“Please,” Sally pleaded prettily, making her eyes wide and cloudy with mystic visions, “do not een-terr-upt! The veesion she will go away!”
“You let her alone, Sam Pelton!” the farmer’s wife commanded tartly. “Go on, Princess Lalla. I think you’re just wonderful—knowing about my mother being dead and even her name and all.”
And Sally continued the reading with Constable Pelton breathing audibly upon her neck as she bent her small head gravely over the crystal. When she could think of nothing else to tell the highly pleased woman, she was desperate. It seemed to her that everyone in the tent was looking at her, reading panic in her trembling fingers, in her fluttering eyelids.
“Gimme a knockdown to my past, present and future, Sister,” the constable suggested with heavy sarcasm and jocularity. “Reckon an officer of the law don’t have to pay. And you’d better make it a good one, or I’ll run you in for obtaining money under false pretenses. Come on, now! Miz Holtzman has already give you a good tip-off, and I guess my star speaks for itself. Knowing my name and my business, you oughta be able to fake a pretty good line for me, but if you don’t tell me my wife’s name, how many kids I got, where I come from, and anything else I’m a-mind to ask you, I’ll make you a present of free board and lodging at the county’s expense.”
Unknown to Sally, whose eyes were fixed, blind with fear, upon the crystal tightly cupped in her ice-cold palms, Gus, the barker, had drawn near enough to hear the constable’s threats and demands.
“Sure, officer!” he boomed heartily, to Sally’s amazement, “just ask the little lady anything you like. She sees all, knows all. Step right up, folks, and hear Princess Lalla, favorite crystal-gazer to the Sultan of Turkey before she escaped from his harem, tell your fellow-townsman, Constable Sam Pelton, the truth, the whole truth and something besides the truth—a few things that are going to happen to him that Officer Sam don’t yet dream of! Step right up, folks! Don’t be bashful! Step up and get an earful about your esteemed fellow-townsman and officer of the law—”
Sally felt the ice melting slowly in her veins. Dear Gus! He was stalling, gaining time, subtly frightening the constable, whose face had gone redder and redder, whose eyes glanced with furtive unease from the crystal to the grinning faces of his “fellow-townsmen,” who apparently had no great love for Constable Sam Pelton.
Then that which Gus had arranged by means of a code signal took place. Two “schillers,” hastily summoned by a carnival employe, suddenly broke into loud curses and sharp, slapping blows which echoed in the instantly quiet tent.
“Pick my pocket, would you?” the raucous voice of a “schiller” demanded between slaps and punches. “I seen you—sneakin’ your hand in my pocket!”
Constable Pelton, glad to be able to assert his authority, glad also, possibly, to escape a too intimate revelation of his past, bounded from the platform, collared the fighting “schillers,” and dragged them triumphantly away.