Another of life’s irritations managed to try the soul of McClintock that morning. One of the more or less wild and untutored savages from the South Sea Island Village on the ocean side of the park came into the possession of a pint flask of the Demon Rum which had been washed up on the beach, and with no regard for the refined niceties of imbibing had swallowed the contents in a series of continuous gulps. The subsequent proceedings relieved the ennui and lethargy which always enfolded Jollyland in the morning hours before the gates were thrown open to the general public.

The savage gentleman—a thin, wiry person with wicked looking eyes from whose slit ear lobes, nose and lower lip there hung a choice collection of carved sea shells and brass rings, went into executive session with himself and proclaimed a Reign of Terror as the best means of establishing a dictatorship over the fellow members of his tribe, and the entire park as well. He started proceedings by invading his straw-thatched domicile and seriously damaging, with a well-directed blow, the facial contour of the companion of his joys. That lady, a most formidable party who had been taken unawares, retaliated in kind with such verve and energy that the self-constituted dictator left his domestic hearth with great suddenness and started on the rampage through the village street.

He seemed to have no carefully calculated plan of campaign and no particular objective. A general demolishment of all existing institutions, a comprehensive destruction of private property in general and a leveling of class distinctions appeared to be his vague aim. He leaped through a frame on which one of the natives was weaving a blanket, completely ruining the work of months; he overturned a shelf full of crude earthenware jugs which the potter of the establishment had contrived; and he playfully kissed the stout and principal wife of Mumbo Tom, the chief of the village. When that venerable worthy attempted to remonstrate in an outburst of outraged dignity, he tweaked the old fellow’s nose three times in rapid succession.

Passing out through the main gateway of the village into the esplanade he continued his ruthless assaults on organized society. Uttering weird and entirely unintelligible invocations to the spirits of his savage ancestors in a high-pitched voice, he vaulted on to the back of a patient-looking camel which was being groomed by a red-fezzed Egyptian from Greenville, Mississippi, preparatory to being ridden by visitors to the park at twenty-five cents per head. He dug his bare heels into the beast’s sides and emitted a wild whoop. The camel turned her head, surveyed him rather bewilderingly and started down the roadway on a brisk canter for about a hundred feet. Then she gave a little snort and heaved her humps convulsively. The social rebel from the South Seas shot through the air and landed in the direct center of a booth presided over by a gentleman from Nippon and devoted to what is known as the “Japanese ball game.” The results here were disastrous. When he picked himself from the clutter of broken china and glass with which he was almost entirely covered his head was bloody, but unbowed. He shook himself like some shaggy dog just emerging from a dip in the ocean, bounded over the counter and made for Antonio Amado’s wild animal show, pursued by a howling mob of attendants and special policemen who had gathered from the four corners of the park.

He burst through the entrance to the enclosure and ran along a passageway into the private office of Signor Amado himself. That ferocious looking worthy was, at the moment, delivering a philippic to his principal assistant, a pungent diatribe directed against the press, press agents, stupid park managements and the inherent injustice of mankind in general. At the sight of the wild-eyed and blood-stained visitor from an alien clime in the doorway, he passed in the middle of a sentence. His jaw dropped and his face turned ghastly white. He ducked behind a desk and mumbled a fervid appeal to the patron saint of his native village in Lombardy. The visitor looked around for something to destroy. His gaze encountered a half empty bottle of Chianti on a table and he sprang for it with the fierce avidity of a lion leaping at his prey from ambush. The contents of the bottle were gurgling down his throat to the accompaniment of half-choked chuckles of delight when the pursuing mob closed in a few seconds later and quelled the revolution. McClintock rushed in as the special policemen were putting a pair of handcuffs on the would be Trotsky. Signor Amado, arising from behind the desk, confronted him.

“Whatafor you leta theese fella in here, eh?” he cried belligerently, his old pose of aggressiveness automatically asserting itself at the sight of the pinions which held the savage intruder safely bound.

McClintock laughed at the sheer absurdity of this remark.

“We didn’t let him in any place, Tony,” he replied. “He just happened to drop in here and several places along the line before we could catch up with him.”

“Whata make him so bada man, er?” inquired the animal trainer.

“Booze, Tony, plain old-fashioned booze. They tell me he picked up a bottle on the beach some one must have dropped off an excursion boat. These fellows can’t stand intoxicants of any kind. It makes ’em wild. I see he’s been cutting into your Chianti.”

He gave orders for the temporary bestowal of the now thoroughly chastened and mollified revolutionary, and was following the latter’s captors out of the office when Signor Amado plucked him by the sleeve.

“Say, meester,” inquired the latter. “You geta my face in de papers tomor’, eh?”

The manager shook his head.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible—that is tomorrow,” he replied. “I told you this morning we’d do the very best we could to work up another story about you next week when this monkey yarn was sort of died down. Then we’ll see what we can do about landing your picture right. Don’t worry. Leave it all to me.”

Signor Amado assumed a defiant attitude.

“I giva you—what you call, eh?—a warning. You have my face in alla de papers tomor’ or, by dam, I feexa de park gooda.”

McClintock had heard threats like that before. He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. Signor Amado’s shifting glance fell upon the overturned Chianti bottle on the table and remained there for a few seconds. A malicious gleam slowly crept into his beady eyes and he smiled.

It is hardly necessary to chronicle the fact that the classic features of Signor Antonia Amado did not decorate the pages of any of the metropolitan newspapers on the following day. McClintock hadn’t bothered to tell Jimmy anything about the animal trainer’s threat. He refused to take it seriously himself and he saw no reason for worrying the press agent with any mention of it, particularly as that gentleman was busily engaged in working out the details of a fresh story which was to center around the fake kidnapping of two babies from the Infant Incubator.

When Signor Amado himself had carefully scanned the papers, and had convinced himself once more of the existence of a secret conspiracy to keep his name out of print he was strangely silent for one prone to burst into vociferous vocalization on the slightest provocation. He even chuckled a little when he put the last paper down and his beady eyes glinted nastily again. He strolled out into the room where his animals paced restlessly back and forth in the cramped limits of their stuffy cages and he spoke to several of them on his parade of inspection.

“Dey teenka day make beega foola of your boss, Lena,” he remarked to a great lioness who pushed her nose against the bars of her cage at his approach, “but, by dam, he makea dem feel ver’ foolish eh, Lena? He puta de whole parka on de bum. What you say, Lena, eh?”

He playfully poked at the splendid creature’s flank and she responded with a long drawn out roar of really terrifying volume. Signor Amado felt moved to sinister laughter.

“Dat’s right, olda girl,” he continued. “I puta de whole park on de bum?”