Part 16 (1/2)

”Sharlie,” he said, ”is it true dot you vos, or is it true dot you aind't?”

Nickie offered him the bottle in a friendly way, and Schmitz took it and drank. The draught seemed to abolish all problems.

”Now ye make dot night, Sharlie,” said Schmitz. He staggered into the bar, and returned with an armful of bottles--all full of liquor. With the adroitness of an expert he knocked the head off a bottle of schnapps.

”Dot is for you, Sharlie,” he explained. The Missing Link a.s.sumed possession.

Schmitz knocked the head off another.

”Dot one for me iss,” he said.

Then the night began. The Dutchman drank and sang and danced, and a hundred times a.s.sured the Missing Link of his undying friends.h.i.+p. True, he had occasional spasms of reawakened amazement, when he would gaze at the man-monkey in stupid wonder, saying: ”I don't understand me, Sharlie,” but Nickie's extremely human manner of disposing of gin seemed to rea.s.sure him, and he would burst into song again.

In due course Nickie grew jovial, and lost all sense of his make-up and his professional reputation, and he sang, too, and caper exuberantly about Schmitz's kitchen, while Schmitz, reclining in a corner on the floor, shook his fat sides with gargantuan roars of laughter. The sight of this gigantic ape dancing a Highland Fling stirred the drunken Dutchman to wildest merriment; he howled with delight.

”Goot, goot! Some more Sharlie!” he yelled. ”Dance, dance. Mein Gott, dot's der greadest sight I effer haff see me.”

This was the strange and awful spectacle Mrs. Schmitz tumbled upon, returning from a week's stay at Rattletrap. Her screams brought the red-headed stable boy to the rescue.

Two minutes later, while Mrs. Schmitz was a.s.suring one section of Rabbit towns.h.i.+p that her poor, miserable husband had sold his soul to h.e.l.l, and was at that moment dancing fiendish dances with the devil himself in her kitchen, a red-headed youth, almost beside himself with horror, was stirring up the other section with the tale of Dutchy Schmitz howling mad in the hotel, while a great, hairy, hideous jim-jam capered on the floor before him.

Rabbit was stirred at last. Professor Thunder was made unpleasantly aware of the fact when he discovered a crowd of patriots surrounding Schmitz's, preparing to burn out the devils that possessed it, having peeped timidly at the windows; and a.s.sured themselves of the unearthly nature of Schmitz's guest.

The Missing Link, with Schmitz on his arm, came rolling from the back door, roaring and brandis.h.i.+ng a bottle. The crowd broke and fled before them, and a minute later the bosom friends were rocking down the road together, singing insanely.

How to recapture Nickie was the showman's real trouble now. He knew that persuasion would be useless with Nickie in his present state, and resolved to try force. He grappled with Nickie in the street, and Nickie, now feeling like a king in his own right, and valiantly a.s.serting his majesty, resented this impudent interference, and fought with fine, royal spirit. For a moment or two Dutchy failed to realise the situation, and then, roaring like a bull, and swinging a bottle of stone gin, he went at the Professor.

The bottle took Thunder in the back of the head. It ought to have killed him, but it didn't--it merely stretched him on the road unconscious. When he recovered he was on a couch in the hotel, with his head wrapped in a tablecloth, and day was breaking. No body knew what had become of Dutchy and the Missing Link, and the Professor returned to the tent, with a soul seething bitterness. He found Nickie in his cage, sleeping soundly, and alongside him on the straw lay the bulky form of Schmitz, the publican, in whose hand was still clutched a bottle of stone gin. The Missing Link had returned hospitality for hospitality, and side by side like brothers dear the carousers slept.

CHAPTER XV.

HOBBS VERSUS MAHDI.

IT was shortly after noon, and the day was warm and still. No one was stirring in Waddy. Professor Thunder had given up the idea that his eloquence could conquer the general la.s.situde, and was snoring in the tent of the Egyptian Mystic. Madame Marve was shopping in the towns.h.i.+p, and Matty Cann, the Living Skeleton, had come down from his throne and was curled up on a horse-rug. Ammonia, the orang-outang, sprawled on the floor of his cage, and the other monkeys were chattering angrily.

Nickie sat with his back to the wall of his compartment, sweltering in the hot garb of the Missing Link, drowsing and day-dreaming of beer. He thought he was sitting in a sylvian glade, with an attendant nymph, where a cascade splashed over crystal rocks, and the cascade was beer--all beer.

”Ello there!” said a thick voice. Someone was shaking the bars of the cage. ”Get up and do some thin', blarst yer eyes! What have I paid yeh for?” continued the voice.

Tish had taken sixpence at the door, and admitted a patron without giving due warning to the exhibits. It was a rule that the public was not to be admitted to the Museum of Marvels without proper notice being given to the company. The precaution was necessary to obviate the chance of the Egyptian Mystic being discovered in the act of preparing onions for the stew, or engaged upon some other menial task, to the destruction of her dignity and mystery as a distinguished foreigner with supernatural powers. Or the people might have come upon the Missing Link in heated debate with the Living Skeleton, or in the hearty enjoyment of a long beer, or possibly reading a sentimental novel.

Nickie bared the long tusks of his mask in a malignant grin, but did not stir. He couldn't be expected to waste his arts and graces on a common drunk.

The man rattled the bars of the cage again. ”'Ello! 'Ello!” he cried, ”shake yourself up! Le's see what yer made of. Get goin'. Give us a specimen of yer arts.”

The Missing Link yawned hideously, stretching his long hairy limbs, and blinked his little eyes at the visitor.

”Tha's not so bad,” growled the man. ”You're a bit of an artist, anyhow, but I reckon you ain't nothin' t' some of the Missin' Links I've come across in my time. I've been in the business myself, so you can't monkey me, my man.”

Nickie sat up, growled in his best style, and scratched with the dull laziness of a tired ape.