Chapter II: Part 2

It was nearly midnight when Bobby Wilkins’ chauffeur reported over the telephone to Jimmy Martin and McClintock, who had been keeping anxious vigil in the office all night.

“There ain’t a sign of him,” he said hurriedly. “I waited right where you told me to wait, and if he’d have been anywhere within a couple of miles I could have seen him after it got dark. The moon has been shining bright for a long time, and I had a pair of glasses with me. I’m afraid it’s all up with him if he hasn’t landed some place else along the coast. It’s tough for all of us if anything’s gone wrong, ain’t it?”

The chauffeur was instructed to make another trip to the selected landing place and to stay there until dawn when relief was promised. Jimmy was pale and over-wrought when he hung up the telephone receiver and turned to McClintock.

“If he had landed any place else,” he remarked, “he’d have made every effort to get to a phone. He’d know we’d be worried. Gee, Mac, supposin’ somethin’s happened to ’em. If there has little old Robert B. Remorse’ll be my side-partner for life. He told me he’d be prepared for all emergencies and he’s there with the nerve, but maybe they ran into a squall or something. Why’d I ever think of this stunt? I’ve got too much imagination, Mac, I’ve got to teach it to lie down and behave.”

The two sat up all night, smoking incessantly and discussing the variety of fates which they fancied might have overtaken the adventuresome Bobby Wilkins and his distinguished fellow passenger. Jimmy called up one of the newspaper offices every fifteen minutes for news, but there wasn’t any worth mentioning. The dirigible had not been sighted by any ship with which the navy wireless had been able to get into communication and the half dozen destroyers sent out to search for it were reported to be without definite information.

The entire country seethed with the story in the morning. The Associated Press had carried fifteen hundred words into every newspaper office in every city of importance from coast to coast and the big dailies in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston had three and four column stories from their metropolitan correspondents, liberally illustrated with pictures of the Hon. Betty, who was one of the most photographed women of her time. McClintock, who had no knowledge of Jimmy’s promise to keep Bobby Wilkins’ real name out of print, had blurted it out to a group of reporters in the evening and the salient facts concerning the modest wearer of three war medals were incorporated in all of the accounts. Robert Wilkins, Sr., forgot that he was a mere business machine, wiped a few tears out of the corners of his eyes, looked tenderly at a picture of a curly headed boy he always kept in one of the drawers of his desk and started east on a special train.

The total haul in the New York morning papers was seventy-six columns of solid reading matter and thirty-eight photographic illustrations. Every angle of the story was covered in great detail and in addition to the main narrative there were extended biographical sketches of the Hon. Betty and of Bobby Wilkins. There were cabled stories from London concerning the festive career of the former and containing an expression of deep concern from the British premier. There were also eulogies of the one time ace from personages no less important than the American commander in chief in France and the generalissimo of the allied armies. All in all it was the most spectacular “feature story” in years and the greatest achievement in the history of American press agentry. McClintock admitted that much when the first editions came in.

“Jimmy,” he said, “it’s a dog-goned shame that you’ve got to lie low and never get credit for this. Still you’ve got company. I was reading in the paper the other day that there’s a well defined rumor that the more or less celebrated covenant of the well known League of Nations was finally framed up by a clerk in the British foreign office. You can drop over later on and take a little drink with him and cry it all out on each other’s shoulder.”

Jimmy’s only response was a mournful attempt at a smile. He lit another cigarette, jerked out of his chair and began to swear softly as he walked up and down the room. He made a vicious lunge with his foot at a waste-basket and kicked it through the door into the next office. Then he took off his soft hat, rolled it into a lump and slammed it down on the floor with a wide, sweeping gesture.

“I don’t mind that so much,” he said testily. “After landin’ a smear like that, though, I’d kinda like to have a good time with myself for a few minutes. I’d kinda like to throw a few assorted flowers up in the air and let ’em drop on me, but I’m so gosh-darned worried about what’s actually happened that I can’t even have that much fun.”

His anxiety increased as the day wore on and the early editions of the evening papers which played up the story even more extensively than the “mornings” failed to buoy him up. There was still no word of the N-24, and navy department officials in Washington were reported to be gravely alarmed at the possibilities.

At noon the British embassy gave out the announcement that “a distinguished person” had cabled for detailed information and had begged to be kept in hourly touch with the developments. Flaming head-lines carried the legend “King Anxious About Lost Dirigible.” Upon reading this three rival publicity promoters who had suspected the presence of the fine Italian hand of Jimmy Martin in the proceedings from the beginning and who had foregathered for lunch in their favorite club, simultaneously started out on a joint jamboree that was to become a memorable minor historical incident in the turgid annals of Broadway. It offered the only means of escaping from the tragic feeling of profound and passionate envy that surged up from the very depths of their beings.

At 3 o’clock as Jimmy, red-eyed and haggard, nodded at his desk between telephone calls, a messenger boy dropped a cablegram in front of him. He tore it open and gazed bewilderingly at this cryptic message:

HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
JAMES T. MARTIN.
JOLLYLAND PARK,
CONEY ISLAND, N. Y.
COME ON IN—THE WATER’S FINE—GIVE
MY REGARDS TO LOLITA, BUT CAN’T
SAY I’M SORRY IT HAPPENED AS YET.
BOBBY WILKINS.

Jimmy gave a second look at the heading and rushed into the next office where McClintock was snoring sonorously on a sofa. He shook the manager savagely and waved the cablegram in front of his eyes.

