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elaborated, “This Harvell Braggs must be an awful fat guy, and the other one, Ivan Cass, kind of a grim bird.”
    “What about them?”
    “They were inquiring around town about you, somebody told me,” Spook explained. “I guess they’ll look you up later. That’s all I know. The feller in the restaurant just mentioned it.”
    Gull probed his memory again, but concluded finally that he had never heard of the two gentlemen, although it was pleasantly possible that they might be theatrical men from New York who had come to sign him up on a new contract—he fervently hoped this to be the case.
    “Say, I remember another thing!” Spook barked suddenly.
    “Yes?”
    “It was a bottle of whiskey that hit me. That’s where the smell of demon rum came from.”
    THE GREAT GULLIVER now applied first-aid bandages and Mercurochrome—there was a kit in the filling station—to Spook’s head. It was while he was working on the small wound that his thoughts got into a new channel….
    Spook Davis was a fellow who could get into a remarkable number of scrapes. Spook was blessed with what the Irish call the gift of gab. Given the choice of telling truth or falsehood, Spook invariably chose a middle course. He exaggerated, managing both in a convincing way. It was hard to separate fact from fiction in Spook’s windy yarning. For a long time, this failing of Spook Davis had puzzled Gull, but for some months he had known what was wrong with his stooge.
    Spook Davis was a chronic Machiavelliast. There are people, psychological cases called kleptomaniacs, who cannot help stealing things. They may have plenty of money and not need the things they steal, but they cannot help taking them. With Spook, it wasn’t stealing. It was exaggerating.
    Added complication was the fact that Spook Davis looked so very like Gull—when he was wearing a wig which he affected when working as an assistant to The Great Gulliver. However, Gull had hired Spook because of this very similarity in appearance. They utilized it in their work as magicians. When properly disguised, the striking resemblance allowed for the astonishing illusion that The Great Gulliver could be in two places at the same time.
    They were dressed differently, now, of course, but when in the same attire, it would be almost impossible to tell them apart, a fact which they had used to advantage in performing magic tricks. Gull had but to get into a wooden box on the stage, which was made to appear empty by means of mirrors, and Spook then would appear immediately in the audience to create a striking piece of legerdemain. 2
    Spook Davis’ exaggerating frequently stirred up trouble, from the results of which Gull, his double in appearance, often had to suffer.
    Gull abruptly faced Spook Davis.
    “So you said, ‘Chris Columbus taking a vacation,’ just by accident!” he growled.
    “Huh? What— No, it was only that the new federal holiday was on my mind.”
    Gulliver Greene looked blank for a moment.
    “Columbus Day,” reminded Spook. “October twelfth. The President of the United States himself signed it into law.”
    Gull made frowning faces, then the light dawned in his emerald green eyes.
    “Forgot about that,” he mumbled. Then, shaking off his reverie, his ire returned.
    “Blast your hide!” Gull grated. “If this mess is something your whoppers have stirred up—”
    “Aw, now, Gull, hell! Really, I didn’t—honest—I—”
    “Remember that blonde hussy down in Tulsa?” Gull rapped.
    “I’m telling you I haven’t—”
    “You promised to marry her! But it was me she sued for breach of promise, and her witnesses identified me as you! You told her you were young Rockefeller!”
    Spook Davis wailed, “This is straight, Gull! Honest to Blackstone. It’s straight. I didn’t stir this up, and I don’t know what it’s all about!”
    Gull stood back, not entirely convinced. Spook had his more skilled moments, when even Gull could not tell when he was expanding