ation of
himself.

"Fake, fake!" they yells at 'em as they showed up. "Who's playing the
hind legs, Lionel?" and a lot of things like that. They threw peanuts
and apples at Rajah, and generally enjoyed themselves.

Then all of a sudden Pinckney pulls the puckering string, yanks off the
padding, and out walks old Rajah as chipper as Billy Jerome. Fetch 'em?
Well, say! You've seen a gang of school-kids when the sleight-of-hand
man makes a pass over the egg in the hat and pulls out a live rabbit?
These folks acted the same way. They howled, they hee-hawed, they
jumped up and down on the seats.

They'd been lookin' for the same old elephant with two men inside, the
good old chestnut that they'd been tryin' to laugh over for years, and
when this philopena was sprung on 'em they were as tickled as a baby
with a jack-in-the-box. It wouldn't have got more'n one laugh out of a
crowd of every-day folks, but that swell mob just went wild over it. It
was a new stunt, done special for them by one of their own crowd.

Was Pinckney it? Why, he was the whole show! They kept him and Rajah in
the ring for half an hour, and they let loose every time Rajah lifted
his trunk or napped his ears. When he got 'em quiet Pinckney made a
speech. He said he was happy to say that the grand door prize, as
announced on the hand-bills, had been drawn by Mrs. Jeremiah Toynbee,
and that Rajah was the prize. Would she take it with her, or have it
sent?

You've heard of Mrs. Jerry. She's a real sport, she is. She's the one
that stirred up all that fuss by takin' her tame panther down to
Bailey's Beach with her. And Mrs. Jerry wasn't goin' back on her
reputation or missin' any two-page ads. in the papers.

"You may send him, please," says Mrs. Jerry.

Maybe they thought that was all a part of Pinckney's fake. They didn't
know how hard we'd tried to unload Rajah. We didn't do any lingerin'
around. While the show was goin' on we sneaks out of the back of the
tent with Rajah and across to the stable. The rest was easy. He'd got so
used to seein' me there that I reckon he'd sized it up for my regular
hang-out, so when we ties him up fast and slides out easy, one at a
time, he never mistrusts.

"Professor," says Pinckney, "it seems to me that this is an excellent
opportunity for us to go away."

"It's all of that," says I, "and let's make it a quick shift."

We did. Goggles shook us up some on the way down, but we hit Broadway in
time for breakfast.