The circus moved on. It had played to good business, and there was more good business in prospect. Mr. Moyne, the treasurer, was on the anxious seat much of the time, fearing another flood of bogus tickets, but the efforts mentioned, on the part of the swindlers, following the use of new paper, was all they had to complain of so far.
"Either the detectives are too close to the trail of the cheats to allow them to work in safety, or they've given it up altogether," decided the treasurer.
"I hope so," said Joe. "Still it won't do to relax our vigilance. I wrote to the detective firm, as I said I would, jacking them up a bit. Maybe they are ready to make an arrest, and that would stop the swindlers."
The young man Joe had picked out to act as his chief assistant in the fire scenes was Ted Brown. Ted was about eighteen years old, and this was his first position with a circus. But he was making good, and he had not yet been afflicted with the terrible disease known as "swelled head," something which ruins so many performers.
Ted learned rapidly, and Joe felt that it would be safe to trust him with some of the secrets of the tricks—the mixing of the fire-resisting chemicals and the like. Joe's choice seemed to be a good one, for Ted did well, and his part in the banquet scene was made even better by his knowledge of the inner workings of the material used.
But though Joe did not lose materially by the desertion of Ham, if that was what it was, since he could now depend on Ted, the young circus man many times found himself wondering if he would ever see the old fire-eater again.
The circus opened one afternoon in a large city—one in which lived many thousands of men employed in a large ship-building plant.
"There'll be big crowds here," said Mr. Moyne, as he walked toward the ticket wagon in preparation for the rush. "And it's here we'll have to look out for bogus coupons."
"Why?" asked Joe, who was getting ready for his acts.
"Because in every other case the swindlers have worked their game where there was a big plant engaging many men of what you might call rough and ready character—ready to take a chance on scalped admission tickets, and rough enough to fight if they were discovered. So I'm going to be on the watch."