PAGE 5
The Pet
by
“No,” said Syrilla tearfully, “you don’t care a hang for the nerves of the lady and gent freaks under your care, Mr. Dorgan. It’s nothin’ to you if repulsion from that corpse-like Pet drags seventy or eighty pounds of fat off of me, for you well know what my contract is–so much a week and so much for each additional pound of fat, and the less fat I am the less you have to add onto your pay-roll. The day the Pet come to the show first I fainted outright and busted down the platform, but little do you care, Mr. Dorgan.”
“Don’t you worry; you didn’t murder him,” said Mr. Dorgan.
“He looks so lifelike!” sobbed Syrilla.
“Oh, Hoxie!” shouted Mr. Dorgan.
“Yes, sir?” said the Strong Man, coming to the car door.
“Take Syrilla in and tell the girls to put ice on her head. She’s gettin’ hysterics again. And when you’ve told ’em, you go up to the grounds and tell Blake and Skinny to unpack the Petrified Man. Tell ’em I’m goin’ to use him again to-day, and if he’s lookin’ shop-worn, have one of the men go over his complexion and make him look nice and lifelike.”
Mr. Dorgan swung off from the car step and walked away.
The Petrified Man had been one of his mistakes. In days past petrified men had been important side-show features and Mr. Dorgan had supposed the time had come to re-introduce them, and he had had an excellent petrified man made of concrete, with steel reinforcements in the legs and arms and a body of hollow tile so that it could stand rough travel.
Unfortunately, the features of the Petrified Man had been entrusted to an artist devoted to the making of clothing dummies. Instead of an Aztec or Cave Dweller cast of countenance, he had given the Petrified Man the simpering features of the wax figures seen in cheap clothing stores. The result was that, instead of gazing at the Petrified Man with awe as a wonder of nature, the audiences laughed at him, and the living freaks dubbed him “the Pet,” or, still more rudely, “the Corpse,” and when the glass case broke at the end of the week, Mr. Dorgan ordered the Pet packed in a box.
Just now, however, the flight of the Tasmanian Wild Man, and the involuntary departure of Mr. Winterberry at the command of his wife after his short appearance as Waw-Waw, the Mexican Hairless Dog-Man, suggested the new use for the Petrified Man.
When Detective Gubb reached the circus grounds the glaring banners had not yet been erected before the side-show tent, but all the tents except the “big top” were up and all hands were at work on that one, or supposed to be. Two were not. Two of the roughest-looking roustabouts, after glancing here and there, glided into the property tent and concealed themselves behind a pile of blue cases, hampers, and canvas bags. One of them immediately drew from under his coat a small but heavy parcel wrapped in an old rag.
“Say, cul,” he said in a coarse voice, “you sure have got a head on you. This here stuff will be just as safe in there as in a bank, see? Gimme the screw-driver.”
“‘Not to be opened until Chicago,'” said the other gleefully, pointing to the words daubed on one of the blue cases. “But I guess it will be–hey, old pal? I guess so!”
Together they removed the lid of the box, and Detective Gubb, seeking the side-show, crawled under the wall of the property tent just in time to see the two ruffians hurriedly jam their parcel into the case and screw the lid in place again. Mr. Gubb’s mustache was now in a diagonal position, but little he cared for that. His eyes were fastened on the countenances of the two roustabouts. The men were easy to remember. One was red-headed and pockmarked and the other was dark and the lobes of his ears were slit, as if some one had at some time forcibly removed a pair of rings from them. Very quietly Philo Gubb wiggled backward out of the tent, but as he did so his eyes caught a word painted on the side of the blue case. It was “Pet”!