lins performed he performed only for the elite, for the hoi-polloi of
the trained-animal world.

The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the beast-claws
of his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his employer's preparation
to enter Hannibal's cage; for the preparation consisted merely in
equipping himself with a broom-handle.

Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in captivity, and
he had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and down the length of his
cage, heavily and swaying, after the manner of captive animals, when the
unexpected audience erupted into the space before his cage. Yet he took
no notice whatever, merely continuing his pacing, swinging his head from
side to side, turning lithely at each end of his cage, with all the air
of being bent on some determined purpose.

"That's the way he's been goin' on for two days," whimpered his keeper.
"An' when you go near 'm, he just reaches for you. Look what he done to
me." The man held up his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped to
shreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showing
where the claws had broken the skin. "An' I wasn't inside. He did it
through the bars, with one swipe, when I was startin' to clean his cage.
Now if he'd only roar, or something. But he never makes a sound, just
keeps on goin' up an' down."

"Where's the key?" Collins demanded. "Good. Now let me in. And lock it
afterward and take the key out. Lose it, forget it, throw it away. I'll
have all the time in the world to wait for you to find it to let me out."

And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, who lived
in mortal fear that at table the mother of his children would crown him
with a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, before the critical
audience of his employees and professional visitors, armed only with a
broom-handle. Further, the door was locked behind him, and, the moment
he was in, keeping a casual but alert eye on the pacing Hannibal, he
reiterated his order to lock the door and remove the key.

Half a dozen times the lion paced up and down, declining to take any
notice of the intruder. And then, when his back was turned as he went
down the cage, Collins stepped directly in the way of his return path and
stood still. Coming back and finding his way blocked, Hannibal did not
roar. His muscular movements sliding each into the next like so much
silk of tawny hide, he struck at the