The Missing Link Part 16

"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 friendship. 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 township 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 brandishing 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 township, 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.

"'Ere, 'ere," cried the man, "'ere, 'ere, Bravo! Not too rotten That's first rate monkey business, take it from Ivo Hobbs. Let me interdoose myself. Mr. Mahdi. Ivo Hobbs, late o' Kitts and Killjammer's Whole World Show."

Nickie walked along the back wall of his cage two or three times with simian ungainliness, turning with a peculiar spring that Mr. Crips had learned from the Orang.

"Good enough!" said. Ivo Hobbs. "Good enough. There's no ticks on you, you're a stoodent, I can see. How's the game mate?"

It was necessary to convince this beery intruder of his grievous error in taking Professor Thunder' celebrated Missing Link, Mahdi, from the tangled jungles of Darkest Africa, for a cheap fake. Nickie sprang to the perch with great agility, caught it with one hand, slowly drew up a leg, hooked a hind claw to the bar and hung so, blinking unconcernedly.

"What oh!" said the audience, with enthusiasm.

"That's a bit of all right. You're a husker. But there ain't no reason for this reticence with a brother professional. I was the bearded woman with Kitts and Kiljammer's show for over two years, I was Shake, mate."

The visitor thrust a hand through the bars.

Nickie dropped from his swing, landing lightly on four paws, ambled daintily across the cage, ran up the bars, and seated himself on a limb propped in a corner.

The audience applauded generously.

"Bli' me," he cried, "you're a fool t' waste them talents on a side show like this. You orter hitch on at one o' the great circuses."

Nickie slid down the rope and resumed his leisurely scratching, prospected his ribs for a few seconds, and then made a sudden dash at Ammona, the orang, grappled with him through the bars, s.n.a.t.c.hed away a little fur, and maintained a fierce scratching and snapping squabble for half a minute or so.

This was one of Nickie's most effective bits of business. Whenever he heard an audience casting doubts on his authenticity as a genuine member of the monkey family, he work up a spluttering dispute with Ammonia and the battle was so realistic that it dispelled all doubts.

"Well I'm jiggered." murmured Mr. Ivo Hobbs. "I could have sworn he was a fake." He pressed more closely to the bars, and peered at Nickie with a critical, if somewhat beery eye, and the Missing Link posed languidly in a monkey att.i.tude. Suddenly Ivo jabbed at him with a stick. The stick was pointed, and it took Nickie in the ear.

"h.e.l.l!" cried the Missing Link, bounding across his cage.

Ivo burst into a roar of laughter. "That's all right, old bloke," he said. "You're a bonzer, but we all have our weak moments."

Nickie was furious. This a.s.sault, combined with the heat and burden of the day, had dispelled his natural apathy. There was always a loose bar in the front of his cage, placed there for effect, so that the Missing Link might work up an occasional sensation by an apparent attempt to break away. Nickie dashed at this bar. It broke before him, and he came through, falling bodily on Ivo Hobbs, and bearing him to the ground. Ivo uttered a yell of apprehension. His beery doubts seemed to fly before this animal attack, and when he realised that he was being bitten and clawed mercilessly, he howled for help at the top of his voice.

Professor Thunder rushed from his slumber, and discovered his Missing Link and a total stranger rolling and tumbling on the ground. By this time Nickie had inflicted no little grievous bodily harm upon the unhappy Ivo, and he allowed Thunder and the Living Skeleton to drag him off, and thrust him back into the cage.

Ivo arose in great wrath.

"This is unprovoked a.s.sault and battery," he cried, shaking his fist at the Missing Link. "I'll have the law on you."

"But, my dear sir," protested the Professor, "you must have provoked the poor animal."

"Animal be blowed. You can't jolly me. Think I don't know a fake when I see one, I'll have him run in in half a tick."

Professor Thunder endeavoured to argue with Ivo, and hinted at compensation, but the injured man fled from the tent in a state of blind anger.

"Let him go." said the Missing Link, vindictively. "He won't come back, He's had all the damages he wants."

But he did come back. Ivo returned in a quarter of an hour and he brought a policeman with him, and on their heels came quite a crowd, Professor Thunder, with business-like precision, charged a shilling a head to all seeking' admission.