Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
After Nickie the Kid had been under the tutelage of the Rev. James for about three weeks, the latter was puzzled to find that Mr. Crips was far from penniless. Now Nickie was paid nothing his services, but every week a small sum, representing his wages, was paid into the Savings Bank, and the deposit was to be transferred to him when he gave proof of complete and perfect regeneration.
"Why, what's wrong, Jinny, old girl." asked Crips innocently, assuming a lounging attitude in the doorway. "You find the togs I'm wearin' a trifle too negligee, so to speak. They're quite the thing in our set." "Let me pass!" ejaculated the lady with crushing hauteur. Nickie was not impressed. He smiled, and continued dreamily: "My word, things have moved with you, Jinny.
If I could growl an' scratch like that I'd be a Missin' Link t'-morrer. No more living skelingtons fer me." "Look here," said Nicholas Crips seriously, "how long does the Missing Link have to remain in the cage?" "The show opens et one in th' afternoon, close at five, opens again at seven, an' closes et arf-pas ten." "And has the Missing Link to be growling' and scratching all the time?"
To the Napoleonic man-servant who opened to him, he gravely presented a tomato can half-full of water, and said: "Will yer please arsk Bill or Jinny if they'll be so good as to bile my billy at the drorin'-room fire. Tell 'em it's Nicholas Crips what makes the request. No, thanks, I won't come in, I'm afraid my motor car might bolt."
It stood within capacious grounds, and proclaimed aloud the fact that its proprietor was a rich man, ostentatious of his riches. "I expect there's a matter of thirty rooms in that house," mused Nicholas Crips, "and after all, a man can get just as drunk in a threepenny bar."
He had been acknowledged by experts to be the best Link ever exhibited in Australia, and Links included all sorts of hairy freaks, wild men of the woods, and shaggy eccentrics from Borneo; but Nicholas Crips could not rest satisfied as a mere interpreter of monkey character.
In his proudest moments Professor Thunder was not likely to overestimate the intrinsic value of the Missing Link as he stood, for tucked away under the singlet that lay between him and his hairy simian cuticle was a store of treasure with the product of which Nicholas Crips dreamed of living a life of ease and luxury when certain matters had blown over and it was wise for him to resume his proper place in the animal creation.
Ammonia witnessed the process of transference that night, and nearly went mad in his cage, springing about wildly, clinging to the bars, squealing and certainly blaspheming in his peculiar monkey gibberish, and Nicholas Crips sat in his cage, impishly eager to goad his enemy to fury, and ate luscious figs and fine preserves, while the gorilla strained at the intervening bars and shrilled his anguish.
An hour later the Missing Link and the Living Skeleton were sitting under the pile bridge a mile above the township, with a bottle of whisky between them. Bonypart was eating bread and cheese with an avidity which demonstrated the abandonment of all professional instincts. Nicholas Crips was drinking whisky slightly diluted with creek water. His drinking cup was a rusty sardine tin.
Crips employed himself on the following day reading up the murder case in back numbers of the Age in the newspaper annex of the Public Library. He had to read a great deal of superfluous matter, and of many idle schemes and excursions on the part of the police before he came upon an illuminating little item in the shape of a casual hit of testimony from a friend of the dead man.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking