Part 15 (1/2)
Mrs. Spink did look closely. There was not the slightest doubt that the animal she beheld, although somewhat faked, was one of the monkey tribe.
She confessed her error, she became contrite and tearful, and promised an apology if the Professor would not persist in his threatened action for defamation of character.
”I was told the wretch was seen with your company,” said the tearful Mrs.
Spink.
When the widow was well out of range, Nickie crept from the tent of the Egyptian Mystic, and breathed a great sigh of relief.
”I shall probably never make love to a widow again,” he said, sadly; ”they are so ungrateful.”
He was dressed in his ordinary clothes, and the creature in the Missing Link's cage sprang towards him spitting and clawing spitefully. It was Ammonia, the Gorilla, in the Missing Link's skin, padded and faked to twice his size to deceive a poor, weak woman.
”I believe after all we ought to frighten something in the way of compensation out of the gorgon,” said Nickie, vengefully. Our reprobate hero was a man who knew no remorse of conscience.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARDI HAS A NIGHT OFF.
PROFESSOR THUNDER was hurt in his professional pride by the signal failure of his Museum of Marvels in Rabbit towns.h.i.+p. In the first place, the great impresario had been guilty of a grievous blunder in selecting Rabbit for a two-night's pitch, but things had been going so remarkably well of late, due mainly to the eccentric adventures of the Missing Link, that the boss was getting proud, and was beginning to feel that his astounding galaxy of unparalleled attractions would draw well in the dead centre of the Old Man Plain. Rabbit towns.h.i.+p was making his error plain to him.
Usually when the caravan bounded into a towns.h.i.+p, with the little bells on the horses jingling gaily, and Madame Marve, dressed in a somewhat brief and too youthful costume, enthroned on the box seat, playing a rattling tune on the cornet, the people turned out in crowds to welcome it, and the children swarmed, eager for a peep at the hidden mysteries.
It was different at Rabbit towns.h.i.+p.
The caravan dashed into Rabbit with the customary velocity and the regulation rattle, but Rabbit did not trouble itself.
”Blarst my eyes!” growled the Professor, when the camp was made; ”even the dogs didn't bark! What sort of a boneyard is this we've struck?”
As a matter of fact, Rabbit was a moribund towns.h.i.+p. The rabbits had eaten up the surrounding country, and now they were beginning to eat up the towns.h.i.+p. So voracious was bunny that when a man went missing it was gloomily concluded that the rabbits had eaten him, and the towns.h.i.+p took no action, subsiding in despair. Most of the people had left. Those who remained did so because they couldn't afford to s.h.i.+ft, or because they were too lazy to go.
Professor Thunder had been doing good business, and his expenses were light. He could afford to play tricks, but he played a foolish prank in trying to amuse Rabbit towns.h.i.+p. Rabbit was incapable of being amused.
There remained an open hotel at Rabbit, and the Professor called on its proprietor to gather useful information concerning the inhabitants, their tastes and habits. He found Schmitz, the portly proprietor, sprawling on his own bar counter, embracing a bottle of squareface with a loving hug.
The two arms of Schmitz caressed the bottle, his cheek was pressed amorously to the cork. The eye of Schmitz was small and round, and seemed to be filled with pink cobweb, his hair was in a state of tumult, and was full of chips, suggesting that he had recently slept on the wood heap.
Schmitz had a fierce, red moustache, that looked as if it had been trimmed on a block with an adze.
The publican blinked stupidly at the world-famous showman for a moment, trying to pick him out from a number of unnatural curiosities careering before him, and then he said, decisively: ”Ged oud of mein 'ous'.”
”My dear fellow,” said the Professor, urbanely, ”I suppose you will serve me with some little refreshment?”
”Refreshmend?” muttered the landlord. ”Refreshmend?” His intellect struggled to grasp the situation. Suddenly it became luminous. ”Nein!” he yelled. ”I vill nod you mid refreshmend serve! Nein! I keep him all for meinseluf. Ged oud!”
”But, Mr. Schmitz,” expostulated the Professor.
”Ged oud of mein 'ous'. I know vot you want, ain't id? You want to buy mein liquer. Veil, I don'd sell some liquer to nopody. Der ain't sufficiency for mieinseluf. Ged oud! Tam you, ged oud kvick!” Schmitz caught up a bottle in quick rage, and dashed it at Professor Thunder.
The Professor pursued his investigations no further. The tent was pitched, the museum was arranged for an afternoon performance, and the unrivalled showman, to whose enterprise Rabbit owed this chance of improving its mind and enlivening its leisure, took his stand outside, and endeavoured to awaken the towns.h.i.+p to a sense of its opportunities.
For three-quarters of an hour he poured forth a stream of eloquence at the top of his pitch. After the first quarter of an hour he was appreciated by a tired dog, which drifted up, and barked at him in a desultory way. Later, he was becoming discouraged when a tattered youth, wearing a hat that nearly engulfed him, came and stared at him open-mouthed, stupidly, silently, for twenty minutes. This youth was the towns.h.i.+p idiot. n.o.body else troubled to come out and see what all the noise was about.