by Don Wilcox
A baseball was tossed to them; at any rate they appeared to believe it was a baseball, though the audience knew it was only imagination. Soon the four young men agreed upon captains for a team; the captains chose their teams from the other boys on the stage and the whole ten of them went into their game.
To the amazement of the crowd, the game spread right out into the audience.
It was hilarious fun for everyone, the more so because none of the players seemed to be in the least aware of the presence of a crowd. They pegged the invisible ball from one corner of the theater to the other, and struck flies right over the heads of the crowd. Their actions were so genuine that here and there some of the spectators would duck to keep from getting hit.
Then everyone would roar with laughter; for it was plain that the whole house had been more or less drawn into accepting the hypnotist’s absurd suggestions.
Sillier goings-on soon followed. The players were called back to the stage to eat their lunch. There was no food, Tolozell, said, except a stack of old boards. But they were sweet flavored boards with only a few nails in them.
The boys ate them with great gusto, not forgetting to stop to yank imaginary nails out of their teeth.
Later, when most of them had been snapped out of the hypnotic spell and sent back to their seats, there remained a husky young man who agreed to have a rock placed on his stomach and broken by a sledge hammer.
Under hypnosis he was told to become perfectly rigid.
“After this is all over,” said Tolozell to his husky subject, “you’ll say you feel you’ve got a great burden off your chest.”[2]
Perfectly rigid, the subject was lifted by the attendants, and placed with his head and shoulders on one chair, his feet on another.
Upon this human bridge the attendants placed a slab of limestone that must have weighed more than a hundred pounds.
Tolozell went back to the throne and picked what appeared to be a fourteen pound maul. He was a dangerous-looking spectacle, thought Yolanda; the tool, hung from his hulking shoulders, had the look of a crude weapon. It was in that moment that Yolanda shuddered at the thought of making a paper doll of Tolozell. Might it not cause her endless trouble? But there was no time to think of paper dolls now.
The maul swung through the air and came down with a solid clunk. The rigid body took the impact without a shudder. The big stone lay broken.
The attendants removed it. They set the rigid man upright and Tolozell brought him back to consciousness with a few snaps of the fingers. Great applause greeted the young husky as he returned to his seat. He would be the town’s hero for weeks to come.
The hypnotist called to him.
“Do you feel perfectly all right, Mr. Smith?”
“Sure,” the husky fellow laughed. “I feel like I’ve got a great burden off my chest.
The crowd remembered and applauded again.
Now there was a conspicuous pause while the Siamese hypnotist looked out over the crowd.
“I would like to make friends with all of you before the evening is over. There will only be time, however, for me to talk with a few of you.”
He descended the steps from the stage and came down the aisle toward Yolanda and her party.
“How-do-you-do. You are a Chinese, I believe. Would you give me your name?”
“John How.”
“Thank you, Mr. How. Ladies and gentlemen, we have here a man whose ancestors lived in my own part of the world, the great Orient. Would you like for him to come up—”
A solid applause proved that the whole crowd was ready to back up Tolozell’s suggestion. Even Yolanda found herself quavering. It did seem so harmless.
“Come, Mr. How. The people are asking for you.”
“Must have few minutes,” said the Chinese smiling uncomfortably, “to think over.”
Tolozell relayed the words to the audience, and there was the slightest hint of mockery in his tone. “Very well, I shall give my Oriental friend a few minutes to make up his mind on this weighty matter. But I warn you, I can’t work with people who like to be stubborn. In the meantime—”
Tolozell reached to take Yolanda by the hand.
“In the meantime, let us have a merry little dance, if one of these young ladies will be so kind. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I always say it takes ten men to keep an audience entertained—but only one pretty girl. Come, Miss.” Yolanda’s heart was pounding. She was trying hard not to betray her fear; her instinctive distrust of this hulking creature was tremendous. Her eyes refused to meet his cunning gaze. What designs did he have?
“If I come,” she said tremulously, “I come of my own free will.”
Her words were swallowed up by the noisy mumblings of the audience. But the hypnotist repeated them for everybody’s benefit.
“If the young lady comes up to the stage,” the voice mocked, “she wants it known that she comes of her own free will—”
“But you don’t believe me,” Yolanda cut in, and everyone, including Yolanda herself, was surprised at the strength of her defiance. “You would believe that it was your will, not mine—and so—”
“I’ll go. I’ll dance.”
It was Katherine who startled everyone by suddenly volunteering. Before Yolanda or John How could stop her, she was marching up to the stage.
CHAPTER IV
A Slip of the Hammer
Tolozell’s half-closed eyes lingered on Yolanda with a look that might have been disappointment, or anger, or even lust. Obviously he hadn’t intended to let her off so easy. But he had boasted that one girl could entertain as well as ten men. So he couldn’t ask for more.
He turned and trudged back to the stage, and extended to Katherine a gracious welcome.
Through the demonstrations that followed, Yolanda suffered untold agonies. If she had gone up herself, the ordeal could have been no more difficult. For Katherine Knight was her very best pal. And Katherine had done this thing only to save her.
