"Make up some of your own. Pete Treco, the tumbler, used to be a bear boxer. He can help you. We"ll be out of Chicago in three days. I"ll give you till then to get in form. What say?"
"I--I"ll try," said Johnny.
"That"s all anybody can do. And say, if you can get him to pull that stunt, chasing you, throwing the glove and all that, the double pay offer stands."
Johnny caught his breath. His opportunity had come. There had come a shake-up. In three days there would be another, and he would be "shaken up" to the position of a full-fledged performer, or he would be shaken down out of the circus altogether. Could he make it?
Closing his fists tight, he gritted between his teeth:
"By all that"s good, I will!"
Fiery and high tempered Millie lost her groom that very day.
As far as the circus people were concerned, Johnny Thompson vanished. In a small tented enclosure, eight hours out of every twenty-four were spent in strenuous attempts to teach that bear to do his bidding. It was a difficult task. More times than one he barely dodged a sudden swing of that powerful paw, which if it had landed would have increased the demand for cut flowers and slow music.
Pant alone saw him, and that after the shadows had fallen. It was at such times that they talked long of those other days in Arctic Siberia.
"Pant," Johnny shot at his friend one night, "what are you here for?"
"Same back to you," smiled Pant. "What are you here for? You"re not a circus man. What interest can you have in learning to box a bear?"
"It"s deeper than that," smiled Johnny. "It"s a matter of honor. There are three girls in that circus I must get on speaking terms with. The only way to do that is to become a performer."
"Oh! It"s a skirt!"
"Not exactly--only a diamond ring."
"A ring?"
"Yes, listen," and Johnny proceeded to tell his story.
"That"s interesting," said Pant, "and I think I can help you. In fact, I think I am safe in promising to tell you in time which of the three girls has the ring."
"You tell me? How?"
"Leave that to me. I have ways of finding things out. It can"t be done here, though; on the road, perhaps, or at a one-night stand. Wait and see.
"And now," continued Pant, "I want you to promise to help me with my own mystery. It is a much deeper and far more important affair. You know the type of people that follow the circus?"
Johnny nodded.
"Well, mixed with these little crooks is a big one--a forger, a master counterfeiter. His work is so good, as you know yourself, that it can be pa.s.sed on La Salle street, and that"s going some. I have several samples of his work. I know they are counterfeits, yet there is not a defect except the slight lack of color. They are technically perfect. One would almost say they were photographs of the real thing. These bonds are being secretly pa.s.sed out even here in Chicago. When we get out into the safer small cities, I have no doubt the state will be flooded with them. It"s an easy game. You know how they work it: Circus employee has a bond he has been saving, money all gone, must sell at a sacrifice. Greedy rubes s.n.a.t.c.h them up. And the worst of it is, they are so perfect that only in cases where two of the same number chance to come together will they be detected. With the vast number of genuine bonds in the country, this is likely never to happen. So there you are. Why, I doubt if even the Treasury Department itself could detect them. And this Black McCree is at the bottom of it all."
"How do you know that?" Johnny bent forward eagerly.
Pant smiled. "He has a foolish habit of scrawling his name about. He made the mistake of scribbling it on one of the bonds which later came into my hands. He"s known to the police the country over, not so much as counterfeiter, however, as a "Red"--a dynamiter of the worst type. He has more than once left his scribbled name above a ghastly piece of work.
That is all they know of him. He has never been identified. Just why he has decided to take up the life of a sane crook and enter the forging game, I can"t tell unless--by George! I believe I have it! Yes, sir! It"s a financial plot!"
"How"s that?" Johnny asked.
"Can"t you see? Our country is deeply in debt. Every town and city is flooded with national credit slips in the form of Liberty Bonds. A nation"s credit is its life. Now, if some slick fellow can fill the safety boxes of the land with bogus bonds, what is to become of the country"s credit? In time government bonds cannot be sold at any price, for the would-be purchaser cannot tell whether he is buying a genuine bond or a counterfeit."
"I see," breathed Johnny.
