The veracious and hitherto unpublished account of the strange doings which led up to a mysterious commotion among the wild animals in a certain city's zoo. And if "Billy Martin" hadn't got that book away from "Jimmy Raines," there's no telling what would have happened

AS I closed the door of our room one day in April, Jimmy Raines slammed a book shut and let it drop behind his chair. I'd been noticing that Jimmy was a little off his feed the past day or so, and had hoped for a chance to corner him — and here it was, ready to my hand.

      "Jimmy Raines," I says, walking over to him where he sits with a stay-there smile glued onto his face, "come across with that thing you're getting by heart! I dunno what it is, but I've suspected you of cheating some for a week. If you've got a new dope book, or a system to work, you don't have to be a pork! I'm entitled to my share, according to contract."

      Jimmy rubs his chin, which is Jimmy's way of sparring for time.

      "It ain't no dope book, Billy," he says, "honest! And you wouldn't be interested in it."

      "Maybe I wouldn't," says I, "but I am." And I makes a dive for it.

      Jimmy plants one foot on it.

      "Brakes on, Billy!" says he, "I didn't hook the book, and it ain't got nothing to do with the ponies. It's jest a little private affair of mine, and nobody dealt you cards to butt in the game."

      That heated me up considerable, for Jimmy Raines usually plays fair. "You didn't deal me any cards," I says, "but I'm in and calling for a show down. What've you got? Hand me the truth, or we'll quit business here and now."

      "Keep your duster on," says Jimmy, "and don't call the police till you know you're robbed. Here, have a look, if nothing else will satisfy you," and he throws the book at me.

      It was a thickish thing, with worn-out covers, and the front page said: "A Simple Guide to the Art of Hypnotism." When I read that far I sits down myself.

      "So it's come to this, has it?" I asks him. "Going to quit an honest business and go to faking?"

      Jimmy didn't answer till he'd got up and took a pipe from the rack. Then he says:

      "Go ahead! You'll never get hump-backed carrying around knowledge. You know a lot more than the perfesser what wrote that book — but nobody's ever accused you of it. I expected you to think I'm all to the bad in my cupola; I calculated you'd shake your head like you're doing now, and say: 'Ain't it a shame — and he was such a bright boy!' I figured you to go drilling around tellin' people I look as natural as ever, even if my brains have spoiled — but — let me tell you something! You didn't invent everything in the world, and there's more in this hypnotism game than your hot air can warp. These directions say that anybody who's got 'a cool head and a calculating brain can become a hypnotizer without any trouble, and with no expense, except the purchase of the book.' Them's the very words — look for yourself. My head's cool — feel it — and if my brain ain't a calculatin' one, with six years' experience handicapping the ponies and figuring past performances, there ain't any calculating heads hereabouts. I got that book second-hand, like many another good thing has been got, and I'm going to be a hypnotizer."

      Wouldn't that stop your watch? Right out of a clear sky, he gave it to me, and me staring at him as if I liked to hear batty talk!

      "So you're going to be a hypnotizer, are you?" I asks. "Going around the country playing a game that nobody believes in any more, and keeping about one train ahead of the sheriffs all the way? That may look good to you, Jimmy Raines, but where am I going all that time?"

      "To — oh, what's the use of tempting me to say things, Billy Martin?" he says. "You horned in on this without any invitation, and you can back out the way you come. I tell you I've read some, while you've been fooling time away this month, and I'm about ready to surprise you."

      "You're more than that — you've done done it," says I.

      "All I need," says Jimmy, plugging right ahead as if I wanted to hear, "is a dress suit and a good press agent, and I'll make money faster than I can bank it."

      "All you need," says I, "is a straw crown and a lathe sword, and you'll be the Emperor of Australia — out at the foolish factory. I'm glad you've told me part of your hallylucinations; the probate court ain't far away, and we've got time to get you there before it closes."

      Then Jimmy whirled on me. "You don't think there's anything in the science," says he, irritated, and peppery, and coming up close to me. "I've got a good notion to prove ⸺" He stops a minute, looking fierce at me all the time, and then he adds to himself: "I wonder if this is the fishological moment? I'll jest have a try, anyway."

      With that he commenced to wave his hands around in the air, in front of my face. I picks up the poker, not to use, understand, but as a kind of hint for him, and, "Jimmy," says I, "if you must have fits, go outside. I don't want this room all mussed up."

      He never stopped waving his hands and jerking back from me like he was at a taffy pull. I watched him for a while, but as he wasn't hurting me, I didn't try to stop him. Pretty soon I yawned, something kind of cracked in my ears, and I commenced to laugh way down inside of me. He did look that ridiculous I couldn't help it.

      "What you're tryin' to make yourself," says I, "is a ready-for-service idiot, and I guess you'll succeed." Then a foolish idea struck me, too. "Come on," says I, sudden; "you play the circus clown and I'll be the trick mule — maybe that will make you feel better," and down on my hands and knees I goes, and commenced to prance around the room, braying outrageous.

      It sounds pretty daffy to tell about now, though it didn't seem so then. Jimmy kept on waving his hands at me, and I galloped around, kicking at the furniture, until he stopped — and then I got wise to myself suddener than I'd started acting a mule.

      But before I could say anything, Jimmy had.

      "If I can hypnotize you to thinking yourself a mule," says he, with his lips curled up, "I guess there's something in this hypnotism game, after all, Billy Martin. When you talk it over with yourself, maybe you won't think me as crazy as I looked to you half an hour ago."

      With that he picks up his book and goes back to reading. You could have bought me for a stick of chewing gum and got a nickel in change! It surely didn't seem to be my turn to talk; I needed medicine more than a gabfest right then!

      When I'd got my breath good again, Jimmy was spelling out the instructions in the back of his dream book like nothing had happened. "And maybe nothing has," says I to myself — maybe I had dreamed it all!

      "To-morrow," remarks Mr. Raines, looking up at me as ca'm as if ordering somebody to scuttle the ship and be quick about it — "to-morrow we'll go out to the zoo. I wish to continue my researches in this here fassynaturing science on new lines — and that's the place for it."

      "They ain't no new lines to the zoo," says I, trying to prove he didn't have me anywhere near the ropes yet; "they've put on more cars, but ⸺"

      "That's a-plenty from you," says Jimmy. "You're going to play spear-carrier to this excursion, and I don't need no aisle directions. Just keep your weepon in front of you, and don't tangle up with the tent ropes, William."

      When Jimmy hands you a quinine pill of talk, it's pretty hard to swallow, and I don't know how I got it down, even now, but all I said was: "Ay, ay, captain," and trickled out of the door. I needed air and room to get myself together in. I felt spread out so thin, by that time, another word would have busted through me.

      The next morning, while I was still trying to figure out what was liable to come of the crazy doings started by Jimmy, he says: "Come on, henchman;" and we gets a car for the zoo, Jimmy carrying his book under his arm, and looking at it every trolley post we passed.

      As soon as we got through the zoo gate, Jimmy heads for the carnivora. It was one of those days that are turned inside out — spring and winter jumbled together and there wasn't a handful of people in the gardens. When we got to the tiger and lion boarding house, I see Jimmy's eyes getting bigger and snappier every step. He was surely going against the new game for all his spare capital, and no fear of a fall down.

      There wasn't nobody but a keeper in the building, and he was back of a cage doctoring a cub tiger's sore back.

      Jimmy took one look around, walks up to Brutus' cage and says to me: "Here's where I show the king of beasts what sort of four-flusher he is. Watch your Uncle James!"

      Brutus, the huskiest lion in the collection, opens one eye and stares at Jimmy from the far corner of his cage.

      "Brutus," says the new hypnotizer, low, slow and earnest, "Brutus, you're not a lion. You're nothing but a measly, egg-laying chicken. Come here and show the gentleman it's true!"

