Daley moodily nodded his head.

“They put on Thacher in your place.  You and him are probably the only two men in the profession who can do the somersault trapeze act with old Benares.  That puts you out of a job, for you’re no good single.”

“I guess that is right.  Thacher takes the bread out of my mouth, sink him!”

“You say, ‘twenty dollars’ if I fix Thacher so he can’t act well,” declared Murdock in a cold-blooded way that made Andy shiver, “he won’t act for a spell after to-night, I’m thinking.”

“Come to the point—­what did you do?”

“Why, after doing their regular stunt on a separate trapeze, Thatcher somersaults and catches a bar swing from centre.  He hangs by his knees and Benares swings from aloft and catches his hands in his dive for life.  Well, the minute Thacher lands on the centre trapeze to-night down he goes forty feet head-first.  It’s broken limbs or nothing, for I cut the bar free first thing after the afternoon performance.  It’s held in place now by only two little pieces of thread that a child’s finger could break.”

“Um!” remarked Daley.  “I guess I’ll cut for it.  They think I’m a hundred miles away.  It mustn’t be known that I was this near the circus or they’d suspect me.  I presume they’ll be wiring for me to come back now.”

“Oh, sure.  They won’t suspect me, either.  I sneaked in the big tent and fixed the trapeze when no one was about.  See here, Daley, if you do get your job back you’d ought to give me an extra ten.”

“I’ll see about it,” said Daley.

The two worthies walked from the place.  Andy watched them cross fields away from the main road and away from both Clifton and Centreville.

Little thrills of horror ran all over the boy.  This was his first view of the dark, plotful side of circus life, and it appalled him.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “it may be murder.  Oh, those wretches!  The Benares Brothers.  I saw them yesterday.  I remember the dive for life.  I had to hold my breath when one man made that somersault, away up at the top of the tent.  It was more than thrilling when he caught the other trapeze with his knees.  It was curdling when his partner made his dive for life.  One second over time, one miss of an inch, and it looked sure death.  And now that trapeze has been tampered with, and—­”

The excited Andy did not finish the sentence.  He forgot all his own plans and the possible danger of arrest at Centreville.

He jumped down from the hay bales and dashed out of the barn.  Andy sped along the highway circus-ward at the top of his speed.

The situation had appealed to him in a flash.  The two plotters had talked in plain English.  There was no misunderstanding their motives and acts.

Andy had a vivid picture in his mind—­the big circus tent four miles away.  He could recall just where the Benares Brothers act came on the programme.