LITMIR.BIZ

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back into the basket. Once the grisly thing was hidden from view and the shock of its appearance subsided, there was a tide of applause followed by a substantial rising cheer from the gallery. In the wings Jacko Grady stood watching, thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat and feet planted apart, a cloud of cigar smoke about his head.

      Devil passed in front of the ornate cabinet. He caressed the gilded pinnacles and touched the paste gems with the tip of his finger. He uttered some words in an unintelligible language and flung open the doors.

      Another gasp rose from the auditorium. The good philosopher’s head floated in black space within. It turned from side to side and its ashen lips parted.

      Devil demanded, ‘Tell me the formula now. You are my prisoner for eternity.’

      ‘I curse you to eternity and beyond,’ Carlo’s voice answered.

      Devil threw back his head and laughed. He stretched out one foot and kicked over the basket. It rolled, empty, towards the footlights. He picked up the sword once more and drove the point into the lower part of the cabinet where the living body attached to the head must surely be concealed. He stabbed the emptiness over and over again.

      ‘My secret is mine,’ the head mocked him.

      ‘Die, then.’

      ‘You cannot kill me. I will always be here. In sleep, in waking, in daylight and darkness. Wherever you travel, I will be at your shoulder. I shall be always watching you’.

      His words echoed in the air. Across Devil’s face in rapid succession passed realisation, understanding of what he had done, and then the dawning of a terrible fear. It was a moment to behold, and the audience edged further forwards in their seats.

      Carlo Morris had agreed to throw in his lot with Devil just as deliberately as his partner had chosen him. He had done so because he recognised from the outset that Devil Wix was a useful melodramatic actor. All he needed was proper restraint.

      Jacko Grady pulled on his cigar.

      Out on the stage Devil had closed the doors and taken a step backwards from his magic cabinet. He snapped the blade of the sword. He fell on his knees beside the black basket and dropped into it the fragments of metal and the twisted hilt.

      ‘Forgive me!’ he cried.

      There was a deafening drum roll and every pair of eyes in the house fastened on Devil as he prostrated himself. The lights flashed off and then burned cold blue and silver.

      With his forehead pressed to the boards and dust in his nostrils making him want to sneeze, Devil wordlessly prayed that the sequence would go smoothly. This was the trickiest part of the entire illusion.

      Across the stage to his right the tumbled heap of clothes belonging to the good philosopher stirred and grew as it took on human shape. The gown’s hood fell back, and the audience saw that the noble grey head rested on broad shoulders again. Standing tall, Carlo held up his arms. The sleeves dropped to expose his bare wrists, freed from the rope.

      When Carlo leaned over him Devil shielded his head with his hands, but his rival did not strike him. Instead he picked up the black basket and held it high in the air. More smoke coiled from the interior.

      Carlo tipped the basket. There was no broken sword. Instead, a stream of golden coins cascaded over the evil philosopher’s body.

      ‘Here is your black heart’s desire,’ the good philosopher called. ‘You shall have no happiness from it.’

      The curtain fell as clapping and whistling surged through the Palmyra.

      Devil scrambled to his feet and embraced the sweating Carlo. His blood jigged in the euphoria of a successful performance.

      ‘You did well, my friend.’

      Carlo swung an extended leg. ‘I did better than that. I am a hero. Let me see you fastening on stilts and then climbing a ladder into your costume, all in the space of two seconds.’

      ‘Yes, that was excellent. And I performed the sleights to the same standard.’

      ‘You were adequate.’

      The curtain swept up, they took their bow and it fell again.

      The stagehands ran on to collect the props. Devil and Carlo shook hands, although even this much appreciation was awkward. They hurried offstage together. Jacko Grady picked a shred of tobacco off his thick tongue and cleared his throat.

      ‘Too long,’ he growled. ‘They were restless out there. Make it faster tomorrow.’

      ‘How many seats sold?’ Devil pleasantly enquired.

      ‘One hundred and seven paid for.’

      The capacity of the theatre was two hundred and fifty.

      ‘You should give us more stage time, not less. Word travels fast, Mr Grady. Tomorrow everyone will be talking about Boldoni and Wix.’

      Figures relating to percentages danced between them. They stood on opposite sides of this barrier of numbers until Grady waved Devil and Carlo aside. The Swiss engineer Heinrich Bayer moved out on to the stage with the beautiful Lucie on his arm. The violinist began to play and the couple danced, Lucie’s shining hair curling over her white shoulders and Bayer bending his head as if to breathe in her perfume. Their timing was mechanically perfect, but Lucie’s smile was fixed and sadness drifted from her creator like mist rising from water.

      A voice called from the back of the gallery.

      ‘What else does the lady do?’

      Laughter broke out, interspersed with catcalls and coarse observations. Heinrich gave no sign of having heard them and Lucie continued to smile and rotate her head. The waltz ended and the band began to play a polka. Lucie danced the polka with just the same degree of elegant detachment.

      The show concluded with a sentimental soprano. The audience had thinned out, the rump of it was growing ever more unruly, and when the final curtain came down it was to nobody’s particular regret. In his narrow cubbyhole of an office Jacko Grady took his seat behind a card table with a cash box set on it. Devil and Carlo waited at the midpoint of the queue of performers, having been engrossed in a card game with the comedy tenor and the male half of the acrobat duo. Carlo had won a shilling. The acrobat’s partner looked through her eyelashes at Devil as the press of performers nudged them together.

      Miss Eliza Dunlop was also waiting. Her married sister Faith Shaw and Jasper Button were talking together, in the manner of people who did not know each other very well but who are concerned to be pleasant. At the end of the show Jasper had asked her, ‘Would you care to meet the good and evil philosophers in person, Eliza? You enjoyed their performance, I think.’

      ‘It was very gory,’ Faith shuddered.

      ‘It was the best act in the programme,’ Eliza said in her composed way.

      ‘It was, but that is not to say a very great deal,’ Jasper laughed.

      ‘And I am sure you know perfectly well that your wax head was the best thing about the best act,’ Eliza told him.

      In fact, she had been astonished by the brio of the little playlet. The confident speed of it, and the smoke and flashing lights and drum rolls had been thrilling, and somehow affecting. It had also been macabre and not a little vulgar, of course, but still the illusion – however it had been achieved – was impressive.

      ‘Thank you,’ Jasper said, with evident pleasure.

      Eliza liked Jasper reasonably well.

      Faith’s husband Matthew Shaw was the manager at the Baker Street waxworks gallery, and one afternoon when the sisters had called on him there he had introduced the talented modeller to his wife’s younger sister. A little time later Eliza had been happy enough to accept Jasper’s invitation to accompany him to the opening of the new theatre of varieties, and Mrs Shaw made up the party while Matty stayed at home with their two small boys.

      ‘I

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