“For me,” Yolanda kept whispering to herself. “Because I was stubborn—” Yolanda trembled as she watched, already the bright-eyed little friend had succumbed to the spell of hypnosis. Now she was dancing—whirling—leaping—all to imaginary music.
Katherine could dance!
Yolanda hadn’t known it before. No one had known it. This was a surprising thing. Katherine was thought to be a timid girl, even more reserved than Yolanda. People thought of her as a quick, eager, wide-eyed child, always ready to act on the suggestions of others, but not possessing much initiative of her own.
Yolanda couldn’t understand it. She herself was the larger, the older, the more aggressive, the stronger. And yet here she sat, as if choked with repressions and angry suspicions, while her little dark-haired friend took possession of the stage and brought down the house.
So it had taken Tolozell, the Siamese Hypnotist, to discover what no one else knew—that this timid little brunette had a hidden talent!
Was that good or bad? Again Yolanda found herself clutching her hands like a terrified child. Perhaps Katherine wasn’t able to do these things in her normal behavior. Perhaps this unaccountable exhibition would be attended by something disastrous!
Katherine Knight gave a deep curtsy and dropped gracefully to the floor, her wide skirt flouncing about her. She seemed completely unconscious of the applause.
The hypnotist was reassuring the crowd that there would be an encore, when something changed his plans—John How.
Tolozell quickly brought Katherine back to consciousness, and seated her, like a guest of honor, at one side of the stage. Then he extended a wave of welcome to the little old Chinese cook, who was hobbling slowly up the aisle toward the stage.
Just when it was that Katherine Knight slipped quietly down from the stage, Yolanda did not know. For the Siamese Hypnotist was a master at directing everyone’s attention, and now he directed it, with the aid of an accommodating spotlight, upon the comic little figure of John How.
On r
eaching the stage, Jolly John adjusted his collar as anyone might in a moment of embarrassment. A gleaming white paper doll fell from inside his coat and dropped to the floor.
Yolanda had guessed that he was carrying a paper doll made from the wand. Now she knew that for a second time John How was placing implicit faith in some mysterious Chinese magic to direct him.
Apparently he did not catch sight of the paper doll until it had fallen down against the handle of the fourteen- pound maul, leaning against the throne. He regarded the big sledge hammer with interest.
“Come, my friend,” Tolozell called. “Our audience is waiting for whatever we have to offer.”
Jolly John nodded. He started to fasten the little white paper doll in his pocket.
“What a bright piece of paper you have there, my friend,” Tolozell said. “Come, let’s don’t keep any secrets from our good audience. Give us a look.”
So saying, the hypnotist reached out to take the white paper doll.
In days to come there would be many a loafers’-bench argument over just how Tolozell took it. Some would say he snatched it with a swift pickpocket grab. Some would say he took it in a mannerly fashion—that Jolly John even handed it to him.
But on one point there would be no argument. Every one in the house saw it happen, and for sheer mystery it capped everything that had transpired up to that time.
The white paper doll exploded.
At Tolozell’s touch it burst into a flash of white fire and was gone.
The hypnotist jumped back with an injured expression. He rubbed his empty fingers together. Evidently he had not been burned; only shocked. The impulsive laughter of the audience was muffled in startled whispers,
“Well, my friend,” Tolozell blustered, trying to recover himself, “I can see that you carry a load of tricks up your sleeve. How interesting. It is strange that I have not met you on the stage before—or have I? You should be starring on Broadway, pulling artificial rabbits out of hats.”
Jolly John awkwardly ho wed. In his habitual smile Yolanda was sure she detected an unusual expression—perhaps of agony, or desperation, or something stronger.
“Go right ahead, my friend.” Tolozell’s voice was a cynic rasp. “Give us another of your tricks. The stage is all yours. What will you have?”
John How glanced back at the throne. He answered slowly.
“I take hammer—and rock—and you.”
Everyone laughed. Everyone cheered. The hypnotist’s bluff had been called. He squirmed, but the little old Chinese held on like a bulldog to his original request.
“You plomise to do what I ask,” he said stubbornly, “and I velly well hypnotize you.”
“Do your worst,” Tolozell snapped.
Jolly John went to work. Whether or not he actually hypnotized the Siamese hypnotist the audience couldn’t be sure. At any rate Tolozell appeared to pass into sleep. He became so rigid that the attendants were able to bridge him across two chairs. They placed a wide flat stone on his midsection.
John How stood with his hands on his hips, gazing so fixedly at the task which awaited him that the audience might well have wondered whether he himself was hypnotized. In the moment’s delay, the attendants apparently were having a bit of private talk at the rear of the stage. One of them retired to the wings. Soon the other, the big blond fellow, came up from the throne carrying the fourteen-pound maul. He handed it to Jolly John.
A moment later both attendants were out of sight and only John How and the rigid Siamese hypnotist were left on the stage.
Some one in front of Yolanda whispered, “What’s he up to? He’s not aiming for the stone. He’s looking right at TolozelPs head! ”
Yolanda stifled a scream. An electric shock of terror caught the whole house. Was that hammer going to strike true?
John How gave it a backward swing, it flashed upward in a swift arc. Right above his own head it slipped out of his hands.
