There was only one thing that marred the perfect symmetry of the general effect. While the fact that the monkeys’ temporary habitat was Jollyland was properly chronicled in headlines and in the body of all the stories, there was no mention made by name of Signor Antonio Amado except in one paper and then his alliterative cognomen was atrociously misspelled and appeared as Andy Amato. He was referred to, of course, and described as well, but impersonally. Mention was made in one story of “a funny little fellow who looked as if he had escaped from the chorus of a Balkan operatta,” and Malia had called him “a bandit king with the manners of a marquis and the sang-froid of Subway guard.”
After glimpsing the evening papers and observing this omission Jimmy had turned over the conduct of affairs in his office for the night to his assistant, hoping that the morning papers would use the signor’s name. When he read the others at breakfast his elation at the general success of his personally conducted enterprise was tempered somewhat by the prospect of an eruption from the Vesuvian temperament of the animal trainer. He wasn’t particularly disturbed at this because he had sized the signor up as a false alarm from the start, but it meant a disconcerting half hour or so and he was a little bit peeved that the fates should have allotted him anything that was not rosy and serene on what should have been a day of general rejoicing and glad acclaim.
McClintock met him at the entrance to Jollyland. The manager wore an anxious look.
“Tony’s off the reservation,” he confided. “He did a series of flip-flops in my office a half hour ago and I understand that he’s turning handsprings all around his arena at the present writing. He inquired about your health. I told him you had gone over to Philadelphia on a little business for me. Better stick to the office all day. He never keeps these things up for more than twenty-four hours. Grand little story, that, even if it did annoy the King of Beasts.”
Chapter Eight
Another of life’s irritations managed to try the soul of McClintock that morning. One of the more or less wild and untutored savages from the South Sea Island Village on the ocean side of the park came into the possession of a pint flask of the Demon Rum which had been washed up on the beach, and with no regard for the refined niceties of imbibing had swallowed the contents in a series of continuous gulps. The subsequent proceedings relieved the ennui and lethargy which always enfolded Jollyland in the morning hours before the gates were thrown open to the general public.
The savage gentleman—a thin, wiry person with wicked looking eyes from whose slit ear lobes, nose and lower lip there hung a choice collection of carved sea shells and brass rings, went into executive session with himself and proclaimed a Reign of Terror as the best means of establishing a dictatorship over the fellow members of his tribe, and the entire park as well. He started proceedings by invading his straw-thatched domicile and seriously damaging, with a well-directed blow, the facial contour of the companion of his joys. That lady, a most formidable party who had been taken unawares, retaliated in kind with such verve and energy that the self-constituted dictator left his domestic hearth with great suddenness and started on the rampage through the village street.
He seemed to have no carefully calculated plan of campaign and no particular objective. A general demolishment of all existing institutions, a comprehensive destruction of private property in general and a leveling of class distinctions appeared to be his vague aim. He leaped through a frame on which one of the natives was weaving a blanket, completely ruining the work of months; he overturned a shelf full of crude earthenware jugs which the potter of the establishment had contrived; and he playfully kissed the stout and principal wife of Mumbo Tom, the chief of the village. When that venerable worthy attempted to remonstrate in an outburst of outraged dignity, he tweaked the old fellow’s nose three times in rapid succession.
Passing out through the main gateway of the village into the esplanade he continued his ruthless assaults on organized society. Uttering weird and entirely unintelligible invocations to the spirits of his savage ancestors in a high-pitched voice, he vaulted on to the back of a patient-looking camel which was being groomed by a red-fezzed Egyptian from Greenville, Mississippi, preparatory to being ridden by visitors to the park at twenty-five cents per head. He dug his bare heels into the beast’s sides and emitted a wild whoop. The camel turned her head, surveyed him rather bewilderingly and started down the roadway on a brisk canter for about a hundred feet. Then she gave a little snort and heaved her humps convulsively. The social rebel from the South Seas shot through the air and landed in the direct center of a booth presided over by a gentleman from Nippon and devoted to what is known as the “Japanese ball game.” The results here were disastrous. When he picked himself from the clutter of broken china and glass with which he was almost entirely covered his head was bloody, but unbowed. He shook himself like some shaggy dog just emerging from a dip in the ocean, bounded over the counter and made for Antonio Amado’s wild animal show, pursued by a howling mob of attendants and special policemen who had gathered from the four corners of the park.