Disowned Page 3

The World's UnparalleledUpside-Down Man! He Doesn't Know Whether He's On His Head Or HisHeels. He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't UpsetHim! Vaudeville To-night--The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant BurmeseBalancers--Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and TristanLeHuber, The Balloon Man--He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At lastindeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in thepublic eye!

  "There are," Alice raved, "two billion people on the earth to-day.Counting three generations per century, there have been about twelvebillion of us in the last two hundred years. And out of all those, andall the millions and billions before that, we had to be picked forthis loathsome cosmic joke--just little us for all that distinction!Why, oh, why? If our romance _had_ to be spoiled by a tragedy smearedacross the billboards of notoriety, why couldn't it have been in somedecent, human sort of way? Why this ghastly absurdity?"

  "From time immemorial," said Grosnoff, "there have been men who soughtto excite the admiration of their fellows, to get themselvesworshiped, to dominate, to collect perquisites, by developing somewonderful personal power or another. From Icarus on down, levitationor its equivalent has been a favorite. The ecstatics of medievaltimes, the Hindu Yogis, even the day-dreaming schoolboy, have hadvisions of floating in air before the astounding multitudes by a mereact of will. The frequency of 'flying dreams' may indicate such athing as a possibility in nature. Tradition says many haveaccomplished it. If so, it was by a reversal of polarity through _anact of will_. Those who did it--Yogis--believed in successive lives onearth. If they were right about the one, why not the other? Supposeone who had developed that power of will, carried it to another birth,where it lay dormant in the subconscious until set off uncontrolled bysome special shock?"

  Alice paled.

  "Then Tristan might have been--"

  "He might. Then again, maybe my brain is addled by this thing. In anycase, the moral is: don't monkey with Nature! She's particular."

  * * * * *

  Tristan's vaudeville scheme was not as easily realized as said. Thefirst manager to whom we applied was stubbornly skeptical in spite ofTristan's appearance standing upside down in stilts heavily weightedat the ground ends; and even after his resistance was broken down in amanner which left him gasping and a little woozy, began to reasonunfavorably in a hard-headed way. Audiences, he explained, were offlevitation acts. Too old. No matter what you did, they'd lay it toconcealed wires, and yawn. Even if you called a committee from theaudience, the committee itself would merely be sore at not being ableto solve the trick; the audience would consider the committee a fakeor merely dumb. And all that would take too much time for an act ofthat kind.

  "Oh, yeh, I know! It's got me goin', all right. But I can't think likeme about this sorta thing. I got to think like the audience does--orgo outa business!"

  After which solid but unprofitable lesson in psychology, we droppedthe last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. But the resultswere similar.

  "Nah, the rubes don't wear celluloid collars any more. Ya can't slipany wire tricks over on 'em!"

  "But he can do this in a big topless tent, or even out in an openfield, if you like."

  "Nope--steel rods run up the middle of a rope has been done before."

  "Steel rods in a rope which the people see uncoil from the ground infront of their eyes?"

  "Well, they'd think of somethin' else, then. I'm tellin' ya, it won'tgo! Sure, people like to be fooled, but they want it to be done_right_!"

  "Yes!" I sneered. "And a hell of a lot of people have fooledthemselves _right_ about this matter, too!"

  He looked at me curiously.

  "Say, have ya really got somethin' up y'r sleeve?"

  "You'd be surprised!"

  Thus he grudgingly gave us a chance for a tryout; and he was surprisedindeed. But on thinking it over, he decided like the vaudeville man.

  "Listen!" said Tristan suddenly, in a voice of desperation. "I'll do aparachute jump into the sky, and land on an airplane!"

  "Tristan!" shrieked Alice, in horror.

  The circus man nearly lost his cigar, then bit it in two.

  "Sa-ay--what the--I'll call that right now! I'll get ya the plane andchute if y'll put up a deposit to cover the cost. If ya do it, we'llhave the best money in the tents; if ya don't, I keep the money!"

  "If I don't," said Tristan distinctly, "I'll have not the slightestneed for the money."

  But the airplane idea was out; we could think of no way for him tomake the landing on such a swiftly-moving vehicle.

  Again Alice solved it.

  "If you absolutely must break my heart and put me in a sanitarium,"she sobbed, "get a blimp!"

  Of course! And that is what we did--on the first attempt comingunpleasantly close to doing just that to Alice.

  * * * * *

  The blimp captain was obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of apeeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money andhe agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone wasperfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress himwith the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his camenear to having dire consequences.

  The captain was supplied with a sort of boat-hook with instructions tosteer his course to reach the parachute ropes as it passed him on itsupward flight. And he was seriously warned of the fact that, after thechute reached two or three thousand feet, its speed would increasebecause of the rarefaction of the air; and in case of a miss, it wouldbecome constantly harder to overtake. These directions he receivedwith a scornful half smile; obviously he never expected to see thechute open.

  We got all set, the blimp circling overhead, Tristan upside down inhis seat suspended skyward, a desperately grim look on his face; andAlice almost in collapse. We were all spared the agony of severalhundred feet of unbroken fall; the parachute was open on the ground,and rose at a leisurely speed, but too fast at that for the comfort ofany of us. I don't think the wondering crowd and the dumbfoundedcircus people ever saw a stranger sight than that chute driftingupward into the blue. We heard nothing of "hidden wires," then or everafter! The white circle grew pitifully small and forlorn against thefathomless azure; and suddenly we noticed that the blimp seemed to bemerely drifting with the wind, making no attempt to get under--orover--Tristan. Our hearts labored painfully. Had the engines brokendown? Alice buried her face against my sleeve with a moan.

  "I can't look ... tell me!"

  I tried to--in a voice which I vainly tried to make steady.

  All at once the blimp went into frenzied activity--we learnedafterwards that its crew of three, captain included, had been socompletely paralyzed by the reality of the event that they hadforgotten what they were there for until almost too late. Now we heardthe high note of its overdriven engines as it rolled and rocked towardthe rising chute. For a moment the white spot showed against its grayside, then tossed and pitched wildly in the wake of the propellers as,driven too hastily and frenziedly, the ship overshot its mark and thecaptain missed his grab.

  * * * * *

  I could only squeeze Alice tightly and choke as the aerial objectsparted company and the blue gap between them widened. Instantly, avidto retrieve his mistake, the captain swung his craft in a wild careenaround and a spiral upward. But he tried to do too many things at atime--make too much altitude and headway both at once. The blimppitched steeply upward to a standstill, barely moving toward theparachute. Quickly it sloped downward again and gathered speed,nearing the chute, and then making a desperate zoom upward on itsmomentum. Mistake number three! He had waited too long before usinghis elevator; and the chute fled hopelessly away just ahead of theuptilted nose of the blimp. I could only moan, and Alice made no soundor movement.

  Next we saw the blimp's water ballast streaming earthward in the sun,and it was put into a long, steady spiral in pursuit of the parachute,whose speed--or so it seemed to my agonized gaze--was now noticeably
on the increase. The altitude seemed appallingly great; the blimp'sceiling, I knew, was only about twenty thousand; and my brother, evenif not frozen to death by that time, would be traveling far fasterthen than any climbing speed the blimp could make; as his fallincreased in speed, the climb of the bag decreased.

  At last, with a quiver of renewed hope, I saw the blimp narrowing downits spirals--it was overtaking! Smaller and smaller grew bothobjects--but so did the gap between them! At last they merged, thetiny white dot and the little gray minnow. In one long agony I waitedto see whether the gap would open out again. Lord of Hosts--the blimpwas slanting steeply downward; the parachute had vanished!

  Then at last I paid some