Professor Scotch gave an exhibition of a wild and somewhat original war dance. When he was out of breath, he paused in front of Frank, shaking his fist in the boy’s face as he gasped:
“I see through your little game. You want to get rid of me! You want to go as you please! You want to do as you choose! That’s why you ran away to South America. But it won’t work, you young rascal! I’ll stick by you now, though you may bring my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.”
Then he tramped up and down the room like a caged tiger. Coming near the cabinet, he lifted his foot to give it a kick, but, at that instant, a hollow voice that seemed to come from the cabinet itself, said:
“Beware! Touch me not!”
And then a grinning skull popped into view and nodded familiarly at the little man.
The professor gave a howl, and rushed out of the room, leaving the two boys, who were in paroxysms of laughter.
When the boys had ceased to laugh somewhat, Frank approached the cabinet, rolling up a little ball of invisible cord as he did so. Without hesitation, he took hold of the skull and thrust it back into the compartment from which it had popped into view.
“There,” he said, “I rather fancied this cabinet would afford me some amusement when I bought it from that traveling magician. The professor forgot that I sometimes practice ventriloquism, and so he fancied that it was the skull that spoke. If he had continued to monkey around that cabinet I would have shown him some other things of a surprising nature.”
Then he arranged everything in the cabinet, which he closed and returned to his trunk.
Under cover of darkness, guided by the dark-skinned Azza, Frank left the hotel shortly before nine.