      Brutus opened his other eye.

      "An egg-laying, dust-scratching, gappy chicken," says Jimmy.

      Brutus opens his mouth halfway, stops, lays back his ears and slouches up to the front of his cage.

      "A dust-scratching, clucking, white-livered chicken," says Jimmy, in a hoarse whisper, "that's all. Now, flap your wings!"

      I waited for Brutus to let out one of those bellows that you hear over in Norwood and that shake the roof of the building loose every now and then — but it didn't come. His eyes narrowed down till they wasn't anything but keyholes in his big, hairy, yellow face, and then, as sure as there is a zoo, Brutus rose on his hind legs, flapped his front ones against his sides and commenced to cluck!

      I don't suppose you ever heard a lion cluck — and you don't want to, believe me. You don't mind the way he hops around the cage, scratching with one hind leg and then the other; it won't joggle you when he pecks at the boards with his mouth, making it into as much of a bill as he can — but when he clucks, I pass! The ice commenced to gorge up and down my spine the minute I heard it, and I makes a lively break for the door. Jimmy lassoed me as I passed him.

      He was laughing, proud and happy.

      "Am I making good, or ain't I?" he asks. "Is this little book a three-time winner or a false alarm?"

      There wasn't nothing I could say, with that crazy lion clucking, and scratching, and pecking the floor, a giant chicken in lion's clothes — so I says it.

      Then Jimmy walks over to the cage where the porcupine's cooped up.

      "Here's a brute," says he, "that's powerful proud of himself and his quills. Porcu, look here!"

      The gentleman addressed swept around with all his stickers standing out, and stared at Jimmy.

      "You," says James, low and decided — "you are a nice, tame Shetland pony. Just a Shetland pony — nothing else."

      A whinny that a canary bird might have made come from that porcupine's throat, and all his quills melted down. He shakes his head and snorts, being reined in too tight in his new-made mind, and then commenced to lope around his cage in a circle. Every loop he made he would stop and stamp his hind legs, and then off he'd go, neighing and whinnying, natural as if he'd always been a horse.

      The man behind the tiger cage stopped working and listened.

      "Jimmy," says I, "hadn't you better turn these creatures back again before you get into trouble? The keeper's coming with a pitchfork."

      "I'll turn him into a goat," says Jimmy, proud and haughty.

      "But you can't turn the pitchfork; it's got no mind to hypnotize," says I, pleading. Me pleading to Jimmy Raines, mind you!

      The next minute the keeper come from behind the cage and hot-footed to where Brutus was still doing the chicken stunt. The man takes one look, and then he was out of the building and hitting only the high places for the superintendent's office. I see trouble on the home stretch for us, but Jimmy was drunk with the success of his scientific experimenting.

      "This black panther," says he, "is the meanest cuss they've got, they tell me. I guess we'll let him play monkey for a while;" and he points his finger at the yellow eyes glowing far back in a smear of black fur, and informs him what he was.

      In half a minute it was astonishing to see the way that dangerous animal had changed; hopping around on his hind legs, stretching his paws through the bars for peanuts, and trying to wind his tail around the trunk of a tree in the cage that was for him to whet his claws on, when he was in his right mind.

      "Listen to me, Jimmy," says I, at last pushing him out the other entrance; "the keeper's gone for help, and there'll be doings with you and me the stars in the mix-up — if you don't stop this fool business. Come on home, now; you've convinced me that's enough, ain't it?"

      "Enough?" says Jimmy. "Why, I've just started, Billy Martin. We'll drop down, to see the residents of the elephant house now, and make a few suggestions to them."

      Hatnee was standing with her back to us when we got there, but she turned around when Jimmy whistled to her, and waves her trunk cheerful.

      "She's a fine old beast," says Jimmy, "but she'd have more fun if she was a kitten. Hatnee, Hatnee, look at me!"

      She was already doing that, but she stopped bobbing when he pointed his finger at her. "You're a three months' old kitten," says Jimmy, "and here's a ball for you to play with!"