It crashed down. It sliced the little Chinese cook across the side of the skull as it fell. He and the heavy tool thudded to the floor together.
Blood was flowing, and the sight of it brought cries and screams from the spectators. On the instant the attendants rushed onto the stage from the wings. The rigid hypnotist, breaking out of his freeze, rolled the stone off his own body, and as it fell it barely missed striking the already gashed head of John How.
Now he could not be seen, for the attendants and the hypnotist had apparently jumped to the rescue. They were seconds ahead of the first group of men who charged up from the audience.
Yolanda was too nearly paralyzed to move. But her eyes and her ears caught more than the general aspect of terror which gripped the whole house. She overheard the whisper of the sharp- eyed observer in front of her.
“It never slipped out of his hands. It was jerked, just as he swung. There was a fine wire. I saw it. One of those damned attendants threw a hitch over that hammer before he gave it to the little fellow. It’s murder, as plain as day.”
CHAPTER V
Somewhere in Siam
Carter O’Connor re-read the letter once more before blowing out his candle. Any mail from America that found its way to this desolate part of the world deserved to be re-read several times, even though it had been written months ago.
“Is he still readin’ ?” one of the workers muttered sleepily. “It beats me how he can build road all day and read all night.”
“A man can’t live for buildin’ highways and nothin’ else,” someone answered. “But for me, I’ll take my nights out after we get back to Bangkok next month.”
Carter O’Connor heard none of this. He wasn’t aware that his candle-lit face aroused endless curiosity among his men.
It had often happened. The workers couldn’t help wondering what wealth of thoughts occupied O’Connor’s hours of silence—thoughts that they could never seem to tap.
Not that their road boss held himself aloof during the working day. He could talk on endlessly, and interestingly. Indeed, it was Carter O’Connor’s conversational resources that had held the men together during that hot stretch of desert grading when they thought they were going to run short on water. By his masterful handling of that crisis he had won the high respect of his better workmen. He was the staunch friend of every man who knew how to play square.
To be sure, there were some among his road crew, Americans and others, to whom square play was the only rule of the simple-hearted; these were the trouble makers. In dozens of ways they would crowd the others in an effort to seize any unfair advantage. Sometimes it took stout fists reinforced with stout courage for Carter O’Connor to quell the riots.
Thus the boldest of the trouble makers were careful how they crossed O’Connor’s path. He had strength and guts; moreover he had this everlasting mystery about him that could be seen in the silhouette of his lean brown face, deep in silent thought, by late candle light.
Much of his reading was necessarily confined to the four or five books he carried in his battered steel suitcase, especially the books full of charts, maps, and tables concerning Asia and the Southwest Pacific: the reconstruction of the war-torn lands following the defeat of Japan in the second world war.
Why should he bother to wade through such a welter of factual material was more than anyone could guess.
And whether the occasional letters he received from America had any connection with his other studies was another matter for conjecture. He always read with a frozen face, and not even “Slack” Clampitt, the slipperiest and most distrusted man of the crew, had ever attempted to pry into O’Connor’s mail.
Tonight Carter O’Connor might have been fifteen thousand miles away from the sleepy little road camp. The recent letter from America had conjured up long-forgotten scenes of American small town life: the main street, thronging with harmless people on Saturday nights; the traveling stock company or medicine show; the county fair with its prize hogs, horseraces, confetti, and trapeze shows; the county courts; the ban
d concerts; the football games; the bright-eyed country youths who would come, with all their pep and good humor, into the high schools; and the poor little rich girl who was forced to live in the big lonesome aristocratic house on Rocky Hill Drive.
Poor little kid.
The letter had made no direct mention of her, but its implications were that she was in dire trouble.
Well, there was little that he could do about it, living here on the other side of the world. And yet he felt a responsibility, for he remembered that his father had meant to help look after her when her parents had passed away.
But Carter’s father, Harrison O’Connor, had been called to work on this side of the Pacific. Before his untimely death, the most he had been able to do for little Yolanda Vellum was to send John How across to America to live in the big stone mansion to help watch over her.
That was nearly eleven years ago. Carter O’Connor and his father had made the trip back for a brief visit, to make sure that that marvelous little Chinese got safely located and adjusted.
Eleven years ago. How far away in time and space it all seemed.
Yolanda had been only a seven-year- old child—a serious, artistic little creature living in a world of paper dolls.
How devoted to her paper dolls she had been. To him, then only a thirteen-year-old boy, it had been funny. She had even made a paper doll of him, and she declared she would keep it forever. For she never lost any dolls, or spoiled any, but kept them all.
Now she must be nearly eighteen. And he was twenty-five—too old to be remembered by her, but much too young to be acceptable as a god-father.
Was there anything he could do to help Yolanda, now that John How was nearing death? Wouldn’t any intrusion on his part be unwelcome? Should he write her a letter? Send her money? Help her get a job?
No, that wouldn’t do. Whatever fatherly advice he might offer, she would consider him a meddlesome stranger.
Carter O’Connor drew the blanket over his broad brown shoulders. The night breeze, filtering through the mosquito netting, was chilly. He moved the flickering candle.