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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