"And yet," mused Pant, "it may not be a plot, after all. Perhaps this Black McCree thinks he has discovered a way to get rich quick, and has dropped his radical notions. They mostly drop them when they fall heir to a piece of money. But, anyway," he straightened up with a jerk, "we"ve got to get him."
"What"s he like?" asked Johnny.
"That"s what no one knows. He"s never been seen. He may be large or small. He may be, for instance, a certain husky conman with a ragged ear."
"The very chap," exclaimed Johnny. "He"s a crook, all right. I caught him in a crooked deal the other day. We had a little boxing match."
"You can"t be sure he"s the man," smiled Pant. "Small crooks seldom do big jobs, and big crooks don"t operate con games. Yet he"ll bear watching. He may be doing that as a blind.
"There"s another fellow, though," Pant went on, "a midget clown--Tom Stick, a queer little chap. He"s the prize of the circus. Dresses like a mosquito, and drives a huge elephant around the ring. Strange part about him is, he insists on living all by himself in a little house built on wheels. Far as I know, no one has ever been allowed inside that house of his. You see the chance, don"t you? He could have all kinds of an outfit in there, and no one would be the wiser. Of course, he wouldn"t sell many bonds himself; he"d pa.s.s "em out through others.
"There"s a third fellow, a cook, the steam kettle cook, Andy McQueen.
Don"t know so much about him. What I want you to do is to get acquainted with these men and see what you can find out. You"re on the inside, so you can do it. There"s another fellow, he"s--"
At that juncture the conversation was ended by the appearance of a party rounding a sand pile, and Johnny hastened back to the tented grounds.
"I"m crazy to get in my first performance," he told himself. "If it"s successful, it"ll put me on even ground with Gwen, the Queen. Then we"ll see what we shall see. She looks mighty interesting, to say the least."
CHAPTER VIII THE GIRL AND THE TIGER
Late that night Johnny Thompson was reminded for the hundredth time of his position as a serf among the knights and ladies of the circus. He was just pa.s.sing into the now almost deserted big top when he came face to face with Millie Gonzales. In sudden embarra.s.sment he was about to speak to her and doff his cap when, with chin in air, she swept past him.
Setting his teeth hard, Johnny hastened on. Only when he was at a safe distance did he give vent to his feelings.
"If it wasn"t for the ring, I wouldn"t stand for it," he raged in a whisper, "I, I"d, well, I"d make her bite her own sharp tongue. Maybe,"
he reflected, "maybe some time I will."
The incident was soon forgotten, and it was not so long after that Johnny was made to realize that not all the ladies of the circus were like Millie, not even those who ranked above her.
In a dark corner of the tent, Johnny threw himself on a pile of netting to think. Life had grown strangely complicated for him since he had joined the show. Problems great and small lay before him for solving. It was like a lesson in algebra. There was the problem of boxing the bear.
His ability to solve that problem would be tested all too soon, on the day after to-morrow. In some small city he would have his try-out.
Depending upon the successful solving of this problem was the other and more important one, that of the ring. Who had it? Millie, the bareback rider, Mitzi, the trapeze performer, or Gwen, the dancing queen of the tight wire? Thus far he had not the slightest clue. If one of them had it, she never had worn it while Johnny was in sight. Could it be that the one in possession of it suspected him of seeking it? That did not seem probable.
"And yet," he reflected, "stranger things have happened. She may have seen me make that foolhardy dash for it when the elephant flicked it from the chain."
But at once his mind swept on to the third and most important problem of all--Pant"s problem, the problem of the counterfeit bonds. Pant had named three men who might be responsible, the conman of the ragged ear, the midget clown, the steam kettle cook. Johnny Thompson was one of the kind of fellows who, when they recognize a great and important problem, set themselves to solving it, leaving all minor difficulties to take care of themselves. As he lay there now, he realized that Pant"s problem had already become his; that for the time being, the ring might be all but forgotten. And yet he hoped that, as the more important and difficult problem was being solved, this one of lesser importance would work itself out.
"Well, anyway," he mumbled, half rising, "my success at boxing the bear comes first, for unless I put that stunt across, I will have precious little chance to discover the whereabouts of the ring, or to help Pant run down the counterfeiter. To-morrow"s my last day of training. Me for my bunk."