“All’s right with the world, Mac,” he shouted joyously. “They’ve landed in Bermuda. Can you beat that fresh son-of-a-gun doin’ a thing like that? What’s the big idea, I wonder?”

McClintock grabbed the message and read it hurriedly.

“I guess maybe he’s mailing the answer,” he remarked. “It beats me. You’d better get a wire off to him asking for particulars.”

The shrill summons of the telephone brought Jimmy back into his own office the next moment. The voice of his friend, Lindsay, the day desk man of the Associated Press, came over the wire in crisp, staccato sentences.

“Got some news for you,” he said. “It’s going to make this morning’s headlines look sick. Here’s the way our first bulletin reads:

“‘Washington, D. C.—July 7—The British ambassador has just given out the following cablegram received from the Governor-General of the Bermuda Islands:—‘Please announce to press the marriage this morning in St. John’s chapel, Hamilton, of the Hon. Elizabeth Ardsley Ashley, eldest daughter of Lord Norbonne, Bart., of London, England, to Robert Benjamin Wilkins, Jr., only son of Robert Benjamin Wilkins, Sr., of Chicago, Ill., U.S.A. The ceremony was entirely informal.’”

“I’m ordering three thousand words from our Bermuda correspondent,” went on Lindsay, “and I’m having London break the news gently to dear, old dad. I suppose if I came down on Sunday with the wife and the kiddies you could slip us into a few of your side-shows.”

“Say,” responded Jimmy exultingly, “you’re goin’ to get a life pass good for each and every attraction within the big enclosure.”

As he hung up the telephone and swung around in his swivel chair the door leading into the hall opened ever so gently and the pale and tear-stained face of Lolita Murphy peered through the opening. Jimmy gazed at her, open-eyed, as she came slowly into the room. He noticed that she had a crumpled bit of paper in her hand.

“Jimmy,” she said timidly, as she held out her arms in appealing suppliance, “I’m just a—just a foolish small town kid. I didn’t understand—I didn’t understand.”

Jimmy, in a daze, took the paper which she held towards him. It was another cablegram. He smoothed it out and the peace that surpasseth understanding settled down upon him as he read these words:

HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
LOLITA MURPHY,
JOLLYLAND PARK,
CONEY ISLAND, N. Y.
WON’T IT EASE YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT
A LITTLE TO KNOW THAT THE
MAD IMPULSIVE THING I DID YESTERDAY
AND THE RASH ACT I HAVE JUST
COMMITTED IN THE CHAPEL HAVE
TRANSFORMED ME INTO QUITE THE
HAPPIEST WOMAN ALIVE—BOBBY HAS
TOLD ME ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING AND
HE FEARS THAT YOU MAY THINK YOUR
FRIEND MR. MARTIN HAD A FINGER IN
THE PIE—HE HAD NOTHING TO DO
WITH IT, MY DEAR—IT WAS JUST FATE.
OUR BEST REGARDS TO YOU BOTH.
ELIZABETH ASHLEY WILKINS.

McClintock, coming into the room just then, tip-toed out again and closed the door softly behind him, thus proving himself to be a gentleman of singular tact and discretion.

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Chapter Six

An understanding with Lolita which contained certain qualifying clauses was one of the net results of the Adventure of the Lost Dirigible. Jimmy filed a number of demurrers, but they were over-ruled as soon as they were entered on the docket. He had been foolish enough to imagine on the celebrated morning after the night before that a perceptible scent of orange blossoms clogged the circumambient air, but this belief was soon dissipated by the young lady herself.

“I can’t get married, Jimmy,” she said earnestly, “until I find out about my career.”

“What’s that got to with it?”

“Why, just—why, everything. I was reading an article only the other day by Mary Garden in which she said that marriage cramped the career of a woman on the stage. She said that husbands were a handicap—that they held you back with the tail end of the procession and kept you from getting on. She said——”

Jimmy broke in with a scornful laugh.

“I suppose she mentioned Mrs. Fiske and Laurette Taylor and Ethel Barrymore and Blanche Bates and all the other selling platers who’ve been left at the post because they were foolish enough to enter the matrimonial stakes,” he scoffed. “It’s really too bad about ’em. It looked once as if they had a chance.”

Her mouth stiffened at this and she tossed her head with a little gesture that spelled stubborn defiance.

“Well—anyway—,” she said, “I’m going to see how it works—for a little while. Maybe there isn’t going to be any career for me beyond—well, beyond ‘Secret Service Sallie.’ If there isn’t I might possibly——”

She paused thoughtfully. Jimmy’s scornful mood had passed and he looked at her appealingly.

“You might possibly what?” he ventured, cautiously. “There isn’t goin’ to be _another_ catch in it, is there?”

“I’m afraid there is,” she replied, quietly. “You’ll have to settle down some place first. I don’t think I’d ever learn how to keep house permanently in a hotel bed-room and besides——”

Again a disturbing pause. Jimmy was rapidly becoming a pitiful object to behold.

“Get it all out of your system, sister,” he said, weakly. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“Well,” she resumed evenly, “besides settling down you’d have to have some money in the bank—quite a little. That’s the most important thing. There was a girl in our town once who ran off with a fellow in the show business and lived a hand-to-mouth sort of a life for several seasons after passing up a lot of good chances among the boys she knew. She’s back selling stockings in Boyd’s Emporium on First avenue now and she looks kind of faded out and tired. I like you a lot, Jimmy, and you’ve treated me better than I deserved and you’re the nicest fellow I ever knew, but we’ve got to be sensible and wait and see how things work out. Won’t you—please?”

