The Missing Link - Edward Dyson (distant reading txt) 📗

up his justly celebrated Link, he found the cage empty, and a bar wrenched from its place in the back wall. He drew his own conclusions--conclusions most unfavourable to Mahdi--and used his own language. He closed his show, and went raging about Loo township in quest of his stray freak.

Nickie the Kid awakened from a death-like sleep in the early hours of a warm summer Sunday. Dawn steeped the bush in crimson, the smoke of a dying camp-fire curled high in the air and its top most spiral caught the red glow of the young sun. About that camp-fire, twisted on their rugs and blankets on the grass in the quaint attitudes of out-door drunks, lay four shearers, Bill, Mike, Ben, and Fred. Near them were scattered various bottles, all empty.

Nickie rubbed his eyes with his hairy paw, and stared at the recumbent figures. His head seen as capacious as an iron tank, and every inch of it held a special and independent ache. The Missing Link was trying to think.

Understanding came in a flash. He had been stolen from the show. These rascals had given him hocussed rum, and had got him away, probably tied to one of the horses. His aching limbs hinted at that, and he could see the horses grazing among the trees.

Nickie reviewed the situation. He was tethered to a tree, his bonds were stout, and his captors had not made sufficient allowance for the almost human intelligence of Professor Thunder's star performer. All about were scattered the utensils of a late supper, and with the aid of a stick the Link contrived to draw a knife within reach. With this he promptly cut the rope.

When free Nickie went quietly and deliberately to work to overhaul an open swag. He took a coat, pair of trousers, a pair of boots, and a hat, and with these under his arm retired to the bush to make his toilet.

An hour later three shearers, Bill, Fred, and Ben, riding at a gallop along the high road to Loo, came upon a man with a bundle walking cheerfully in the same direction. The horsemen pulled up.

"Hi, mate, have you seen anythin' of a strange sort of animal on this road?" cried Bill.

"Have I?" answered the man. "My word, I have! A great, big, red, hairy bunyip 'r somethin' charged out o' th' bush 'bout a mile back, bowled me over an' went howlin' down th' road in a cloud o' dust."

"Which way?" gasped Bill.

The pedestrian pointed in the direction of Loo. "That's th' way he went," he said. "Cripes, I'd a' thought I seen a fantod on'y I bin teetotal fer a year."

The shearers whipped up, and rode on at a gallop, and the man grinned after them with exquisite joy. "Well, life's worth living after all." said Nickie the Kid.

Before Sunday night it was known at Loo that the Missing Link, which had been stolen or had escaped, was once more safely bestowed in Professor Thunder's Museum, and when the show opened on Monday there was something like a run on it. With the curious crowd came Bill, Ben, and Fred, Mike having been left to keep camp. At the sight of the shearers before his cage, the Missing Link simulated a paroxysm of ungovernable rage. He bit, glared, roared, and reaching his mighty claws towards Bill, made murderous sweeps in the air, as if desirous of disembowelling that hapless young man.

"That's curious." said Professor Thunder, regarding the shearer sternly. "My Link don't often go on like that, and when he does he has good reason. See here, young gentlemen, what did you have to do with the purloining of my man-monkey Saturday night?"

Bill protested fiercely. "Never put a hand on yer blanky monkey. Wouldn't touch him with er forty-foot pole."

"Well, he as good as says you did."

Bill grinned. "You can't send a bloke up on th' say so of a Missin' Link," he said. "You can't put a monkey in the witness box t' swear a man's character away."

"I don't know," said the Professor. "That's a delicate point of law, but we may as well have a word with the constable about it."

The shearers didn't stay to take part in the consultation with the constable--Professor Thunder had not expected them to. "They lit out in a great hurry," he explained to the Missing Link at lunch time. "With a bit of engineering I might have shaken a few pounds out of them in the way of compensation. I was too hasty. Now, we'll have to leave their punishment in the hands of heaven, and there is no money in that."

"Heaven has punished them already, Professor," said the Missing Link, with a wide, simian smile.

"How that?"

Nickie's smile deepened. "There was eleven pounds in the pocket of the trousers I borrowed to come home in," he said.


CHAPTER XVII.

A NARROW ESCAPE.

THUNDER'S Museum of Marvels was showing at Wildbee, and doing only moderately, much to the Professor's disgust.

Nickie the Kid was hurt, too, at the scant attendance.

He had been acknowledged by experts to be the best Link ever exhibited in Australia, and Links included all sorts of hairy freaks, wild men of the woods, and shaggy eccentrics from Borneo; but Nicholas Crips could not rest satisfied as a mere interpreter of monkey character.

Nickie reached out and developed, and his newest device was a dinner in the cage, an actual dinner, in which Madame Marve, bewitchingly dressed in a costume that was a cross between the uniform of a hospital nurse and the garb of a French peasant girl, acted as waitress, and the Missing Link figured as the diner. Actual edibles were used, and a "practicable" bottle of beer.

