L. Frank Baum - Oz 19

by The Lost King Of Oz

  “Undo this mischief at once. Give me back my own shape. Restore the King!” screamed Pajuka, flapping his wings in Mombi’s face.

  “Raise up this castle or I’ll step on you!” promised Kabumpo furiously.

  Mombi looked pleadingly at Dorothy and Snip, but the little boy and girl felt now that any punishment was too good for the old witch.

  “Give me time,” muttered Mombi, casting uneasy glances from one to the other. “The formula should have restored the King, but something went wrong. I must have more time.”

  “Here, take it.” Stumbling across the room, Ilumpy pressed a dollar watch into the old witch’s hands. “Here’s all the time in the world,” said the dummy dolefully, “but don’t ask me to be King again. Let Kabumpo sit on the throne and see how he likes it.”

  Turning his back upon the company, Humpy began to run after Tora’s ears. Fastened together by the tailor’s spectacles, they were flapping wildly around the apartment. Pajuka groaned and covered his eyes with his wing, for the honest goose could not bear to see his old master conducting himself so foolishly.

  “Well, what shall I do with her?” Kabumpo shook Mombi again and snapped his eyes angrily at Dorothy.

  “She got us into this trouble and now she must get us out,” decided the little girl wisely. “Do you think you can?”

  The old witch nodded and, at a sign from Dorothy, Kabumpo let her go, at the same time keeping a close guard upon her. Mombi, it must be confessed, was as surprised at the fall of the castle as anyone else, nor could she account for the failure of the magic formula. Hemmed in a corner by the gigantic Kabumpo, she began mumbling in magic and making queer passes in the air just to gain time.

  Dorothy watched anxiously, but Snip, who had already had an idea of his own, tiptoed across the room and picked up Mombi’s basket. In a sudden flash Snip recalled the skyward flight of the cats in Catty Corners. Was there any more of the marvelous baking powder? Tumbling everything out of the basket, Snip fumbled hurriedly among its contents and with a little cry of triumph found what he was looking for-a small purple can of the magical powder. And, better still, printed in Mombi’s crooked writing, were the directions for its use. This is what Snip read:

  “To raise hair-one drop in water.

  “To raise the roof-one pinch down the chimney.

  “To raise the rent-five teaspoon’s full in vinegar.

  “To raise a castle or city empty entire contents of can on spot desired. Sprinkle with water and

  count ten.”

  Seizing a flower vase from a nearby stand, Snip dumped out the powder and moistened it from the vase. Then, hardly daring to think what would happen, the little button boy began to count.

  With a roar as sudden and frightful as when it had fallen, the castle shot upward, gaining speed as it went, up, up, up, till the dark earth was left far below and the massive structure stood on its rightful foundations again.

  How Ozma and her friends were caught upon its roof, we already know, for Snip had set off the powder, just as the Little Queen flung herself upon the grass to weep.

  While the Scarecrow, with a long ladder from the garden, was helping those on the roof to get

  down, Snip was hurrying around the throne room helping those inside to get up, for the final jar as the castle settled had knocked everyone over-even Kabumpo.

  “Is this exciting enough for you?” asked Dorothy, crawling out from beneath a sofa. The Elegant Elephant groaned, but made no attempt to arise, and Dorothy, rushing over to Mombi, dragged her hurriedly to her feet.

  “Now that you’ve raised the castle,” puffed the little girl determinedly,”suppose you transform the King and Pajuka!”

  “Mombi didn’t raise the castle, I did it myself!” cried Snip delightedly.

  “You did!” gasped Kabumpo, rolling over in astonishment. “How?”

  Snip held up the empty can and, while Mombi glowered angrily, he explained his use of the marvelous baking powder. Tora’s ears were still off so the poor tailor was as bewildered as ever, but Snip nodded to him encouragingly and had just finished his recital when the door in the hall burst open and Ozma, in a perfect flutter of excitement, swept into the throne room-Ozma and everyone who had accompanied her to Morrow.