The “please” was long drawn out and a bit plaintive. It touched the heart-strings of the hapless press agent and played a tender little strain upon them. He meekly agreed to all the qualifying clauses in the agreement and he would have signed on the dotted line if they had been three times as numerous.

Filled with a new enthusiasm his imagination began to run riot and within two weeks his surprise assaults upon the front line trenches of the forces defending the serried columns of the metropolitan daily newspapers resulted in space returns that established new records.

He contrived to have a member of the President’s cabinet who happened to take a ride on the Dippy Dip stalled in his gondola one hundred and seventy-five feet in the air for half an hour while a squad of mechanicians labored feverishly to get things straightened out. That landed on the front page of every paper in town. He married off the Armless Wonder in Bisbee’s Carnival of Freaks to the Legless Marvel with a new result of six “picture spreads” and five and a half columns of solid reading matter. His discovery that the little dark-haired girl who danced on the open air stage in the big free show every afternoon and evening was the daughter of a grand duke who had fled in disguise from Soviet Russia and who had feared to reveal her identity because of the possibility of attack by Bolshevik sympathizers in this country was his biggest coup, however. This was sensationally played up for all it was worth and considerably more in every New York daily and had been telegraphed all over the country. As a “follow-up” on this he arranged to have two uniformed guards accompany the young woman wherever she went. This, too, landed heavily and Jimmy’s customary high opinion of his own prowess was perhaps more noticeable than ever.

One evening while he was sauntering through the incandescent splendor of Jollyland in a mood of supreme elevation, he heard the booming voice of McClintock hailing him from the porch of the administration building.

“Come out of it,” the manager shouted.

Jimmy dropped back to earth with a start and sauntered toward the office.

“Gosh,” observed McClintock, “you looked as if you were off on a long journey. I hope you brought an idea back with you. We need one. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Jimmy smiled the inscrutable smile of one who is the custodian of the wisdom of the ages.

“I’ve got a neat little assortment of goods I picked up,” he responded cockily. “What can I offer you?”

“Well, it’s this way,” returned McClintock. “You haven’t pulled anything yet about our co-worker, Signor Antonio Amado, and his trained animal show. He’s just been bawling his head off to me. Says there’s a conspiracy on foot to keep him out of the papers and threatens all kinds of trouble if we don’t slip something over about his concession right away. I know you planned to get around to him before long, but you’d better start something right off. Can you think of anything?”

Jimmy didn’t reply for nearly half a minute. His general manner betokened profound mental concentration.

“I guess we can accommodate that bird,” he finally remarked. “I don’t want to hurl any purple pansies at myself, but I think I’ve got a stunt that’ll pretty nearly crowd everything else on to the back page. I’ve got seven other animal stories ready, but I think this one has a shade on all of ’em. I’ll slip over and ooze it into our Dago friend’s intellect.”

The manager laughed good-naturedly.

“Say,” he commented, “you’re the best little friend of yourself you ever had, aren’t you? Just hand out a little of that conversation to Tony and he’ll lie down and behave for a few hours. Tell him you’ll get his picture in all the papers. That’ll make a hit with him. He’s a member of your lodge.”

The implications of the last remark made about as much impression on Jimmy as did the idle wind which at that moment was lightly brushing his cheek. He strolled over to the garish and gaudy building which housed Amado’s Colossal and Gargantuan Collection of Trained Wild Beasts from the Trackless Jungle; paused just long enough at the main entrance to tell the dark-eyed lady cashier that she looked like a pocket edition of Maxine Elliott and passed into the auditorium where Signor Amado was directing the progress of the final show of the night.

The animal trainer was a short, stocky, swarthy-hued Latin with beady eyes, shiny black hair, and a moustache to the care of which he devoted himself with self-effacing solicitude. It was a fierce looking affair with ends pointed like a rapier, which thrust themselves aggressively upwards at a sharp angle giving the signor’s dark countenance a look of great ferocity. He tried desperately hard at all times to live up to that moustache and he had a habit of working himself into violent rages which were, in reality, rather hollow and empty affairs, as even the most casual observer could see. He was at heart, a weak and excessively vain little man. Only the animals who leaped or cowered at his command were fooled by his appearance of ferocity.

At the conclusion of the show he retired to his office and began to pour into the unreceptive ears of the general director of promotion and publicity a voluble stream of protest against the neglect of himself which Jimmy was able to check only with great difficulty.

“Listen, Signor,” he finally managed to remark. “You’re wastin’ gas you’ll need some day when you’re climbin’ uphill. I came in to tell you about a scheme I’ve got that’ll put you and your show right in the center of the map in bright green, and you begin this eruption stuff that doesn’t get you even a look-in. Will you listen to me?”

“All right. I makea de listen,” replied Signor Amado, “but eef eet eesa nota one gooda schema thata makea me hava de face—Signor Antonio Amado’s face—all ever de—what you call?—all over de whole damned place—I queeta de park—so.”

He snapped his fingers airily and shrugged his shoulders. Jimmy proceeded to expound and expatiate, and as he did so the signor’s face took on a look of intense interest. Presently it was wreathed in smiles, and he was patting the press agent on the back and uttering words expressive of pleased delight. The conspirators conferred for a half an hour, carefully going over Jimmy’s plan of campaign and adjusting the smallest details thereof so that there would be no disturbing faux pas on the morrow. They pledged the success of the enterprise just before midnight in brimming glasses of Chianti which the signor drew from a secret hiding place in his desk.