      With that he throws a bag of peanuts over the railing, and the rush she made for it tore loose her shackle stake. In a minute she was on her back, wallowing around and purring like the wind machine was running away behind the scenes, while she tossed the paper bag up in the air and tried to catch it in her paws.

      Zeekoe, the little hippopotamus, seemed to feel sorry for her, from the way he looked; but when Jimmy says to him, "You're nothing but a ⸺" he whirls around and slides into his tank, head and all.

      He was the only animal in the whole collection that Jimmy couldn't put the spell on that day; and it kind of hurt Jimmy, till he remembered his book didn't have anything in it about hypnotizing under water. Then he felt better.

      The next half hour was enough to frazzle anybody's nerves, and I was certainly all to the bad when we started for the bear pits. The howls and clucking coming from the carnivora, and the purring and shaking and other noises from the elephant house, had me going. It wasn't until after Jimmy had made Jack, the big polar bear, take himself for a peacock, that I got the chance I was looking for.

      "We will now go have one of the camels do a turn as an alligator," says Jimmy, "and then ⸺"

      "And then," says I, "we'll land in the station house. Here comes the whole zoo force on the warpath. They're going to play rough-house tag, and you'll be it every time!"

      Jimmy turns to peek, and I grabbed his book, and fired it through the bars at the peacock-polar bear. He was still trying to spread his two-inch tail, but his mate landed on the book, and tore it into ribbons before Jimmy knew what I had done. He made a grab at me, but then the walking-in-my-sleep feeling had passed. The ice gorge had moved off my backbone, and I could see things right side up again.

      I gathers up a bunch of coat collar and shook Jimmy till his hair curled.

      "Jimmy Raines," says I, "get awake! You've made trouble enough. You're coming back with me right over the trail and undo your dizzy work."

      "I'll undo you," says he, pushing away from me; "you're nothing but — you're a rabbit, a rabbit, I say!" He stamps his feet and his face got red.

      But this time his saying so didn't deliver the goods. If I was a rabbit, I didn't act like one; I laughed and shook him again.

      "And you," says I — "you are a plain, hard-shelled lobster. Don't try to hoodoo me again! The whole zoo has gone crazy, but I ain't in a cage yet. And you needn't get sore over it; you had your fun and you proved something, though I don't know what; but it's my turn now. And I say, back you go!"

      I felt kind of sorry for him, then; for as the book soused into the bears' bathtub and sunk, Jimmy's power went with it. He wasn't Jimmy the Hypnotizer any more; he was plain Jimmy Raines.

      "Tell that animal he's a bear again," I says, for I could hear the keepers coming, and Jimmy, grumbling at the rough way I handled him, told him so. From the look he gave me, poor old Jack was grateful. He let the stub of his tail down with a slap, and crawled into his cave, worn out with his extra exercise.

      When we reached the elephant house, Hatnee was having the time of her life. She was chasing her tail, thirty revolutions to a minute, and purring the same as a sawmill. Eddie, her keeper, standing out of reach, was wiping the tears out of his eyes, and trying to argue her back into a sensible frame of mind.

      When she saw Jimmy coming, she stopped and made a playful swipe at him with her front feet; it ripped out a section of the steps, but she never made another.

      "Hatnee," says Jimmy, pointing his finger at her again, "you're acting like a kitten. You ain't one, though — you're a good elephant."

      If she had bumped against a gravel train she couldn't have stopped quicker, and the sheepish look that come over her was pitiful to see. She turns around and hid her head in the corner, and when the keeper got to her she was crying, too. We left them sobbing with their heads together, and I hustled Jimmy across the grass to the carnivora.

      "Now you understand what you've been doing," says I, severe and solemn; "and I reckin you're not very chesty with pride over it, either!"

      "All the same," says Jimmy, "I made good. Don't overlook that fact, Billy Martin; I made good!"

