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Updated: May 19, 2025
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.
The quick changes prevented outsiders from noticing that the absence of Nicholas Crips was always coincident with the appearance of Mahdi, the Missing Link; but, still, nice judgment and caution had to be observed in effecting the transformation.
NICHOLAS CRIPS came back to Melbourne, the image of a reputable and orderly citizen. He had accepted office as a billiard-marker in a township hotel while his whiskers grew; and now, full-bearded, dressed in a new suit of sedate, grey tweed, wearing an excellent hat and whole boots, he re-entered the city.
The god-fathers of Nickie the Kid were all experts, and obtained bed and board mainly by exercising the art of dissimulation. To stand out conspicuously as a specialist in such company one needed to possess very bright and peculiar qualities. Mr. Nicholas Crips was blonde, bony man perhaps five feet nine in height, but looking taller because of the spareness of his limbs.
Less of it, my boy!" was his deep throated exhortation on such occasions. All the members of the company had to take a hand in the hard graft and menial tasks incidental to the upkeep, management and movement of the show, and neither professional etiquette nor artistic pride could rescue Nicholas Crips from the vulgar task of preparing comestibles for the monkeys.
He had a linen collar that had long since lost all claims to whiteness and all pretence of dignity, and his hat was a small round boxer, with scarcely any rim. On one of the buttons of his Beaufort hung a strip of ordinary sugar bag, on which he had written with a stub of pencil the word "Program." Mr. Nicholas Crips looked the part to the life.
These were the belongings of Nicholas Crips. The people of Catcat maintained a respectful distance, not knowing for certain what so formidable an animal might do next. "Better mind out," said one youth; "he bites! He bit the bloke inside. Didn't yeh 'ear him say?" On the whole the attitude towards the Missing Link was hostile. It was felt that here was a dangerous brute at large.
Two days earlier Tollbar had patronised the museum. These cheerful thoughts occupied Nickie's mind while the mare was negotiating about five miles, and wearing much of the wool off Mahdi, and not a little cuticle off Mr. Crips; but he was saved the dread ordeal he anticipated by another disaster.
Facing them on the other side of the fire, with his profile to Nicholas Crips, was a short, stoutly-built man, in a coarse blue shirt and corduroy riding pants, with a white handkerchief tied loosely about his neck. A fine chestnut horse stood behind him. The rein was looped over his arm. In his right hand this man held a long, business-like Colt's revolver pointed at the group before him.
Here!!" The severe man slapped a shilling on the counter. "Oh, thank you thank you so much." said the Rev. Andrew Rowbottom effusively. "What name?" "Confound the name!" snapped the severe gentle man. "Good-day." "Oh, to be sure, to be sure good day," said the Rev. Andrew, and he smiled and bowed and slid I trough the half-open door. Nicholas Crips called at many offices.
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