At about ten o’clock on the following morning an express wagon drove up in front of Signor Amado’s concession and four husky attendants brought out a large box which was placed on it. Jimmy drew the driver aside and gave him final instructions.

“Get right near the tower on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn bridge,” he said, “and figure on making it at just about noon. Drive slowly and if anyone near you makes a noise like a cop don’t pull anything just then. Wait till there’s no one lookin’ and then reach back, unfasten the hasp and lift the lid. Then you’ve got to register surprise, consternation and annoyance and suggest calling up Signor Amado when the plot begins to thicken, if you get what I mean.”

The driver, a typical “wise” product of the New York streets, nodded his head, Signor Amado spoke a few mystic words through a wire netting at one end of the box and the “plant” started on its way after Jimmy gave a final parting instruction.

“I’ll probably be in the immediate vicinity when things begin to break,” he cautioned, “but for the love of P. T. Barnum don’t make any signs of recognition.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Seven

And so it came to pass that at the appointed hour Jimmy, nonchalantly strolling along the promenade near the great stone tower on the Manhattan side of the bridge, cast a wary glance down towards the roadway and observed the express wagon slowly jogging along directly underneath. The driver, covertly glancing to the right and the left, reached behind the seat with a quick movement, fumbled for an instant with the hasp and, after lifting back the lid of the box, resumed his two-handed control of the reins, perceptibly slowing up the speed of the wagon.

The next instant the mischievous and uncannily human looking head of a large-sized monkey appeared above the top of the box. He blinked for a moment in the strong sunlight, reassured himself that the driver was not watching him, leaped lightly to the roadway and made for the network of auxiliary cables which run from the main supporting cables of the great bridge. Following him came a procession of other monkeys of varying sizes and kinds—short-tails and long-tails, some with weird whiskers and others as devoid of facial adornment as a new-born babe—all of them chattering and gibbering, each one intensely alive and apparently determined on having the time of his or her young life as the case might be. There were fifteen of them in all and as they sprang out of the wagon, one by one, and started to join the venturesome leader of the expedition they attracted the attention of scores of pedestrians, chauffeurs and drivers.

“Hey, there, young fellow,” shrieked a man on the promenade. “You gosh-darned zoo is escaping.”

The driver stopped the wagon suddenly, turned around and proceeded to give a perfect imitation of a man in that particular frame of mind popularly known as a “blue funk.” He jumped to the roadway and tried to clutch the last of the escaping simians by the hind legs. That agile creature eluded his grasp and joined two of his brethren who were chattering gaily at the base of the labyrinthian maze of cables and supports. By this time the first dozen of the monkeys had clambered aloft and were surveying the constantly increasing crowd of joyous onlookers from points of vantage anywhere from twenty to a hundred feet in the air.

A policeman shouldered his way through the front ranks of the crowd and looked up at the galaxy of nimble apes. He was sputtering and fuming with rage.

“Come down out of that,” he yelled helplessly, shaking his club in an absurdly futile attempt to wield authority.

The crowd roared with delight. One of the monkeys still on the ground darted toward him, leaped on his shoulder and sprang from it to the nearest cable far above his head before he was conscious of exactly what had happened. He struck vainly at it with his stick. The crowd rocked with laughter. Two other policemen joined him, forcing their way with difficulty through the dense mass of pedestrians on the promenade.

“Maybe if we whistled at him, Dinny,” observed one of these sagely, “they might come down.”

The three guardians of the law proceeded to pucker up their lips and to emit a series of plaintive whistles which so startled the one-time denizens of the jungle that all of them, as if swayed by some common impulse, swung lightly to places ten or twelve feet higher.

“Sing ’em a little song,” shouted at ribald youth and the crowd once more chortled with glee.

At this juncture a police lieutenant arrived on the scene, attracted from a distance by the great congestion of traffic. More than two thousand persons were now gathered on the promenade and vehicular progress in both directions was clogged. A long line of trolley cars was strung out to the east and the west, and several hundred motor cars and trucks were stalled while their drivers crowded forward to enjoy the fun. The lieutenant sized up the seriousness of the situation instantly. He dispatched one of the patrolmen to telephone for the reserves and to send in a still alarm for the fire department, and then turned to Jimmy’s willing tool, the driver. That individual, still registering dazed bewilderment, shrugged his shoulders when asked to assist in bringing down the escaped monkeys, who were now festooned in irregular formation along the interlocking cables for a distance of several hundred feet. Most of them were swinging by their tails and otherwise comporting themselves with a supreme disregard for law and order.

“I can’t do a thing, boss,” persisted the driver. “I don’t know the first name of a single one of the bunch. Maybe if some one telephoned for the gink that owns ’em he might be able to bring ’em down.”

And so it further came to pass that Signor Antonio Amado was reached on the telephone at Jollyland; that he swore lustily in three languages in simulation of great consternation and that he promised to come to the scene of hostilities as rapidly as his touring car could bring him. When he arrived forty minutes later; the crowd had grown to ten thousand and the greatest tie-up of traffic in the history of the bridge was in progress. The firemen from two hook and ladder companies were making ineffectual efforts to bring down the innocent disturbers of the great city’s peace and dignity and a certain press agent, watching the proceedings from a discreet distance, was enjoying the biggest emotional experience of a somewhat checkered and not altogether drab career. He was getting the same sort of thrill that comes to the playwright as he stands in the rear of a theatre during a tense scene in a play of his writing and watches a great audience swayed by something he has originated.

