow" with her "Cine-Kodak eight," and soon thereafter films him loosening the wires on a trapeze about to be used by Paul's sister, June. Before the girls can take the footage to the police, Paul's brother George is attacked by lion and suffers a "few scratches" after somebody "file[s] the lock" on a lion cage where he works as a trainer. (This is not the last lion attack in the book, for towards the end of the book another one manages to slip out and sink its claws "deep into [Beverly's] shoulder" before it can be subdued.) Despite the footage Cummings remains free, leading Beverly and Lenora to sneak into his hotel room in search of evidence. Hidden inside his chimney they discover a violin case, empty except for a single bullet. Cummings sees them as they depart, however, and that night warns Beverly that "[i]f you play with fire you must expect to get burned." These words prove prescient the next day when, relaxing at Lake Geneva, the girls have their motorboat "rammed" by another and are forced to swim an unconscious Beverly back to shore. Before impact Beverly catches "a clear, distinct glimpse of the face of the man at the wheel of the boat," and believes it to be Cummings. He is finally caught in the next chapter, after Beverly observes him leaving a pawn ticket in June's dressing room trunk. This appears to be an effort to frame her, for upon redemption of the ticket Beverly and Virginia are handed the murder weapon, "a gun, not small enough to be a revolver and not quite long enough for a rifle. . . . It looked like a sawed off shotgun." They take the gun to the police, where "[e]verything was carefully considered and they all agreed that Cummings was the murderer." He was left out of the will of the Grahams' uncle, it turns out, but stood to gain the share willed to Paul, June and George should anything have happened to all three. Officers are sent to arrest Cummings, who "confesse[s] when confronted with the evidences of his guilt." Beverly is left to "break the news" for her paper.
  Several subplots share space with the murder of Paul Graham in World's Fair. Significant ink is expended on the many wonders and exhibits at the fair, some of it copied word for word from the fair's official guidebook, and Shirley's acting career encounters both downfall and revival. Beverly runs into Shirley on her first day in Chicago, discovering her to be "out of a job," with "scarcely any money and no friends." She can ill afford to eat and is about to be evicted, ye
caption: 1933–34 Chicago World's Fair poster
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