“Did they force themselves past without tickets?”

“No, each one had the proper coupon.”

“Has there been a theft of our tickets?” demanded the young magician and acrobat.

“No, our ticket account is all right, except there are a thousand extra entrance coupons in the box—­coupons taken in by the entrance attendants.  It’s a puzzle to me,” confessed the treasurer.  “There is some game being played on us, and we’re out to the tune of five hundred dollars by it already.”

“Is there any way of finding out who these persons are who have come in without paying us and having them ejected?” asked Joe.

“I don’t see how,” admitted Mr. Moyne.  “If they were in reserved seats it could be done, but not in the ordinary un-numbered fifty cent section.  The whole situation is that we have a thousand persons too many at the show.”

“Well, we’ll have a meeting of the executive body and take it up after the performance,” said Joe, as he quickly prepared to get into his aerial costume.  “We’ll have to go on with the performance now; it’s getting late.  If we’re swamped by people coming along who hold our regular tickets we’ll have to sit ’em anywhere we can.  If we lose five hundred dollars we’ll make it up by having a smashing crowd, which is always a good advertisement.  I’ll see you directly after the show, Mr. Moyne.”

“I wish you would,” said the harassed treasurer.  “Something must be done about it.  If this happens very often we’ll be in a financial hole at the end of the season.”

He departed, looking at some figures he had jotted down on the back of an envelope.

Joe Strong was puzzled.  Nothing like this had ever come up before.  True, there had been swindlers who tried to mulct the circus of money, and there were always small boys, and grown men, too, who tried to crawl in under the tent.  But such a wholesale game as this Joe had never before known.

“Well, five hundred dollars, for once, won’t break us,” he said grimly, as he fastened on a brightly spangled belt, “but I wouldn’t want it to happen very often.  Now I wonder what luck I’ll have in my big swing.  I haven’t done it in public for some time, but it went all right in practice.”

Joe looked from his dressing room.  He was all ready for his act now, but the time had not yet come for him to go on.  He saw Helen hastening past on her way to enter the ring with her horse, Rosebud, which a groom held at the entrance for her.

“Good luck!” called Joe, waving his hand and smiling.

“The same to you,” answered Helen.  “You’ll need it more than I. Oh, Joe,” she went on earnestly, “won’t you give up this big swing?  Stick to your box trick, and let me act with you in the disappearing lady stunt.  Don’t go on with this high trapeze act!” she pleaded.

“Why, Helen! anybody would think you’d been bitten by the jinx bug!” laughed Joe.  “I thought you were all over that.”