Jimmy noticed with keen interest that a group of newspaper men had already gathered on the scene, and that among them was no less a celebrity than Frank Malia, of the Item, the star feature writer of the Eastern Seaboard and a specialist in stories with a humorous angle. Jimmy knew that there were standing orders in the Item office to “let Malia’s stuff run,” and he felt reasonably sure of at least a column and half in that particular paper.

It may be recorded that the arrival of Signor Amado, resplendent in the snappy green and white huzzar uniform he wore while directing the performances in his concession, brought the festivities to a rapid conclusion. In response to sharply spoken words of command from the fierce-looking little trainer the truant apes descended rather reluctantly from their perches and permitted themselves to be herded together once more into the wooden cage, the top of which was now securely fastened down under the personal direction of the police inspector who had arrived to take charge of affairs a few minutes before.

The great throng cheered the Signor vociferously when he had finished and stepped into his car. He bowed again and again, kissed his hand, waved his busby and gave other indications of profound satisfaction with himself and with what he felt to be the justly merited plaudits accorded him. Jimmy permitted himself to be swallowed up in the eddies of the dispersing crowd, as the signor’s car whirled him back to Jollyland.

The subsequent proceedings were all that the most sanguine and optimistic press agent could desire. The story landed with a big splash in all the evening papers, and four of the morning papers covered it with feature yarns running all the way from three quarters of a column to nearly two columns in length. The longest story of all was written by Malia. It was a delightful bit of foolery written in a spirit of satirical burlesque and full of whimsical little touches that made it the talk of the week in journalistic circles.

There was only one thing that marred the perfect symmetry of the general effect. While the fact that the monkeys’ temporary habitat was Jollyland was properly chronicled in headlines and in the body of all the stories, there was no mention made by name of Signor Antonio Amado except in one paper and then his alliterative cognomen was atrociously misspelled and appeared as Andy Amato. He was referred to, of course, and described as well, but impersonally. Mention was made in one story of “a funny little fellow who looked as if he had escaped from the chorus of a Balkan operatta,” and Malia had called him “a bandit king with the manners of a marquis and the sang-froid of Subway guard.”

After glimpsing the evening papers and observing this omission Jimmy had turned over the conduct of affairs in his office for the night to his assistant, hoping that the morning papers would use the signor’s name. When he read the others at breakfast his elation at the general success of his personally conducted enterprise was tempered somewhat by the prospect of an eruption from the Vesuvian temperament of the animal trainer. He wasn’t particularly disturbed at this because he had sized the signor up as a false alarm from the start, but it meant a disconcerting half hour or so and he was a little bit peeved that the fates should have allotted him anything that was not rosy and serene on what should have been a day of general rejoicing and glad acclaim.

McClintock met him at the entrance to Jollyland. The manager wore an anxious look.

“Tony’s off the reservation,” he confided. “He did a series of flip-flops in my office a half hour ago and I understand that he’s turning handsprings all around his arena at the present writing. He inquired about your health. I told him you had gone over to Philadelphia on a little business for me. Better stick to the office all day. He never keeps these things up for more than twenty-four hours. Grand little story, that, even if it did annoy the King of Beasts.”

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Chapter Eight

Another of life’s irritations managed to try the soul of McClintock that morning. One of the more or less wild and untutored savages from the South Sea Island Village on the ocean side of the park came into the possession of a pint flask of the Demon Rum which had been washed up on the beach, and with no regard for the refined niceties of imbibing had swallowed the contents in a series of continuous gulps. The subsequent proceedings relieved the ennui and lethargy which always enfolded Jollyland in the morning hours before the gates were thrown open to the general public.

The savage gentleman—a thin, wiry person with wicked looking eyes from whose slit ear lobes, nose and lower lip there hung a choice collection of carved sea shells and brass rings, went into executive session with himself and proclaimed a Reign of Terror as the best means of establishing a dictatorship over the fellow members of his tribe, and the entire park as well. He started proceedings by invading his straw-thatched domicile and seriously damaging, with a well-directed blow, the facial contour of the companion of his joys. That lady, a most formidable party who had been taken unawares, retaliated in kind with such verve and energy that the self-constituted dictator left his domestic hearth with great suddenness and started on the rampage through the village street.

He seemed to have no carefully calculated plan of campaign and no particular objective. A general demolishment of all existing institutions, a comprehensive destruction of private property in general and a leveling of class distinctions appeared to be his vague aim. He leaped through a frame on which one of the natives was weaving a blanket, completely ruining the work of months; he overturned a shelf full of crude earthenware jugs which the potter of the establishment had contrived; and he playfully kissed the stout and principal wife of Mumbo Tom, the chief of the village. When that venerable worthy attempted to remonstrate in an outburst of outraged dignity, he tweaked the old fellow’s nose three times in rapid succession.

