The surprised and subdued deputation found Mahdi, the Missing Link, lying moaning on his straw, his wounds—artfully bloodstained—all stitched up. There were white bandages about his head and his injured arms.
"But the girls say it was a man gasped the fierce deputationist.
"A not unnatural mistake, my dear sir," said the Professor, "Strip the poor creature of its hairy hide and its resemblance to a human creature would deceive the most expert naturalist."
"Wonderful!" said the local publican.
"But all the same, me mahn," said Quinn, regretfully, "I have half a moind t' prosecute yeh fer croolty t' animals."
The trick worked, however, the situation was saved, and that night all Bunkers flocked to see the Missing Link that had been flayed in its life-and-death struggle with an infuriated gorilla.
CHAPTER X.
THE STOLEN BABE.
IN the larger townships and the small towns visit by the museum of Marvels on its provincial tour, Professor Thunder, gifted manager of this "colossal amusement enterprise," as the streamers eloquently phrased it, preferred to secure a shop in the main street to pitching his tent in some out-of-the-way place, where his persuasive powers might be wasted on the desert air.
The Professor flattered himself there was not a more seductive "spruicher" in the business, and, mounted on a gin case at a shop front plentifully papered with screaming posters depicting the more popular attractions, he reckoned that he could always lure a given number of people into the show by the sheer force of his eloquence, and so make up the rent, provided there were men and women in the street willing to listen.