JUGGLING WITH FIRE
Smilingly the man who had made claim to the ten thousand dollars waited for Joe Strong. The fellow seemed already to have the money in his grasp.
"You say there is a sliding panel in that corner?" asked Joe.
"Positive."
"And that I get out that way?"
"Yes."
"Well, I say you are wrong, and I am going to prove it," returned Joe easily, and also smiling. "Now I'm going to let you, and any one you may select from the audience, paste sheets of paper over that corner. Then I'll do the trick over again. If I get out of the box, and the paper you paste on remains unbroken, you'll have to admit that I didn't come out through the place where you say is a sliding panel, won't you?"
"Well, if you don't break the paper, I guess I'll have to admit you didn't get out that way," said the man, with a grin. "But I want to see you do it first."
"Very well. I'll send for some paste and paper," went on Joe. "Meanwhile call upon any of your friends you like to help."
"Come on up here, Bill!" called out the man.
For an instant Joe, and Helen also, as she admitted later, feared it might be Bill Carfax to whom he referred. But an altogether different individual shuffled up to the stage.
"We'll paste paper over this end where the trick panel is," went on the man who had claimed the reward. "He won't get out then!"
"Sure he won't," agreed his companion. "Do we get the ten thousand then?"
"Naturally, if you have guessed right," said Joe. "But that remains to be seen."
There was no trouble in getting paste and paper. That is part of a circus, for, even though it is old-fashioned, paper hoops are still used for the clowns and some bareback riders to leap through.
A plentiful supply of large, white sheets and a pail of paste with a brush were brought up to the stage. Then the men were invited to begin their work, which was to seal up the corner the man had picked out as the location of the secret panel.
Before pasting on the paper the men looked closely at the joinings of the box. They seemed rather puzzled in spite of the cock-sureness of the first individual.
The pasting was not a work of art, but it was effective. The corner of the box was plastered over with sheets of white paper, in which there was no break.
"If I get out of the box without cracking, tearing, or disturbing the paper you have pasted on, without moving it in any way, you'll admit that you're wrong, won't you?" asked Joe, as he prepared to do the trick again.
"Yes," was the answer. "I will. But I've got you sewed up!"
"Pasted up would be a better word," returned Joe, with a smile. "But that remains to be seen."
The box was placed in position, and Joe took his place in it. The lid was slammed down, locked, and the rope was knotted about it. The two men who had done the pasting assisted in this.
Then the curtains were drawn, and Helen and the firemen took their places. There was a period of waiting. The tense suspense of the audience was manifest. Even Jim Tracy and Bill Watson, veteran circus men though they were, seemed a bit worried. The man who had claimed the ten thousand dollars and his companion seemed a bit ill at ease.
Then, suddenly, the curtains parted and Joe Strong stood in plain view, outside the box, bowing to the applause that greeted him. When it had subsided, he said:
"Will you two gentlemen kindly look at the paper seals you placed on one corner of the box? If they are unbroken and undisturbed I take it you have lost. Kindly look and announce what you find."
The men shuffled to the case and bent down over the corner that was covered with the pasted sheets. Look as they did, they could find no evidences of a break or tear in the paper. And it had not been removed and put back again. The men admitted that.
"Then you have to admit that I didn't get out of the box by means of a secret panel in that corner, don't you?" asked Joe, when the two had asserted that the paper was intact.
"Yes, I guess you win," said the first man. "But there's some trick about it!"
"Oh, I admit that!" laughed Joe. "It is a trick, and if you discover it you get ten thousand dollars. But not to-night. Red Cross is richer by a hundred dollars."
"Um!" grumbled the man, as he walked off, and many in the audience laughed. Joe had won.
The circus performance went on to its usual exciting close in the chariot races, and when preparations were being made to travel on to the next city, Helen had a chance to speak to Joe.
"It was a narrow escape," she said.
"Just what it was!" he replied. "If he had picked the other corner—the left instead of the right—he would have had me. But luck was with us."
"I'm glad," said Helen. "But how did he happen to select any corner? Some one must know more about your trick box than you think."
"I'm afraid so," admitted Joe ruefully. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised but what this was some of the work of Bill Carfax."
"Has he been around again?" asked Helen, and there was a note of annoyance in her voice.
"He hasn't been seen," said Joe. "But this man may have been in communication with him. Bill may have been studying the trick out since his last failure, and I must admit that he's on the right trail—that is, if it was Bill who put this man up to making the claim."
"What makes you think Bill had anything to do with it?" asked Helen.
"Well, for the reason that this is just the kind of town where Bill would be likely to have friends—I mean in a big manufacturing center. Bill may have found a man who is willing to act to help pull down the reward for him. But this time they failed."
"He may succeed next time," remarked Helen.
"No, I'll take care of that," Joe said. "I'm going to make a change in the box."
As the mechanism of the trick box has been explained in the preceding volume, it will not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that Joe's method of getting out of the box could be changed, so that if a person thought he had discovered the secret panel it could be shifted to another part of the case.
It was two or three days after this, and Joe had made a change in his box which satisfied him that the secret would not soon be discovered, that Helen, coming over to where he sat in his private tent, saw him making what seemed to be torches.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "Do you think our electric lights or gasoline flares are going to fail?" she went on jokingly. The Sampson Brothers' Show was a modern one, and carried a portable electric light plant.
"Oh, no, I'm not worrying about that!" answered Joe. "But I have a new idea for my wire act, and I want to see if it will work out."
That night, at the proper time, when Joe was introduced as about to perform his wire act, Helen noticed Ham Logan come out with the young fire-eater, carrying a number of the torches Joe had made.
Joe started across the high, slack wire, and on it performed many of his usual feats. They were not specially sensational, and Helen wondered what he had planned.
But, after a daring run across the slender support, following some risky side swinging, Helen saw Joe lower from the high platform where he stood a flexible wire. Standing on the ground below, Ham Logan received it and fastened on the end several of the metal torches Joe had made. The young magician hauled them up to him by means of the wire.
Then, as Helen and the audience watched, Joe set the torches ablaze. They were made of hollow cones of sheet iron, in which were placed bits of tow, soaked in alcohol.
With four blazing torches, two in either hand, Joe Strong started out to cross the high, slack wire. And then, to the wonder and amazement of the audience, no less than that of his friends in the show, Joe began juggling with fire.