Passing out through the main gateway of the village into the esplanade he continued his ruthless assaults on organized society. Uttering weird and entirely unintelligible invocations to the spirits of his savage ancestors in a high-pitched voice, he vaulted on to the back of a patient-looking camel which was being groomed by a red-fezzed Egyptian from Greenville, Mississippi, preparatory to being ridden by visitors to the park at twenty-five cents per head. He dug his bare heels into the beast’s sides and emitted a wild whoop. The camel turned her head, surveyed him rather bewilderingly and started down the roadway on a brisk canter for about a hundred feet. Then she gave a little snort and heaved her humps convulsively. The social rebel from the South Seas shot through the air and landed in the direct center of a booth presided over by a gentleman from Nippon and devoted to what is known as the “Japanese ball game.” The results here were disastrous. When he picked himself from the clutter of broken china and glass with which he was almost entirely covered his head was bloody, but unbowed. He shook himself like some shaggy dog just emerging from a dip in the ocean, bounded over the counter and made for Antonio Amado’s wild animal show, pursued by a howling mob of attendants and special policemen who had gathered from the four corners of the park.

He burst through the entrance to the enclosure and ran along a passageway into the private office of Signor Amado himself. That ferocious looking worthy was, at the moment, delivering a philippic to his principal assistant, a pungent diatribe directed against the press, press agents, stupid park managements and the inherent injustice of mankind in general. At the sight of the wild-eyed and blood-stained visitor from an alien clime in the doorway, he passed in the middle of a sentence. His jaw dropped and his face turned ghastly white. He ducked behind a desk and mumbled a fervid appeal to the patron saint of his native village in Lombardy. The visitor looked around for something to destroy. His gaze encountered a half empty bottle of Chianti on a table and he sprang for it with the fierce avidity of a lion leaping at his prey from ambush. The contents of the bottle were gurgling down his throat to the accompaniment of half-choked chuckles of delight when the pursuing mob closed in a few seconds later and quelled the revolution. McClintock rushed in as the special policemen were putting a pair of handcuffs on the would be Trotsky. Signor Amado, arising from behind the desk, confronted him.

“Whatafor you leta theese fella in here, eh?” he cried belligerently, his old pose of aggressiveness automatically asserting itself at the sight of the pinions which held the savage intruder safely bound.

McClintock laughed at the sheer absurdity of this remark.

“We didn’t let him in any place, Tony,” he replied. “He just happened to drop in here and several places along the line before we could catch up with him.”

“Whata make him so bada man, er?” inquired the animal trainer.

“Booze, Tony, plain old-fashioned booze. They tell me he picked up a bottle on the beach some one must have dropped off an excursion boat. These fellows can’t stand intoxicants of any kind. It makes ’em wild. I see he’s been cutting into your Chianti.”

He gave orders for the temporary bestowal of the now thoroughly chastened and mollified revolutionary, and was following the latter’s captors out of the office when Signor Amado plucked him by the sleeve.

“Say, meester,” inquired the latter. “You geta my face in de papers tomor’, eh?”

The manager shook his head.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible—that is tomorrow,” he replied. “I told you this morning we’d do the very best we could to work up another story about you next week when this monkey yarn was sort of died down. Then we’ll see what we can do about landing your picture right. Don’t worry. Leave it all to me.”

Signor Amado assumed a defiant attitude.

“I giva you—what you call, eh?—a warning. You have my face in alla de papers tomor’ or, by dam, I feexa de park gooda.”

McClintock had heard threats like that before. He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. Signor Amado’s shifting glance fell upon the overturned Chianti bottle on the table and remained there for a few seconds. A malicious gleam slowly crept into his beady eyes and he smiled.

It is hardly necessary to chronicle the fact that the classic features of Signor Antonia Amado did not decorate the pages of any of the metropolitan newspapers on the following day. McClintock hadn’t bothered to tell Jimmy anything about the animal trainer’s threat. He refused to take it seriously himself and he saw no reason for worrying the press agent with any mention of it, particularly as that gentleman was busily engaged in working out the details of a fresh story which was to center around the fake kidnapping of two babies from the Infant Incubator.

When Signor Amado himself had carefully scanned the papers, and had convinced himself once more of the existence of a secret conspiracy to keep his name out of print he was strangely silent for one prone to burst into vociferous vocalization on the slightest provocation. He even chuckled a little when he put the last paper down and his beady eyes glinted nastily again. He strolled out into the room where his animals paced restlessly back and forth in the cramped limits of their stuffy cages and he spoke to several of them on his parade of inspection.

“Dey teenka day make beega foola of your boss, Lena,” he remarked to a great lioness who pushed her nose against the bars of her cage at his approach, “but, by dam, he makea dem feel ver’ foolish eh, Lena? He puta de whole parka on de bum. What you say, Lena, eh?”

He playfully poked at the splendid creature’s flank and she responded with a long drawn out roar of really terrifying volume. Signor Amado felt moved to sinister laughter.

“Dat’s right, olda girl,” he continued. “I puta de whole park on de bum?”

