Part 13 (1/2)
The Missing Link advanced with movements and howls significant of horrible ferocity. Dan Heeley backed before it, white to the lips. At this point the Professor plucked up courage and advanced upon Heeley.
Dan offered no resistance, his arm was broken, and he was completely paralysed by the insistence of the monster attacking him. Five minutes later Dan, Heeley, the Bold Birragua Boy, was securely tied to a tree, with about three fathoms of inch manila, and the Professor's cash box, with its proper contents increased by certain sums that were illegally Heeley's, was safely bestowed in its locker again.
”What was the price you said the Government had put on your head, Dan, my boy?” asked Professor Thunder. ”Two hundred and fifty of the best? It's mine, Daniel.”
Heeley made no reply; his frightened eyes were fixed on the man-monkey cowering in the shade, with the revolver tight in its right hand.
”The Missing Link will watch over you to-night, Dan,” continued the Professor, jauntily. ”He's as strong as ten men, so don't try tricks with him.”
But the Professor did not get that 250. At day-break, to Heeley's great amazement, the huge monkey cut him free, and made no attempt to resist his flight. Nicholas Crips had very satisfactory reasons for not being mixed up in a long, legal ceremonial such as the handing of Heeley over to the police would have entailed. Nicholas remembered a certain strange adventure in Bigg's Buildings, and his desire was to give the police of Victoria as wide a berth as the most exclusive officer could possibly long for.
CHAPTER XII.
A CURIOUS MISCHANCE AT BULLFROG.
PROFESSOR THUNDER freely admitted that Nickie the Kid was by far the best Missing Link he had ever met.
”There ain't your equal in the whole profession, my boy,” he said, clapping the man-monkey heartily between the shoulder blades, ”and if you go on improving your interpretation and developing the character, by the Lord Harry, I believe it'll be worth our while to do a world's tour one of these days.”
In consideration of Mahdi's perfections the Professor had twice generously raised his salary by half a-crown a week.
”There isn't a Woolly Man o' the Woods or a Wild Man from Borneo now on the roads' drawing the salary you are, Crips,” said the Professor. ”Two pounds two and six a week is princely pay for a Missing Link. Let me tell you there are stars playing Romeo and Hamlet that aren't getting such good money, my boy.”
Nickie certainly deserved his munificent salary, as he was the best draw in the museum, and was improving the attractiveness of the show weekly, with bright ideas and new schemes for inciting the interest of the Professor's bucolic customers. It was Nickie suggested the idea of a ride through Bullfrog town s.h.i.+p in character.
”I'm afraid, my boy,” said the Professor, ”it's risky--very risky. You'll be giving the game away one of them days, and once it gets about that Professor Sullivan Thunder's marvellous and only-living Missing Link is a fake, the metropolitan press will be down on me like a ton of bricks, and I'll come to running a Punch and Judy show at baby parties in my old age.”
”My dear Professor, have a bit of enterprise,” replied the Missing Link, ”we are not drawing well! Bullfrog wants waking up. Run out the caravan, and take a turn through the towns.h.i.+p, with the cornet playing and me riding ahead on the black mare, and we are bound to make an impression.
Get through at a good bat, and they won't have time to look twice at the man-monkey before it's all over. Just a dash through and back to the tent, and we can be under cover again before they're fairly out of their houses. I tell you, sir, it will make Bull frog wild with curiosity.”
Madame Marve, the Egyptian Mystic, favoured the scheme, and Professor Thunder agreed. The caravan was prepared, and Madame Marve, wearing a much bespangled, but rather seedy, pantomime, fairy costume, stood by the box seat, playing a lively air on the cornet; Professor Thunder, with a flowing mane of hair and a Buffalo Bill rig-out, drove the horses. From the sides of the big vehicle hung highly-coloured posters, while above flared the name of the show in long, red letters.
The black mare Nickie rode was one of the three hired to drag the Museum into Bullfrog. She was a rather spirited little beast, and had shown great perturbation when Mr. Crips, in his full make-up as Mahdi, the Missing Link, approached to mount. Now she cantered ahead at a smart pace, still nervous about the monstrous thing upon her back. The caravan came rattling after, Professor Thunder keeping up a volley of whip cracks, and Madame tooting gaily.
It was early in the day, and the towns.h.i.+p had lain drowsing in its dust under the s.h.i.+mmer of a great yellow sun till this astonis.h.i.+ng invasion struck it, and startled it from its accustomed lethargy. There was a rush to windows and doors, men fell over each other struggling from Harvey's bar, a sudden mutiny arose in the little wooden school, and children swarmed at the windows, and poured pell-mell from the doors. The people of Bullfrog caught only a fleeting glimpse of a huge monkey crouched man-wise on a gaily caparisoned pony, of Madame Marve in her fairy costume, and the gaudy caravan, as the small procession dashed past.
But Constable Cobb, who was drowsing against the shoemaker's doorpost, saw the amazing thing on the horse approaching as in a dream, and professional zeal uppermost in his mind, he dashed into the toad, and grabbed at the rein. The mare, already much distressed, lost her head entirely at this rude intervention of the law, and rearing high on her hind legs as she beat the air with her hoofs, plunged wildly, and then bolted, leaving Constable Cobb on the broad of his back, half stifled in the dust, with the imprint of a horseshoe on his elegant helmet.
The mare did the circuit of Bullfrog at a furious pace, with the Missing Link hanging about her neck, and slinging to her ribs with insistent heels. Never had Bullfrog experienced such a shaking up. People came running in all directions, eager to see this marvellous thing. The towns.h.i.+p was almost obscured in its own dust, and through the clouds of her own creating came the little mare, scattering the horrified inhabitants, who caught only fleeting glimpses of the huge, hairy creature sprawling in the saddle.
When Nickie at length regained his stirrups, and worked himself into an upright position, he found the mare racing along a rough road between walls of bush, heading towards Tollbar, whence she had come on the previous day.
Nickie the Kid was not expert as an equestrian. So far he had clung to the horse with desperate tenacity, and now that he had recovered his mental grip to some extent he could think of nothing to restrain the animal's wild career, but he did think of the awful possibilities of his position, one of which was an apparent certainty. The horse would carry him back to Tollbar, to its owner's stable, the towns.h.i.+p would be drawn together by the extraordinary spectacle of a horse bolting through the place mounted by a gigantic monkey, the fraud would be discovered, and then the inhabitants would deal in their own gentle, characteristic way with the man who had been party to Professor Thunder's shocking imposition. Two days earlier Tollbar had patronised the museum.
These cheerful thoughts occupied Nickie's mind while the mare was negotiating about five miles, and wearing much of the wool off Mahdi, and not a little cuticle off Mr. Crips; but he was saved the dread ordeal he antic.i.p.ated by another disaster. The mare caught a hoof in a rut and came down heavily, and presently Nickie recovered consciousness, lying on his back, blinking at the blue sky, gratified to find that he was not dead.
The mare was out of sight, and the Missing Link was at large in the bush, with a damaged head, a sprained ankle, a cracked rib, and a pain in every limb. He arose and shook some, of the dust off himself, and then limped from the road and sat in the shade of a tree, with his back to the b.u.t.t, to consider his lamentable situation and feel his injuries.