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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