“No silly business there, Mahdi,” cried Madame warningly from her tent.  “The public will be here in half a tick.”

Mahdi dropped his string and curled in a knot, but presently he started cautiously hauling in his prize.  A long hairy arm reached out and clutched it, and hastily hid the object in the straw.  The treasure was a bottle three-parts full of brandy, Professor Thunder’s extra special.

The Missing Link’s performances during the next hour were curious and perfunctory:  the animal was not himself.  If Missing Links were habitually intemperate one would be inclined to say this Missing Link had taken something too much.  During a quiet quarter of an hour Mahdi got the key of his cage from the Professor’s ordinary vest, which had been left hanging within his reach, opened the door, and going quietly along the wall behind the cages, reached the back door, opened it, and stepped into the night.

Two minutes later a monstrous shape came out of the shadows of a right-of-way into the well-lighted City Street, a strange, misshapen animal, with a head half-human half-monkey, with a body like that of an ourang-outang and long, flapping feet.  The brute was covered with short, tufted, reddish hair, and in its hand it carried a brandy bottle containing about half-a-cup of spirit.

The first to confront Nicholas Crips, the Missing Link, was a woman.  She did not attempt to escape, but stood right in his way, staring at him with eye frantic with terror.  Fear had struck her motionless but not dumb; she shrieked in Mahdi’s face again and again.  Her screams echoed along the street.

“Thash all ri’, missus,” said the Missing Link affably, “I don’ know you, an’ excuse me; I don’ wanter hear you sing.”  He brushed her aside, and rolled drunkenly into a wine shop.

In the wine shop a large mirror served as a door screen.  Nickie saw his grizzly shape reflected in this, and after surveying it in stupid surprise for a few moments, smashed the glass with his bottle, and rolled out again.

Amazed men assembled at the door, fell back in awe before the Missing Link, and Mahdi crossed the road, carrying the neck of the broken bottle, his quaint feet, like huge hands, flopping in the dust.  Mahdi’s make-up did Professor Thunder great credit—­it was grotesquely inhuman.  The shape of the costume demanded a stooping attitude and shambling gait.  Only in a good light and at close quarters could the deception be seen.

People came running from all directions.  A cab horse backed in terror before the monster, reared, plunged furiously and bolted into a peanut stall.

Nickie waddled on, blissfully unconscious of the sensation he was creating.  He invaded a secondhand clothes shop.

“Shemima, mother of der brophet!” gasped Moses Aaronstein, throwing out his palms in a gesture terror, and Moses bolted through a side door.