  “The King!” gasped Ozma faintly, for she was rather short of breath. “Where is the King?” Her glance travelled in alarm from Mombi to Pajuka. The goose was waddling after Humpy. Paying no attention to the rise of the castle, the dummy was mounted on a chair in a last effort to capture Tora’s ears.

  “Dorothy,” wailed the sorely tried and tired little fairy, “where is my father?”

  “Here! Here!” honked Pajuka, doing his best to make Humpy turn ‘round. “This is the King of

  Oz!”

  Dorothy, astonished though she was by Ozma’s sudden entry, hastened to break the shock of her disappointment. “You must remember,” she explained hastily, “he is not quite himself!”

  “He’s bewitched-we’re all bewitched!” groaned the goose, flapping his wings despairingly.

  “Well, who hit me with the castle?” demanded Scraps, staring around indignantly. “I told you the King was a dunce!”

  The little girls, Sir Hokus and the Wizard were regarding the stuffed man’s actions with horror and dismay.

  “Are you my father?” faltered Ozma, approaching the dummy timidly. “Why, where have you been all these years?”

  “In the pictures,” answered Humpy in a matter-of-fact voice. With a final snatch he had captured the tailor’s ears and was more interested in them than in his daughter. “I double for the stars, my dear. I fall and die and all that sort of thing. Ask Dorothy, she knows all about me.”

  “He’s been leading a double life,” murmured the Scarecrow, looking solemnly at Sir Hokus of Pokes. Then, facing the King, he asked frankly, “Are you a dub or a double?”

  “He’s bewitched, I tell you,” puffed Pajuka, trying to get some attention. “Make her disenchant us!” He shot his neck angrily in Mombi’s direction and immediately everyone’s attention was directed to the old witch, whom the Elegant Elephant still guarded in the corner.

  “Why, there’s Kabumpo!” cried Ozma and then, catching her first glimpse of the tailor without ears, she sank limply into a chair and began to fan herself with a doily. “Everything, everything’s so queer,” murmured the little Queen, looking appealingly at Betsy and Trot.

  “Fetch the Green Book of Magic from the library,” ordered the Wizard, giving Sir Hokus a push. “Fetch the book and I will put an end to this nonsense!”

  Sir Hokus made haste to obey and, before Dorothy could explain all that had happened or introduce her friends the Knight came back with the green book.

  “Here, give me my ears,” cried the tailor, who had missed most of the excitement. Snatching them from Humpy, he clapped them quickly in place and turned toward the Wizard. The Wizard looked slightly cross-eyed from astonishment, but swallowing quickly and, determined not to delay the King’s restoration another minute, began to flip over the leaves of the book.

  “This is it, Incantation No.980!” panted the little man joyfully. “Two ought to be eaten before

  seven.

  “That’s not an incantation, that’s Humpy’s number,” cried Dorothy, pulling out the white tag on the dummy’s collar.

  “Why, that’s what Mombi tried,” put in Snip anxiously. “Look out! Something else awful will

  happen!”

  But the Wizard waved them impatiently aside and, throwing the royal robe he had carried all the way from Morrow about Humpy’s shoulders, pushed him down upon the throne.

  “All but seven leave the room,” he ordered crisply and after a short delay the order was carried out. The seven who remained watched tensely as the Wizard approached the stuffed King. Popping two small crackers into his mouth, he gazed fixedly at the dummy. “I command you to assume your natural shape,” choked the Wizard, throwing up his arms impressively.

  ‘T
he King’s himself! Long live the King!” shrieked Pajuka, falling flat upon his bill.

  Everyone crowded forward to see what happened to Humpy-but the dummy remained as he

  was.

  “Why he’s not changed at all,” cried Scraps scornfully, and the Patch Work Girl was perfectly right. Except for a slight slump to the left, Humpy had not even changed his position.

  “Two ought to be eaten before seven! Two ought to be eaten before seven!” muttered the Wizard, beginning to pace anxiously up and down.

