"Yes."
"Well, I say you are wrong, and I am going to prove it," returned Joe easily, and also smiling. "Now I'm going to let you, and any one you may select from the audience, paste sheets of paper over that corner. Then I'll do the trick over again. If I get out of the box, and the paper you paste on remains unbroken, you'll have to admit that I didn't come out through the place where you say is a sliding panel, won't you?"
"Well, if you don't break the paper, I guess I'll have to admit you didn't get out that way," said the man, with a grin. "But I want to see you do it first."
"Very well. I'll send for some paste and paper," went on Joe. "Meanwhile call upon any of your friends you like to help."
"Come on up here, Bill!" called out the man.
For an instant Joe, and Helen also, as she admitted later, feared it might be Bill Carfax to whom he referred. But an altogether different individual shuffled up to the stage.
"We'll paste paper over this end where the trick panel is," went on the man who had claimed the reward. "He won't get out then!"
"Sure he won't," agreed his companion. "Do we get the ten thousand then?"
"Naturally, if you have guessed right," said Joe. "But that remains to be seen."
There was no trouble in getting paste and paper. That is part of a circus, for, even though it is old-fashioned, paper hoops are still used for the clowns and some bareback riders to leap through.