      He was getting weak when he tackled Brutus. The daffy old lion could hardly hear his voice when he says:

      "Stop that scratching, Brutus! You don't eat worms — and you ain't a chicken. You're a lion."

      He quit clucking, all right, but the yard-wide-all-wool roar that followed showed me he had his lungs with him still, and as he jumped at Jimmy, we ducks for the other side of the building. Between Brutus' howls I heard the keepers outside, so I pushed Jimmy up to the black panther's cage.

      "Quick!" I says. "They're right outside — tell him what he is!"

      But Jimmy was all in. He didn't know what he was, much less what a panther acting like a monkey ought to be. He hadn't no breath left, and as he hung onto the rail in front of the cage where the big cat was chattering for peanuts and scratching his sides, I thought the game was up.

      "Jimmy," says I, desperate, "you've got one more chance to square yourself with me — and only one. Change him back, or I'll get you arrested for practicing hypnotism without a license."

      Jimmy took a deep breath and pointed both hands at the panther.

      "Not monkey — panther!" he says, with a gasp.

      And half a dozen men with iron rods and elephant hooks, headed by the main squeeze of the zoo, came tumbling in the building.

      The superintendent was onto us before I could frame up anything for him, and what come then was right off the reel.

      "Mr. Von Haldenfeldt, Superintendent Stephan," says I, pointing to Jimmy; "and I am Professor Gonzekoe, from Berlin, at your service. We were just wondering what the gentleman with the black whiskers and the prominent optical organs was doing to this poor animal, to make him slink back into his corner the way he is now. The stranger must have given him a narcotic, or a sporadic, or something."

      "Black whiskers?" says the superintendent. "Which way did he go?"

      "Out that door," says I, "less than a minute ago. Of course I don't want to suggest your duty to you, but he really wants watching. I think he is headed for the bear pits."

      "Jehosaphat!" says the superintendent, grabbing up a stick. "He'll get what he don't want when we catch him, driving the whole zoo crazy. Come on, men!" and he gallops off.

      "It's up to us to make a record getaway, James," says I. "Will I have the pleasure of your company, or ⸺"

      "I'm comin'," says Jimmy, "as soon as I get my breath."

      "You don't need to wait for that," I says, firm; "I'll furnish you breath and legs. We're just as welcome in here as we would be out on the street right now — and a heap sight safer. Hump yourself!" and I gets a grip on his arm again that he couldn't have broke with a trip hammer.

      He mumbled something just before we pushed the door open, but I wasn't in the humor to listen to him. Jimmy's excursion into science hadn't lubricated my temper to any great extent.

      If it took us more than sixty seconds to reach the gate I am a bad time-keeper, and no sound ever seemed sweeter to my ears than the click of the turnstile as we passed through and out onto free old Vine Street again.

      While we waited for a car to come along a thought hit me in the pit of the solar plexus like a load of cross-ties.

      "That blamed porcupine!" I gasps; "you never turned him back!"

      "Well," says Jimmy, picking up a handful of gravel and shooting 'em, one at a time, at a cigarette box on the grass, "I did it halfway. As we come out. I says, 'Porcupine, not po⸺' and that was as far as my power went. The hyponotic dynamo slipped a belt then, and the light went out. If you hadn't run me up the hill so fast ⸺"

      "Oh, of course," says I. "If I hadn't! It's me that's to blame! Here's our car now; but when we get home I'm going to tell you all the pretty things I think about you and your hypnotism."

      And I did. And it took me two hours to get it all out, in fitting language. I haven't been to the zoo since, and I don't want to go; for a man was telling me the other day that the porcupine is subject to some kind of fits the animal men never seen before.

      "Every now and then," says he, "that ground-hog thing acts like a pony — shakes his head and stamps his feet and tries to neigh. It's worth going out to see. Come along some day with me?"

      "No, thank you," says I, hasty and emphatic. "I ain't partial to porcupines with fits — not a bit."

      But Jimmy didn't say nothing; he set and looked like he'd made a bad bet, and was forever soured on the world!