  “Two what?” asked Snip. “Are you sure you’ve eaten the right thing? Mombi swallowed

  buttons.”

  “Well, I’m no ostrich and the foot note says two of anything,” answered the little man, keeping

  his place in the book with his forefinger and gazing at the dummy in exasperation.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Lost King Is Found

  THE Wizard of Oz was puzzled and mortified. His magic seemed to be no magic at all. The little man was silent. He could think of nothing but his failure.

  “Let’s all sit down in a circle and think,” proposed the Scarecrow, taking Ozma’s hand, for he could see the little fairy was ready to cry with disappointment. “The goose feather said the King was in the castle, so he must be here,” he insisted cheerfully. “Let Dorothy tell her story and we’ll tell ours and then perhaps we can find out what’s wrong with our magic.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” approved Scraps, plumping down beside the straw man. “Have Dorothy explain this old goose, this button-button-who’s-got-the-button boy and the fellow with the fluttering ears.”

  “I guess that would be best,” sighed Dorothy. So in less than a wink that whole strange company, with Humpy in the center, dropped down in a circle upon the floor. Kabumpo, holding Mombi fast in his trunk, stood just behind Dorothy, putting in a word now and then or giving Mombi a shake when she objected to any part of the story.

  Ozma and her friends could scarcely repress their astonishment and surprise as Dorothy recounted her wonderful adventures with the dummy and told of Snip’s exciting journey with the goose and the old witch. Indeed, as the story proceeded, they began to regard Snip and Pajuka with growing admiration and respect, for certainly these two had played an unforgetable part in the history of Oz.

  When Dorothy told how Snip had raised the castle with Mombi’s baking powder, the company burst into such loud cheers and cries of approval that the little button boy tried to hide behind the tailor. Tora, himself, came in for a goodly share of the interest too, and he smiled pleasantly as Dorothy explained his singular ears and described his escape from the Blanks. When Dorothy had finished, Ozma quickly related all that had happened in the Emerald City and in Morrow. She told of the deserted castle and the mysterious messages, and the Scarecrow gravely passed around the golden quill

  “I seem to remember this,” puffed Pajuka when it had come to him. “Ah, I know! It is the magic quill the King gave me on my last birthday in the castle. It always warned one or the other when either was in danger and I had it in my pocket when Mombi turned me to a goose.

  “And I pulled it out when I fell down the well!” cried Snip excitedly.

  “And it returned to the spot where the old castle had stood,” put in the Wizard, leaning forward sagely.

  “Well, that explains the feather, but who will explain the King?” demanded the Scarecrow,

  looking at the dummy with his head on one side.

  “I’m about tired of being explained,” mumbled Humpy sulkily. “If you don’t pretty soon decide something, I’ll go back to America. I’ve fallen and I’ve risen and now I want to sit still.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested the tired tailor timidly, for he felt shy in the presence of so many celebrities, “perhaps Humpy is not the lost King at all! The feather said the King was in the palace, but it did not say the dummy was King.”

  “Bless me,” cried the scarecrow tossing up his hat, “his brain works as fast as his ears. That is an idea!” It had not occurred to any of them that Humpy might not be the King, but now they began to look at one another questioningly.

  “But he’s the image of Pastoria!” insisted Pajuka. “Don’t you suppose I know my own sovereign? Ozma my dear, is this dummy not like your father?”

  Ozma nodded. “But it wouldn’t do any harm to look around,” she added thoughtfully.

  “Come on,” cried the Scarecrow waving his hat, “we’ll hunt from cellar to garret!”

  “Keep a trunk on that witch!” called Scraps to the Elegant Elephant, as they all jumped up and started to follow the Scarecrow from the room.

  “But wait!” exclaimed the tired tailor, catching hold of the straw man’s arm. “How do know you are not the King yourself?”

  “Me the King!” ejaculated the Scarecrow falling back against a pillar.

  “Well, Mombi could easily have changed you to a Scarecrow,” mused Tora, but Dorothy hastily shook her head, for the Scarecrow’s past was well known and though he had been proved an Emperor of Silver Island, she felt he could not be the lost King of Oz.

