The Chief’s announcement that an escaped convict was in their neighborhood fell like a bombshell in the midst of the campers assembled at lunch.

“All boys are forbidden to go out of sight of camp, unless a councilor is along,” he ended. “We must take precautions until this dangerous man is captured. Now, to-night we will assemble here in the lodge, for Stunt Night. Every tent-group will be expected to have an act or other stunt prepared, and prizes will go to the winners. Dismissed!”

The groups scattered from the mess-hall to their respective tents to pass the daily siesta hour which was set aside as a period of rest and quiet from the brisk, noisy turmoil of the camp’s activity. Mr. Jim Avery cocked his long legs up on the end of his bunk in Tent Ten. “We have the whole afternoon to get ready,” he observed to his followers. “That should give us plenty of time to work up a first-class stunt that will bring home the prize. Anybody got any ideas?”
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Wild Willie Sanders spoke up. “We’ve got an edge on the other tents, haven’t we? Here we are with Chink Towner, the most famous Mandarin Magician in captivity. Say, I’ll bet we can put over a magic show that will knock the rest of the tents silly!”

“How about it, Chink?”

“Sure, that’s right,” Chink Towner agreed modestly. “We could do it, all right. I’ve got a lot of new tricks up my sleeve that nobody ever saw before. The best one, though, needs to have Jerry Utway, and that means we’d have to take Tent Eight into partnership with us.”

“That can be arranged, I think,” said Mr. Avery. “I’ll speak to Dr. Cannon about it. He knows it’s next to impossible to separate the twins. And with fourteen campers on the job, it ought to be some show. Well, what’s your trick?”

“Yes, what is it?” asked the Utway twins together.
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“Well, it’s this way,” began the Mandarin Magician; “Wild Willie can announce a big display of old Chinese hocus-pocus. We fix up a place on the stage where I sit, and a crowd of you guys come around and want to see some tricks. Then Fat Crampton comes along, and then I do a few easy ones, just to show my stuff, and then——” He lowered his voice as his comrades gathered about to hear the plan. Lefkowitz was sent over to Tent Eight to bring in the other participants, who listened and agreed to the scheme for a combined stunt that would make a most amusing addition to the vaudeville program that night. As soon as Recall sounded, the two groups of actors made for the Council Ring, where they rehearsed excitedly most of the afternoon.

Sherlock Jones did not join in the preparations for Stunt Night. He retired alone to the dark-room, where he stared at a photograph and pondered plans of his own. The announcement that a reward had been offered for the capture of the escaped criminal had set his mind working furiously on the problem of the Tattooed Arm. Indeed, the Chief’s startling news was a leading topic of conversation in Lenape that afternoon; but when supper-time brought no further information, the subject was temporarily forgotten in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment.
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No sooner had the dessert dishes been cleared away than the space in front of the blackened fireplace was transformed into a stage. Benches were ranged in rows for the seating of the camper audience, and a makeshift curtain of bed-sheets strung on a wire was hung across that end of the lodge. Darkness had just fallen when a boisterous crowd of leaders and boys took their seats, awaiting the drawing of the curtain on the opening act, announced by Sax McNulty, master of ceremonies, as “Captain Colby’s Army,” a Tent Fifteen Feature Production.

Joey Fellowes, who with his brother Ted made up the Lenape bugle corps, sounded Reveille on his muted instrument. The curtains parted to reveal a morning scene in Tent Fifteen. A great fuss was made by Ollie Steffins, dressed in a scout uniform with many medals and much gold braid, who in the person of Mr. Colby himself, went about getting the snoring sleepers to waken for morning drill. The drowsy boys were finally put on their feet and each armed with a broom-stick gun, with which they went through a series of clumsy maneuvers, knocking each other over the head, facing the wrong way, and otherwise tangling themselves in a travesty of a squad of rookies at drill. The concluding evolution brought them into line facing the audience, singing off key their rallying song:
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“We are Mr. Colby’s army,

Mr. Colby’s army we,

We cannot shoot, we won’t salute,

What earthly good are we?”

The curtains closed amid cheers, boos, and stamping of feet, during which Mr. Colby sat with a self-conscious smile on his disciplinarian’s face.

The acts followed swiftly after that. Tent Twelve put on a pirate play, Tent Three showed to advantage in a lady-like game of basketball, in which each side begged the other to kindly accept the ball on pain of being slapped on the wrist. Tent Four gave a ventriloquist act, with Peanut Westover as the talking dummy.
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“The Mysterious Mandarin Magician,” with an all-star cast from Tents Eight and Ten, was the next to the last number on the evening’s program. At the parting of the curtain, Wild Willie Sanders in a high, battered black silk hat, wearing the curling mustache of a circus ringmaster, pointed out the main attraction to a gaping crowd of boys from the participating tents, dressed in wild garbs of every description. “Laydeez and gen-tul-men! The one and only Chinese magician, brought at great expense from the Flowery Kingdom to mystify you to-night!” Chink Towner, his naturally oriental cast of countenance exaggerated by a line of grease-paint above each slanting eye, and dressed in a pair of colorful silk pajamas borrowed from Councilor Lane, sat cross-legged above the crowd on a blanket-draped table, his features masked in Chinese calm. “Step right up, laydeez and gen-tul-men, and see the one and only!”

Fat Crampton, tittering sweetly, walked by, dressed as a beautiful damsel in a skirt fashioned from Howard Chisel’s spare kitchen apron. The Mysterious Mandarin descended from his throne and expertly drew half-dollars from the hat, sleeve, and nose of the “lady.” He then gave an exhibition of sleight-of-hand, at which he was an adept of no mean skill—making a collection of red balls appear and disappear between his nimble fingers, shaking a flying pack of cards from his fan, collecting the cards in a neat pile and drawing forth at one flip the card desired by any of the nondescrip............