THE PAPER EXPERT
For a moment Helen Morton stared at Joe Strong as though not quite sure whether or not he was in his proper mind. Then, seeing plainly that he was in earnest, she seemed to shrink away from him, as he had noticed her shrink away, for a moment, from the burned man suffering there in the hospital.
"What's the matter, Helen?" asked Joe, trying to speak lightly. "Don't you want to see some more sensational acts in the show?"
"Yes, but not that kind," she answered with a shudder she could not conceal. "Oh, Joe, if you were to—" She could not go on. Her breast heaved painfully.
"Now look here, Helen!" he exclaimed with good-natured roughness, "that isn't any way to look at matters; especially when we both depend on sensations for making our living.
"You know, as well as I do, that in this business we have to take risks. That's what makes our acts go. You take a risk every time you perform with Rosebud. You might slip, the horse might slip, and you'd be hurt. Now is this new act I am thinking of perfor—"
"Yes, I may take risks, Joe!" interrupted Helen. "But they are perfectly natural risks, and I have more than an even chance. You might just as well say you take a risk walking along the street, and so you do. An elevated train might fall on you or an auto run up on the sidewalk. The risks I take in the act with Rosebud are only natural ones, and really shouldn't be counted. But if you start to become a fire-eater—Oh, Joe, think of that poor fellow in the hospital!"
"He didn't get that way from eating fire—or pretending to eat it—for the amusement of the public. He might just as easily have been burned the way he is by lighting the kitchen stove for his wife to get breakfast. His accident was entirely outside of his act, you might say. Why, I use lighted candles in some of my tricks. Now, if some one knocked over a candle, and it caused a fire on the stage and I was burned, would you want me to give up being a magician?"
"Oh, no, I suppose not," said Helen slowly. "But fire is so dangerous. And to think of putting it in your mouth! How can you do it, Joe? Oh, it can't be done!"
"Oh, there's a trick about it. I haven't mastered all the details yet, so as to give a smooth performance, but I can make an attempt at it."
"Joe Strong! do you mean to say you know how to eat fire?" demanded Helen, and now her eyes showed her astonishment.
"Well, not exactly eat it, though that is the term used. But I do know how to do it. I learned, in a rudimentary way, when I was with Professor Rosello—the first man who taught me sleight-of-hand. He had one fire-eating act, but it didn't amount to much. He told me the secret of it, such as it was.
"But if I put on that stunt I'm going to make it different. I'm going to dress it up, make it sensational so that it will be the talk of the country where circuses are exhibited."
"And won't you run any danger?" questioned the girl quickly.
"Oh, I suppose so; just as I do when I work on the high trapeze or ride my motor cycle along the high wire. But it's all in the day's work. And now let's talk about something pleasant—I mean let's get off the shop."
Helen sighed. She was plainly disturbed, but she did not want to burden Joe with her worries. She knew he must have calm nerves and an untroubled mind to do his various acts in the circus that night.
After supper and before the evening performance Joe made a careful examination of his trapeze apparatus. Beyond the place where the acid had eaten into the wire strands, causing them to become weakened so that they parted, the appliances did not appear to have been tampered with. Nor were there any clews which might show who had done the deed. That it could have happened by accident was out of the question. The acid could have gotten on the wire rope in one way only. Some one must have climbed up the rope ladder to the platform and applied the stuff.
"But who did it?" asked Jim Tracy, when Joe had told him of the discovery of the acid-eaten cable.
"Some enemy. Perhaps the same one who was responsible for our loss in tickets this afternoon," answered the young magician.
"Carfax?" asked the ringmaster.
"It might be, and yet he isn't the only man who's been discharged or who has a grudge against me. There was Gianni with whom I had a fight."
"You mean the Italian? Yes, he was an ugly customer. But I haven't heard of him for years. I don't believe he's even in this part of the country."
"And we haven't any reason to suppose that Carfax is, either, after his fiasco in trying to expose my Box of Mystery trick. But we've got to be on our guard."
"I should say so!" exclaimed the ringmaster. "And now about your trapeze act, Joe! Are you going to put it on again to-night?"
"Of course. It's billed."
"Then you'll have to hustle to rig up a new rope."
"I'm not going to put on a new rope," declared Joe. "The act went so well when I seemed about to fall, that I'm going to keep that feature in. I'll rig up a catch on the severed cable. At the proper time I'll snap it loose, seem to fall, swing by the dangling bar as I did before, and land on the platform that way. It will be more effective than if I did it in the regular way."
"But won't it be risky?"
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
"No more so than any trapeze act. Now that I'm ready for the sudden drop I'll be on my guard. No, I can work it all right. And now about these extra admissions? What are we going to do about them?"
"Well," said the ringmaster, "maybe we'd better talk to Moyne about them. If they ring an extra thousand persons in on us again to-night the thing will be getting serious."
The treasurer was called in consultation with Joe and Tracy and other circus officials, and it was decided to keep a special watch on the ticket wagon and the ticket takers that night.
Joe quickly made the change in his trapeze and tested it, finding that he could work it perfectly. Then he began to think of his new fire-eating act. He was determined to make that as great a success as was his now well advertised ten thousand dollar mystery box act.
