Moon-Face and Other Stories | Page 8

as though there had been no

interruption.
"--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De
Ville looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed
at us, as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville's
head into a bucket of paste because he wanted to fight.
"De Ville was in a pretty mess--I helped to scrape him off; but he was
cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in his
eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild beasts, and I went out of
my way to give Wallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did not
look so much in Madame de Ville's direction after that.
"Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning
to think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time, showing
in 'Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and the big tent
was filled with women and children, when I went looking for Red
Denny, the head canvas-man, who had walked off with my
pocket-knife.
"Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole in the
canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn't there, but directly in front
of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his turn to go on with
his cage of performing lions. He was watching with much amusement a
quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists. All the rest of the people in
the dressing tent were watching the same thing, with the exception of
De Ville whom I noticed staring at Wallace with undisguised hatred.
Wallace and the rest were all too busy following the quarrel to notice
this or what followed.
"But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his
handkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat from
his face with it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walked past
Wallace's back. The look troubled me at the time, for not only did I see
hatred in it, but I saw triumph as well.
"'De Ville will bear watching,' I said to myself, and I really breathed
easier when I saw him go out the entrance to the circus grounds and

board an electric car for down town. A few minutes later I was in the
big tent, where I had overhauled Red Denny. King Wallace was doing
his turn and holding the audience spellbound. He was in a particularly
vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred up till they were all snarling,
that is, all of them except old Augustus, and he was just too fat and lazy
and old to get stirred up over anything.
"Finally Wallace cracked the old lion's knees with his whip and got him
into position. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his
mouth and in popped Wallace's head. Then the jaws came together,
CRUNCH, just like that."
The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and the far-away
look came into his eyes.
"And that was the end of King Wallace," he went on in his sad, low
voice. "After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance and
bent over and smelled Wallace's head. Then I sneezed."
"It. . .it was. . .?" I queried with halting eagerness.
"Snuff--that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. Old
Augustus never meant to do it. He only sneezed."

LOCAL COLOR
"I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusual
information to account," I told him. "Unlike most men equipped with
similar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is--"
"Is sufficiently--er--journalese?" he interrupted suavely.
"Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny."
But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders, and
dismissed the subject.

"I have tried it. It does not pay."
"It was paid for and published," he added, after a pause. "And I was
also honored with sixty days in the Hobo."
"The Hobo?" I ventured.
"The Hobo--" He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles
while he cast his definition. "The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for
that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are
assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders.
The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois--there's
the French of it. haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it
becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I
believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in
'Henry IV'--
"'The case of a treble hautboy Was a mansion for him, a court.'
"From