Astray Read Free

might be a last glimpse of you. Such queues for the rides! We could charge a guinea apiece if we chose, not that we would.
    Let’s you and me go and take a look at your crate. It’s nothing to be afraid of, idiot boy; only a big box. Look, some fresh writing since yesterday: Jumbo don’t go, that’s kind. More flowers. Dollies, books, even. See that woman on her knees outside the gates? A lunatic, but the civil kind. She’s handing out leaflets and praying for divine intervention to stop your departure.
    But the thing is, lad, you’re going to have to go sooner or later. You know that, don’t you? There comes a time in every man’s life when he must knuckle down and do the necessary. The judge has ruled your sale was legal. Barnum’s told the Daily Telegraph he won’t reconsider, not for a hundred thousand pounds. So the cruel fact is that our days togetherare numbered. Why not step on into your crate now, this very minute, get the wrench of parting over, since it must come to that in the end? Quick, now, as a favor to your sorrowful pa? Argh! Be that way, then; suit yourself, but don’t blame me if the Yank comes at you with hooks and irons.
    It’s like trying to move a mountain, sometimes. Am I your master or your servant, that’s what I want to know? It’s a queer business.
    That superintendent! To think I used to be amused by his little ways, almost fond of the old gent. Well, a colder fish I never met. Sits there in his dusty top hat and frock coat flecked with hippopotami’s whatsits, tells me he’s giving me a little holiday.
    “A holiday?” I was taken aback, as you can imagine. I haven’t taken a day off in years, you’d never stand for it.
    He fixes me with his yellowing eyes and tells me that my temporary removal will allow Mr. Newman to accustom himself to the elephant’s habits and tastes before departure.
    “You know Jumbo’s tastes already,” I protest. “He can’t stand that Yank. And if the fellow dares to try cruel measures, word will get out and you’ll have the police down on you like a shot, spark off riots, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    Which sends the superintendent off on a rant about how I’ve been conspicuously unwilling to get you into that crate.
    “Oh, I like that,” says I. “I’ve only loaded the unfortunate creature with shackles, pushed and roared to drive all six and a half tons of him into that blooming trap, so how is it my fault if he won’t go?”
    He fixes me with a stare. “Mr. Newman informs me that you must be engaging in sabotage, by giving the elephant secret signals. I have suspected as much on previous occasions, when I sent you perfectly competent assistants and Jumbo ran amok and knocked them down like ninepins.”
    “Secret signals?” I repeat, flabbergasted.
    “All I know is that your hold over that beast is uncanny,” says the superintendent between his teeth.
    Uncanny? What’s uncanny about it? Nothing more natural than that you’d have a certain regard for your pa, after he’s seen to all your little wants day and night for the last seventeen years. Why does the lamb love Mary so, and all that rot.
    Well, boy, at that moment I hear a little click in my head. It’s like at the halls when a scene flies up and another one descends. I suddenly say—prepare yourself, lad—I say, “Then why don’t you send a telegraph to this Barnum and tell him to take me too?”
    The superintendent blinks.
    “I’m offering my services as Jumbo’s keeper,” says I, “as long as his terms are liberal.”
    “What makes you imagine Mr. Barnum would hire such a stubborn devil as you, Scott?”
    That threw me, but only for a second. “Because he must be a stubborn devil himself to have paid two thousand pounds for an elephant he can’t get onto the ship.”
    A long stare, and the superintendent says, “I knew I was right. You have been thwarting me all along, using covert devices to keep Jumbo in the zoo.”
    I smirked, letting him believe it. Covert