  “Well, somebody in this castle is King,” insisted Tora positively.

  “But how shall we know?” gasped Dorothy, while the others looked equally puzzled.

  “Find the man who fits the King’s robe,” cried Tora, waving his tape measure. “Try him,” he finished, indicating Sir Hokus of Pokes.

  “How did you ever think of that?” asked the Wizard admiringly. “Find the man who fits the robe! Why it’s as simple as arithmetic. But how did you ever think of it?”

  “Well, being a tailor, it occurred to me at once,” answered Tora modestly. “The robe fits the dummy perfectly, so I thought at first he must be the King, but when the magic failed to work I concluded that he wasn’t.”

  Mombi sniffed scornfully as the Knight stepped forward but Dorothy and Ozma, remembering Sir Hokus’s strange history, felt that he might easily be the lost King of Oz.

  Again all but seven left the throne room, and the tailor placed the King’s robes carefully about the Knight’s shoulders. Then the Wizard, taking two more crackers, gravely repeated the magic formula.

  Ozma kept her eyes fixed intently on Sir Hokus. She rather hoped he would turn out to be her father, for she was very fond of the blustery Knight. But nothing at all happened after the Wizard’s incantation and Sir Hokus stepped down from the throne with real relief.

  “Odds buckles and bonnets, my dear, I would like to be your father but not your King,” sighed the Knight. “I prefer fighting to governing any day.”

  The Wizard cast his eye about for another candidate of proper size and shape to fit the robe, but no one in the room seemed to qualify.

  “You’re wasting time,” grunted Kabumpo irritably. “This person,” he waved loftily at the old tailor, “this person had better have kept out of it. What does a tailor know of magic?”

  Dorothy looked reprovingly at the Elegant Elephant and just then, catching a glimpse of the Soldier with the Green Whiskers in the doorway, rushed over and pulled him into the room. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers is the entire army of Oz and, while not noted for his bravery, is a great favorite in the Emerald City. Ever since the disappearance of Ozma, he had been hiding in the castle cellar, terribly frightened by its fall and rise. Finally he had screwed up enough courage to venture forth and investigate. Too astonished to move, he had listened to the proceedings in the throne room and watched the Wizard’s magic experiments.

  “Try him!” puffed Dorothy, hurrying him toward the throne. As the tailor carefully adjusted the robe, everyone gasped at the fit and becomingness of the green garment. It quite transformed the timid old soldier and, complacently stroking his beard, he waited for the Wizard’s formula to take effect. But again, nothing at all happened and, dashing the green book of magic into a corner, the Wizard rushed out of the room. At last he had had an idea of his own. He would look in the magic picture and discover at once who was the mi
ssing King.

  Meanwhile Tora, looking very apologetic, had taken the cloak from the grand army’s shoulders. “I was wrong,” sighed the tailor shaking his head sorrowfully, “and now there is no one else to

  try.”

  Everyone joined in the tailor’s sigh, for the afternoon had lengthened into evening and they were still as far as ever from solving the mystery. At each disappointment Pajuka had grown more gloomy and now, waddling up to Mombi, he cried angrily, “Woman, what have you done with the king? Speak! Speak, or I’ll peck off your nose!”

  “Yes, say something!” shrilled Kabumpo, shaking her violently.

  “I remember nothing! I remember nothing! Let me go!” wailed the old witch, howling dismally.

  Mombi’s screams, Pajuka’s threats and Kabumpo’s trumpeting almost drowned out another voice that had risen triumphantly above the confusion. It was Snip. Jumping to his feet and running across the room, the little button boy flung his arms ‘round the old tailor.

  “You never tried it on yourself! You never tried it on yourself!” panted Snip, trembling with impatience. “Here, give it to me!”

  While Kabumpo sniffed and the others watched half heartedly, the little boy wrapped the King’s robe around the tired tailor, popped two sugar lumps into his mouth and shouted hoarsely, “Two