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Chapter Nine

Rain began to fall early that afternoon, a steady persistent downpour that held no immediate promise of abatement. A melancholy grayness enveloped Jollyland, converting it into a bleak and dismal habitation wherein dwelt people who seemed to have drunk of the chalice of desolation. Rain at the seaside is depressing enough, but rain in a summer park in the height of the season, rain that comes up just after the gates are opened and that looks as if it would last for twenty-four hours, produces an effect of gloom that almost defies description. Thousands of once gay flags twisted themselves limply around their poles; dozens of lady cashiers who hadn’t taken in a cent for hours and who were tired of their novels and incessant gum-chewing gazed listlessly into the leaden sky and wished they were home in Flatbush or Astoria; low-spirited concessionaires figured up their losses with pencil and paper and would have cursed the Fates if they had known of the existence of those divinities; performers, literally sick with ennui, clustered in little groups under cover and querulously argued with each other about trivialities; the waiters in the “Trianon” restaurant at the end of what was called the Street of a Thousand Delights, foreseeing that there would be no largesse forthcoming until the dawn of another day, rolled dice for the previous night’s pickings or aimlessly discussed Flying Scud’s chances in the fifth race at Belmont Park; the South Sea Islanders crooned weird chants under the shelter of their grass huts and McClintock smoked thick, black cigars and called up his friend in the weather bureau every fifteen minutes in a vain search for cheerful tidings. At seven o’clock in the evening—not a single patron having crossed the threshold of the park for four hours and the weather man’s report still being “continued rain”––he ordered Jollyland officially closed for the night, shut his desk with a vicious slam and stepped over to Jimmy Martin’s office for a chat.

“Well,” remarked the press agent, glancing up from his typewriter, “it looks as if we were in for a nice quiet evening at home. Has there been any squawk lately from my Italian friend?”

“There’s hasn’t been a peep out of him since yesterday,” replied the manager. “This rain has given him something else to worry about. He loves money as the flowers love the dew, and I’ll bet he hasn’t taken in $8.25 all day.”

McClintock dropped into a chair, swung one foot on Jimmy’s desk and lazily puffed at his cigar while the press agent ground out on the clicking machine a romantic tale concerning a lady rejoicing in the cognomen of Montana Maggie, who rode a cow pony in Laramie Ike’s Wild West Show and who totally annihilated dozens of glass balls with her trusty rifle at every exhibition given in that concession. Outside the rain poured incessantly. A mist-laden breeze found its way through the open windows, but it didn’t seem to dampen the pristine enthusiasm of Jimmy Martin who was working with all the fervor of a reporter trying to catch an edition with a big murder story and the “dead line” only ten minutes away.

Presently there came to the ears of both men the echo of a far-off sound that penetrated through the monotonous murmur of the dripping rain. It seemed like the blended babble of many voices and yet it was vaguely indistinct. McClintock jerked his foot off the desk and straightened up in his chair.

“If it wasn’t raining so-dog-goned hard,” he remarked “I’d say someone was staging a doughboy’s ‘welcome home’ parade or a young riot. What is it, I wonder?”

“There’s doings somewhere close at hand,” was Jimmy’s comment as he stood up, walked towards one of the windows, and peered out. “Here’s little old Paul Revere now, coming to tell us the news.”

The next instant a dripping park attendant, white-faced and trembling with excitement, burst through the door.

“Mr. McClintock,” he stammered, “there’s particular hell to pay down in the South Sea village. That bunch of wild-eyed nuts is all soused and they look as if they was gettin’ ready to go on the warpath. They’re crazy drunk—where they got the stuff beats me,——and they’re dancin’ around and singing’ songs fierce and when Patsy Burke tried to go in and argue with ’em they threw spears at him. He got cut in the shoulder—it ain’t anything bad—but you can’t tell what’ll happen and the rest of us is kinda upset. You’d better come along right away. We’ve got guards posted all around the fence, but I’m afraid if they start to come out something pretty rough’ll happen.”

“The end of a perfect day,” murmured the manager as he jammed his hat on his head and plunged out into the driving rain, closely followed by Jimmy and the attendant.

The events of the next hour were as full of exciting incident as the entire fifteen reels of a movie “serial.” The attendant had spoken truly when he stated that the forty-odd savages in the village were drunk. They were roaring, raving drunk. When McClintock and Jimmy reached their habitat they were filling the air with wild cries and maniacal shrieks. They were brandishing spears and vicious looking war clubs, and were dancing about the grass hut of Chief Mumbo Tom with all the fierce abandon of whirling dervishes. That ancient dignitary was sitting in front of the royal palace on his throne chair in a state of maudlin stupor, draining the last dregs of a bottle which he held to his lips and directing the festivities with encouraging waves of his free hand. The steady downpour of rain seemed to have no effect whatever on the celebration.

Finally the chief dropped the bottle and clapped his hands. There was silence for a moment and he made a brief speech, liberally punctuated by hiccoughs. When he had finished the others gave a concerted cheer and turned towards the stockade which surrounded the village.

“They’re coming out,” shouted McClintock, who was peering through an opening, “get your clubs ready, boys. Don’t anybody shoot. We’ll get into all kinds of a mix-up if you do.”

The battle royal which followed lasted for several minutes. The special policeman and other attendants gathered outside the enclosure won out after a desperate struggle and drove all but three of the rioters back. These three managed to worm their way through the press and went shrieking up the main street of Jollyland in emulation of their brother whose adventures of the day before have already been duly chronicled. The net damage which they wrought before capture was appraised on the following day at several thousand dollars. When the partially sobered villagers renewed their effort to get out of the stockade fifteen minutes later they were met with decided opposition from the park’s fire company, which had been called out by McClintock. A well directed high-pressure stream of water from a fire hose sent them tumbling over one another in disordered array and brought about a final cessation of hostilities.

