The Illusionists - Rosie Thomas

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vocalist and before this performer could finish his smirking delivery of ‘Kitty and the Old Corner Cupboard’ they were drowning him out by bellowing coarser versions of the chorus. As he struggled to lift his voice over the uproar of singing and guffawing the musicians played louder and faster to help him along. An object flew through the air and landed on the boards close to his feet. It was a ripe peach. The pulp sprayed over the cracked toecaps of his patent leather shoes.

      In the better seats were pairs and trios of young gentlemen, sitting with arms akimbo and legs outstretched. At the supper clubs, during the acts which did not appeal to them, they could be diverted by chops and potatoes and by the young women who served them, or else resort to their own talk and cigars, but here they found themselves captive as if they had bought tickets for the opera.

      Interspersed with these gentlemen and in one or two of the boxes sat a few families and some young fellows who had brought their wives or sweethearts. Two or three of these had already stood up and escorted their womenfolk to the curtained exit.

      Devil dropped his head into his hands. Grady had sent out printed playbills, and he had done that well enough. For their act, all that was promised was:

      Devil approved. Keep them guessing, that was the idea. But Grady had ordered the distribution of his bills in the taverns and markets and such places, and this had brought in the gallery crowd. All this was quite wrong, in Devil’s opinion. The desirable audience was composed of the very people who were now leaving. The Palmyra was an elegant theatre and the show should be an elegant affair, to which a gentleman could bring his wife and daughters, his mother or his sisters.

      Devil had tried to point this out to Grady but the fat man had rudely dismissed him.

      ‘It would be of benefit to us all if your act proves to be as big as your mouth, Wix. Anyways, I thought it was supposed to be the Sphinx. What is this monstrous thing? It looks like a damned duke’s tomb.’

      In constructing their magic cabinet Carlo and Devil had encouraged each other to pile decoration upon decoration, and the piece was ornamented with golden pinnacles and carved finials, paste jewels and panels painted with stars and suns.

      ‘This will be better than anything else you’ve got,’ Devil answered.

      The vocalist came offstage, mopping his face with a handkerchief. Despairingly he hurried away to the dressing rooms. The next act was ready to go on. It was a pair of acrobats, one of them a supple young woman. The lower half of her face was covered by a spangled scarf and as she edged past Devil their eyes briefly met. There were tiny bells stitched to her clothing and these jingled a mocking accompaniment as her brother grasped her hand and they somersaulted out into the lights.

      Devil resumed the contemplation of his own feet. It was warm in the wings and the close air was heavy with sweat and greasepaint. He needed this interval to concentrate and collect his wits. Beside him stood the cabinet and the mirrors, ready to be placed in position when the curtain fell. It was unusual for Devil to feel nervous, whatever lay in store, but there was no other way to explain the damp palms of his hands and the small impediment in his chest that seemed to catch his breathing.

      Tonight was an opportunity, even though the audience was wrong and Grady was a fool.

      The opportunity must not be missed.

      One act followed another. The acrobats were popular, the musicians and singers less so. The curtain came down as the hem of another costume swept across Devil’s line of vision. He glanced up, and then looked higher. Carlo towered over him, Carlo on stilts that were concealed by a long robe and an academic gown stitched with occult symbols. He wore the grey wig Devil had bought for him, the horsehair combed smoothly back from his brow. Under the stage paint his long-chinned face looked authoritative, even noble. The dwarf was pleased with his appearance.

      ‘Ready?’ Devil asked automatically.

      Carlo’s lips twisted to indicate that he was always ready, that Devil would never find him in any other condition. In a moment of fellow feeling Devil even patted the dwarf’s shoulder but all that met his touch was the wicker frame that Carlo wore over his shoulders to increase their breadth beneath the philosopher’s gown.

      A pair of stagehands lifted the cabinet between them and positioned it on the marks. Devil himself carried the precious mirrors and placed them on the angled lines he had so carefully calculated and measured. When they were aligned the cabinet appeared to stand clear of the stage on its four legs, with no other support or place of concealment visible from the body of the theatre.

      The curtain rose once more.

      The stage was empty apart from a soot-black basket and the cabinet itself. Paste jewels glittered under the lights. To begin with there had been some tittering and a couple of louder guffaws, but the effect was sufficiently striking to capture attention. Devil swept onstage into an expectant silence, the first real silence of the evening. As the evil philosopher he was costumed in stark black. The lights dimmed, there was a slow roll of the drum and he threw open the double doors of the cabinet. There was nothing in the velvet-lined interior, so much nothing that the emptiness seemed infinite. Devil slid his hands inside and spread his arms to prove that the audience’s eyes did not deceive them. As he withdrew there was a flash of light, and a puff smoke rose from the cabinet. Devil came forward to the footlights and bowed low.

      ‘Are you finished?’ some wag called down.

      Towards the back of the stalls Devil spotted Jasper Button, seated with a young woman on either side of him. He was glad that after all Jasper had come to see him perform.

      Devil held up one hand. ‘I have not yet begun,’ he said.

      His air of authority was enough to quell the unrest. The audience shifted in their seats. There was another flash of light and smoke drifted across the stage.

      He led Carlo out from the wings at the end of a short length of rope. The captive’s hands were bound at the wrists. He moved at a slow shuffle, his head hanging like a prisoner’s. Devil brought him to centre stage.

      Between them, in the past days, they had worked up some lines of dialogue.

      Devil was pleased with his own literary abilities and he had composed a declamatory paragraph or two to establish the proper degree of evil exhibited by himself. Carlo’s response to the first recitation of this had been to scowl, pinch his own lips between finger and thumb and then jab a forefinger at Devil.

      ‘Keep the jawing short. Tell ’em a bit of a story as fast as you can do it and move on to the action.’

      There had been a day or two of violent disagreement followed by a period of coolness, but Carlo had won. The exchange now established simply that Good and Evil were locked in a struggle for possession of the formula for transforming base metal into gold. This was established mostly by sign language accompanied by plenty of smoke, drum and cymbal.

      ‘I shall never yield my secret,’ said the good philosopher. ‘Never, while breath remains in this body.’

      He raised his grey-wigged head and held it high.

      Behind him, with relish, Devil drew a long blade from beneath his academic gown.

      The audience fell silent.

      ‘Then the breath shall be extinguished,’ Devil cried.

      He swung the blade in a glimmering arc. There was a collective gasp. Following a loud bang, a second’s total darkness and a savage chord from the musicians, the lights flared again. Devil stood alone in a swirl of smoke. The knife dripped with gore and at his feet a huddled outline lay beneath the good philosopher’s robe.

      Devil reached down to the soot-black basket and slid one gloved hand into the interior. With a flourish he pulled out the severed head and brandished it by a hank of the grey hair.

      Jasper had done his work well. The noble philosopher’s features were Carlo’s smeared with blood, the eyes glazed in death. When the executioner

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