The evening performance had not long been under way, and Joe had done his big swing successfully, when he was sought out by Mr. Moyne.
"The same thing has happened again," said the treasurer.
"You mean more people coming in than we have sold tickets for?"
"That's it."
"Well, where do the extra admissions come from? I mean where do the people get their admission slips from—the extra people?"
"That's what we can't find out," the treasurer aid. "As far as the ticket takers can tell only one kind of admission slip for the fifty cent seats is being handed them. But the number, as tallied by the automatic gates, does not jibe with the number of ordinary admissions sold at the ticket office. To-night there is a difference of about eight hundred and seventy-five."
"Do you mean," asked Joe, "that that number of persons came in on tickets that were never sold at the ticket wagon?"
"That's just what I mean. There is an extra source from which the ordinary admission tickets come. As I told you this afternoon, we are having no trouble with our reserved seats. There have been no duplicates there. But there is a duplication in the fifty cent seats, where one may take his pick as to where he wants to sit."
"Don't we have tickets on sale in some of the downtown stores?" Joe asked.
"Oh, yes, several of the stores sell tickets up to a certain hour. Then they send the balance up here for us to dispose of."
"How about their accounts? Have you had them gone over carefully?"
"They tally to a penny."
"How about the unsold tickets these agents send back to us? Isn't there a chance on the way up for some one to slip out some of the pasteboards, Mr. Moyne?"
"There is a chance, yes, but it hasn't been done. I have checked up the accounts of the stores, and there is the cash or the unsold tickets to balance every time. But somehow, and from some place, an extra number of the ordinary admission tickets are being sold, and we are not getting the money for them."
"It is queer," said Joe. "I have an idea that I want to try out the first chance I get. Save me a bunch of these ordinary admission tickets. Take them from the boxes at random and let me have them."
"I will," promised the treasurer. "There is nothing we can do to-night to stop the fraud, is there?" he asked. Mr. Moyne was a very conscientious treasurer. It disturbed him greatly to see the circus lose money.
"I don't see what we can do," said Joe. "If we start an inquiry it may cause a fight. Let it go. We'll have to charge it to profit and loss. And don't forget to let me have some of those tickets. I want to examine them."
Mr. Moyne promised to attend to the matter. Joe then had to go on in his Box of Mystery trick, and when this was finished, amid much applause, he caused Helen to "vanish" in the manner already described.
The circus made considerable money in this town, even with the bogus admissions, and as the weather was fine and as the show would exhibit the next day in a big city for a two days' stand, every one was in good humor. Staying over night in the same city where they exhibited during the day was always a rest for the performers. They got more sleep and were in better trim for work.
The last act was finished, the chariot races had taken place, and the audience was surging out. The animal tent had already been taken down and the animals themselves were being loaded on the railroad train.
As Joe, Helen, and the other performers started for their berths, to begin the trip to the next town, the "main top" began coming down. The circus was on the move.
Soon after breakfast the next morning, having seen that all his apparatus had safely arrived, Joe visited Mr. Moyne in the latter's office.
"Have you a bunch of tickets for me?" asked the young magician.
"Yes, here they are—several hundred picked at random from the boxes at the entrance. I can't see anything wrong. If you're looking for counterfeit tickets I don't believe you'll find them," added Mr. Moyne.
"I don't know that I am looking for counterfeits," said Joe. "That may be the explanation, or it may be there is a leak somewhere in the ticket wagon."
"I'm almost sure there isn't," declared the treasurer. "But of course no one is infallible. I hope you get to the bottom of the mystery."
"I hope so myself," replied Joe, with a smile, as he put the tickets in a valise.
A little later he was on his way downtown. He had several hours before he would have to go "on," as he did not take part in the parade, and he had several matters to attend to.
Joe made his way toward a large office building, carrying the valise with the circus tickets. A little later he might have been seen entering an office, the door of which bore the name of "Herbert Waldon, Consulting Chemist."
"Mr. Strong," said Joe to the boy who came forward to inquire his errand. "Mr. Waldon is expecting me, I believe."
"Oh, yes," said the boy. "You're to come right in."
Joe was ushered into a room which was filled with strange appliances, from test tubes and retorts to electrical furnaces and X-ray apparatus. A little man in a rather soiled linen coat came forward, smiling.
"I won't shake hands with you, Mr. Strong," he said, "for I've been dabbling in some vile-smelling stuff. But if you wait until I wash I'll be right with you."
"All right," assented Joe. And then, as he caught sight of what seemed to be a number of canceled bank checks on a table, he smilingly asked: "Have you been paying your income tax?"
"Oh, no," answered the chemist with a laugh. "Those are just some samples of paper sent in for me to test. An inventor is trying to get up an acid-proof ink. I'm a sort of paper expert, among my other chemical activities, and I'm putting these samples through a series of tests. But you'll not be interested in them."
"I don't know but what I shall be," returned Joe, with sudden energy. "Since you are a paper expert I may be able to set you another task besides that of showing me the latest thing in fire-resisting liquids. Yes, I may want your services in both lines."
"Well, I'm here to do business," said Mr. Waldon, smiling.