In the excitement attendant upon the suppression of the incipient revolution no one observed a spectator who watched the proceedings from a sheltered position directly opposite the main entrance of the village. No one overheard his chuckles or saw him twirl the ends of his waxed moustache with a little gesture expressive of pleased satisfaction with himself. For that matter no one had seen one of his assistants unload three cases of Chianti from a push-cart in the rear of Mumbo Tom’s dwelling late in the afternoon during a particularly heavy downpour of rain or had overheard the announcement that the villagers were requested to drink to Signor Antonio Amato’s health. And there was no one to overhear the signor murmur as he stole back to his office through the gathering darkness.

“I tella dem I putta de park on de bum.”

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Chapter Ten

Fifteen minutes after peace had been declared McClintock and Jimmy, both thoroughly soaked and decidedly uncomfortable, foregathered in the latter’s office for a comparison of notes and a general consultation.

“That’d make a pippin’ of a story if you’d dare to let it get out,” ventured the press agent as he wrung out the corner of his saturated coat into a waste-basket.

“Well, I don’t take the dare,” returned the manager peevishly. “That’s one story that the censor isn’t going to let get through if he can stop it.”

“What’s the harm?” inquired Jimmy innocently.

McClintock looked him over carefully before replying.

“What’s the idea?” he remarked scornfully. “Is your reason tottering on its throne? Don’t you know that if this thing got out it’d scare away the family parties that are the backbone of our patronage? You couldn’t induce women to come within half a mile of the park if they heard about this rumpus. They’d think it might happen again any minute and they’d remain away in a body—and they’d keep father and the boys away too. Get that straight.”

“There’s something in it, I guess,” opined Jimmy slowly.

“You put your money three ways on that. You’ve got a new job tonight, mister man. You’ve got to forget about putting things in the papers. It’s up to you to keep something out for a change.”

“Maybe somebody’ll blab the whole thing.”

“I’ve issued orders to have everyone instructed to give an imitation of a tongue-tied clam, but so dog-goned many people were in on this that it’s pretty certain there’ll be a leak somewhere. That’s where you come in.”

“What can I do?” inquired the press agent ruefully. He was plainly displeased with the vista opened up by his superior.

“You can do every little thing there is to do,” returned McClintock firmly. “I want you to make a personal matter of this. I want you to drop into town and make the rounds of all the morning papers. I want you to see every city editor and make a special plea to have the thing hushed up. Tell ’em it’ll ruin us for the summer if it gets out. Make it strong. It’s going to be the acid test of how useful you really are around here. String ’em along. Let ’em understand that you won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I’m going to dust over home in my car for a clean-up and a long, dreamy nap. Goodnight.”

Jimmy started to expostulate, but he stopped short when the office door slammed in his face. He stood irresolutely as the chug-chug of McClintock’s machine died away in the distance. Then he dropped into a chair, reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table, lit one and indulged himself in painful cogitation. Under ordinary circumstances he would have experienced profound physical discomfort from his water-soaked clothes and the general feeling of stickiness that enveloped him from head to feet, but physical feelings were matters of slight importance to him at the moment. The distress which was registered upon his face was purely mental in its origin, but it was intense and singularly disturbing. He felt that he was up against the hardest job of his life and he could see no way to hurdle what seemed to be the insurmountable barriers that confronted him.

In the language of journalism Jimmy “knew news.” He knew precisely what sort of an incident or happening or bit of romancing, for that matter, would appeal to the trained newspaper executive as worth playing up and precisely the sort of stuff that would be passed up. By all the tests he was familiar with, by all the general rules and regulations of the game, the story of the jamboree of the savage gentlemen from the far-flung isles of the Pacific, of their attempt to raid the park, of the battle between them and the guards and of their final defeat was one of the biggest bits of “feature news” that had transpired in or about New York that summer.

If it had “leaked” into any newspaper office he knew there was about as much chance of his keeping it out of print by making a personal plea, as there would be of suppressing the announcement of the engagement of a daughter of the president of the United States to the Prince of Wales. If it hadn’t “leaked”—and there was a fair chance that it hadn’t—because of the state of the weather—he was painfully aware of the fact that by calling on the city editors in person and asking them not to use it he would simply be handing them a tip on which they would base an investigation. The story was decidedly too good to be hushed up by any plaintive wail about “ruining our business.”

He would have mentioned all of these things to McClintock if the latter hadn’t made such an abrupt departure. He told himself now that even if he had been able to voice them the manager wouldn’t have comprehended the impossible nature of the task he had so casually mapped out. Folks who haven’t smelt the smell of the paste-pot and heard the presses roar usually have the weirdest sort of naive notions concerning just what and just what cannot be done in the way of either inserting news in the columns of a great metropolitan daily or keeping it out.

“The acid test”—Jimmy kept remembering these three words and the oftener they recurred to him the more distressed he became. He sat hunched up in his chair looking out into the pouring rain and consuming cigarettes at a most alarming rate. At about the middle of the sixth cigarette he straightened up; at the beginning of the seventh he arose and began to pace the floor while a new idea slowly unfolded in his active mind; when he was two puffs into the eighth he flung it into a corner with a resolute sweep of his arm, dived for the telephone, called up “Beekman 4,000,” and impatiently joggled the hook until a response came.

“Hello, World?” he said jerkily, “give me the city desk ... hello ... city desk?... Who is that? McCarthy?... Say, Mr. McCarthy, this is Martin of Jollyland—Martin—M-A-R-T-I-N—publicity director of Jollyland—raining here? You betcha—say, I’ve got something pretty good for you ... hot stuff.... Be on the lookout for it, will you?—Dope?—No, sir, this is the real goods. No fooling—on the level—you can expect it before midnight. Good-bye.”