This turn gave the Living Skeleton great concern. "I wish yer wouldn't do it, Nickie," said Matty, from his pedestal next the cage of the Missing Link. "Et's awful tryin' to a pore bloke what ain't 'ad nothin' fer dinner but a dry biscuit t' 'ave 't sit 'ere, patient as an owl, while you're hoggin' into ther grub, an' pourin' fresh beer into yersell regardless iv expense."

"Get out," replied the Missing Link. "Call yourself an artist. Every pro. has to suffer for his art. You have to suffer for yours, going short in your eating so as to keep in proper condition. You wouldn't have a fellow artist sacrifice his chance of becoming celebrated just because it isn't quite pleasant to you to be a spectator at the banquet?"

"Art he blowed!" said the Living Skeleton. "Give we a yard o' tripe an' a scoopful iv mashed potatoos."

"You aren't cut out for a public career. Matty you ought to abandon Living Skeletons and get a good eating part."

"Wish t' 'eaven I could, but there's ther missus an' ther kids t' think of."

"Well, you can turn your head away when the banquet scene's on."

"What if I do; can't I smell it?"

There was no escape--poor Matty Cann had to be sacrificed to the requirements of art.

Professor Thunder spread himself to make the new act a success; he procured a clean tablecloth, and napkin, a crush hat and black opera coat (both second-hand) were purchased for the Missing Link. A table, a chair, crockery, edibles, a bottle of beer, a walking stick, and an eyeglass were the rest of the properties.

When the Professor had explained to his patrons his gallant capture of the only living Missing Link in the jungles of Darkest Africa, and had put Mahdi through his paces, to the great amazement of the bucolic audience, he said:

"And now, ladies and gents. I have the pleasure of introducing to your notice an entire change of programme, exhihiting Mahdi, the Missing Link, in his wonderful act, called 'Civilisation.' You have, seen, ladies and gents, this here astonishing animal showing the natural qualities of the brute creation; you will now be privileged to see that side of his nature which approaches more nearly to humanity. This act, I may tell you, ladies and gents, though a miracle of training, would not have been possible if wasn't that the Missing Link has a good deal of human nature in his composition."

After this the opera cloak was handed in to the Missing Link, and he put it on with awkward, monkey movements; he donned the crush hat, put the eyeglass in his eye, and with the walking' stick promenaded the cage with some uncouth affectations of humanity. Meanwhile, Madame Marve had carried the small table into the cage. She spread a cloth, put on a few articles, and offered Mahdi a chair.

The Missing Link sat down, took off his hat, and closed it. Then he examined the bill of fare, and pointed to an item. While Madame was fulfilling the order Mahdi lounged in his chair, playing with the serviette, which he took from the ring, and spread on his lap.

After this Nickie went through the process of ordering and eating a dinner, the aim being to do the thing not too humanly, but as a trained animal might do it, throwing in a good deal of coarse humour, at which the audience roared.

The turn was a success, the spectators applauded vociferously.

"Ladies and gents. I thank you," said the Professor, bowing. "You have witnessed a triumph of teaching and training over brute animal nature, and I hope that when you go out you'll speak well of a show that has been in some measure the victim of a hireling press here in Wildbee."

"A marvellous performance, indeed," said a thin, shabby, sandy man, coming forward with a notebook. "Almost miraculous."

"True for you, sir." said the Professor eyeing the man suspiciously.

"Perhaps you can tell me. Professor Thunder, what branch of the Simian family this--this creature of yours belongs?"

"Well," said the Professor, "he is said to be most closely connected with the gorillas."

"Nonsense, man! Gorilla, rubbish! Look at that pelvis, sir, look at those arms. That's no more a gorilla than I am."

"May I ask to whom I have the honour of speaking?" asked the Professor, in his coldly polite manner--his most superior professional attitude.

"My name is Andrew McKnight, if that's any good to you. If that is a gorilla, sir, where are his vertebral processes, tell me that? And how comes it that his legs are almost as long as those of man?"

The Missing Link, who had doffed his airs of civilisation, and was now crouched in the straw, began snarling at this. It seemed almost as if Mr. McKnight's criticism were making the poor beast angry.

"You must remember, sir, that this animal is not of any known species," said Professor Thunder, who had a large collection of stock phrases for such discussions. "He is in a manner a creature apart."

"I should say so. Would you permit me to take cerebral measurements of your so-called Missing Link? I am interested in this matter, having opposed the Darwinian hypothesis for many years."

Here Mahdi's snarling became diabolical, and he leaped about in a terrifying way.

"Certainly," said the Professor, "Certainly, Mahdi is always at the service of science. But I warn you he is apt to be treacherous with strangers. He almost tore the arm off Professor Fitzpoof, of Dresden, and he nearly disembowelled a doctor in Dublin in 1895."

"Oh," said the gentleman with the notebook, doubtingly, "in that case I had better not, perhaps."

Mr. McKnight did not