“All der same,” he said, in a puzzled tone, “I don’t know me vy you vear dot hairy overcoad dose hot nides.  Haff er drink.”

The Missing Link, standing grimly outlined in the darkness, raised the bottle in his two prehensile paws, and drank health to Schmitz.

“Goot man,” said Schmitz, embracing him again.  “Now con mit me to my ‘ous’ to, und we make the night.”  He grappled with Nickie, and the two seesawed towards Schmitz’s hotel.  The place was in complete darkness; the bar door was wide open.

Schmitz dragged Nickie through the bar, with much bumping and more breaking of glass, into a back compartment, and there he fumbled for matches, forgot his mission, and sang a German song very drearily, stopping suddenly to say: 

“Vere haf you gone mit yourseluf, mein goot friend?  Vot is der madder mit der lightness.”

He fumbled again.  Nickie was in no hurry, he had the gin bottle.

Schmitz found the matches, and lit a candle on the shelf.  He turned drunkenly towards Nickie, and beheld what must have been a strange and mysterious sight to a commonplace Dutchman in his own home.  Sitting on a chair facing him, with the gin bottle raised to his lips, was a mighty monkey—­a great, red, hairy ape, as large as a man.

The publican scratched his head wonderingly.

“Mein gracious!” he said.

“Dot iss a sdrange ting dot haff happened mit you, Sharlie,” he said, in a wondering, small voice.

“Sharlie!” he called.  “Sharlie!” The Missing Link gave no reply.

“Pless mein soul!” gasped the Dutchman.

Suddenly a gleam of intelligence shot through the publican’s boosy gloom.  He pointed a finger straight at Nickie, lurched towards him, crossed the room in a stagger, and drove his inquiring digit against the mysterious visitor.  The mysterious visitor was solid.

Schmitz was beaten.

“Sharlie,” he said, “is it true dot you vos, or is it true dot you aind’t?”

Nickie offered him the bottle in a friendly way, and Schmitz took it and drank.  The draught seemed to abolish all problems.

“Now ye make dot night, Sharlie,” said Schmitz.  He staggered into the bar, and returned with an armful of bottles—­all full of liquor.  With the adroitness of an expert he knocked the head off a bottle of schnapps.  “Dot is for you, Sharlie,” he explained.  The Missing Link assumed possession.

Schmitz knocked the head off another.

“Dot one for me iss,” he said.

Then the night began.  The Dutchman drank and sang and danced, and a hundred times assured the Missing Link of his undying friendship.  True, he had occasional spasms of reawakened amazement, when he would gaze at the man-monkey in stupid wonder, saying:  “I don’t understand me, Sharlie,” but Nickie’s extremely human manner of disposing of gin seemed to reassure him, and he would burst into song again.

In due course Nickie grew jovial, and lost all sense of his make-up and his professional reputation, and he sang, too, and caper exuberantly about Schmitz’s kitchen, while Schmitz, reclining in a corner on the floor, shook his fat sides with gargantuan roars of laughter.  The sight of this gigantic ape dancing a Highland Fling stirred the drunken Dutchman to wildest merriment; he howled with delight.