The Man Who Was Magic (10 page)

Nevertheless, that sensitive spot at the base of Mopsy’s spine which at times makes a dog’s tail wig-wag frantically with joy and at others causes it to be drawn flat under his stomach as he cowers nervously under the bed knew something.

For at that moment, Malvolio the Mighty was passionately addressing a secret meeting of Magicians in the basement of the Town Hall in a private room next to the Mageian Historical Museum of Magic, which was also located there.

“Do you know what it would mean to you all,” he was saying, “if ever a real magician were to appear? One who could do better tricks with a wave of his hand than we have been able to accomplish in a lifetime of practice and scientific invention?”

There was no reply. They all sat silently staring before them. For the first time someone had given voice to that fleeting, yet nagging thought, passing through the minds of those who had watched the stranger with the dog that talked who claimed he had come from over the Mountains of Straen unscramble an egg and put it back together again.

In addition to Malvolio’s sycophants and cronies such as Mephisto, Zerbo and Abdul Hamid, not to mention Fussmer the Town Clerk, who was playing both sides until he found out which one was likely to win, there were some dozen magicians at the meeting who had been present at the elimination tests either as Judges or guests.

What Malvolio was suggesting seemed ridiculous to the majority who were sensible men and well-disposed, and who were certain that the only magic there had ever been on earth was their kind: tricks of physical skill or mechanical apparatus, carefully prepared in advance to delude or entertain people. And yet—

If one so much as even whispered those two words, “and yet” (and Malvolio had been shouting them practically for the last half hour), the vistas they could open up in the mind in an instant were terrifying. Who would ever want to see theater magic again, if a day dawned when a man might really make a lady or, for that matter, an elephant disappear on the stage before the eyes of everyone, without complicated machinery—mirrors, trap doors, or hordes of assistants?”

The mind leaped to the next step; starvation for themselves and their families at the worst; at the least, their life’s work gone down the drain.

“I tell you The Great Robert is a fool!” Malvolio was now saying. “He takes everything that old dodderer Professor Alexander says for gospel truth. All he’s thinking about is himself and discovering how the egg trick is done, so that he can use it. That’s why he’s entertaining him in his house. He’s not concerned with all of you, as I am, and thinking of the good of Mageia.”

Somehow just the mention of old Professor Alexander’s name had a chastening effect upon a number of those present and helped to drive away the visions that had opened up before them.

“Oh, come on, Malvolio,” interrupted Dante the Dazzling. “You haven’t got an iota of proof. You’re as bad as some of those clods in the audience who, after a good show, are convinced we have supernatural powers and come up and want us to put them in touch with their dead grannies.”

Not one wit abashed, Malvolio flashed back. “What if I could get you proof?” They were silent again.

“Aha,” sneered Malvolio, “that stopped you, didn’t it? And I know what you’re thinking—just like I am.” Here he passed his fingertip across his throat in an unmistakable gesture which horrified a number of them. For one fleeting moment that is what many
had
been thinking before. Of course, they immediately rejected it as impossible and uncivilized. If everyone went about cutting the throats, or otherwise getting rid of people who got in one’s way, or imperiled one’s livelihood, the world would hardly be a fit place in which to live.

“You, Fussmer,” Malvolio snapped, “how did you let that fellow in? I’ve had a look at his application form. You could have disqualified him on half a dozen counts.”

Fussmer suddenly turned first red and then pale. “That’s my business,” he protested. “I prefer not to say.”

“Oh, is that so?” Malvolio threatened. “Well, you’d better, if you know what’s good for you. I haven’t called this meeting for fun. There’s an election coming up next month and if I’ve anything to do with it, you’ll find yourself out of a job.”

There wasn’t much backbone in all Fussmer s fat. “Well,” he quavered, “h-he m-made me. He stole my teeth out of my mouth.”

“How? Where? Who?”

The questions were thundered at him by the entire gathering of Magicians. The Town Clerk, now once more beet red in the face, confessed, “Well, you see, they’re not real.” And then he told the whole story of what had happened at Adam’s interview.

“Let’s have a look at them,” Mephisto said.

“Do I have to?” Fussmer asked, miserably.

“Come on, give!” ordered Malvolio.

Shamefacedly, the fat little Clerk removed his uppers and lowers.

“And you didn’t feel anything?” asked Zerbo.

“Foff a fing.”

“Okay, put ’em back,” Malvolio directed and then, challenging the group, he asked, “Well, can any of you do that?”

“What, steal the false teeth out of a man’s mouth without him knowing it?” said Mephisto. “Are you crazy? That’s magic.”

That word spoken in that way in this group seemed to fall to the floor with an iron clangor, as though someone had dropped a poker.

“Well,” said Malvolio, “what more proof do you want?”

Boldini the Brilliant stood up and said, “Oh, come on, old boy, you’ve only got Fussmer’s word for it and everybody knows he’s the easiest gull in Mageia.”

Fussmer began to protest, but Saladin the Stupendous chimed in, “That’s right, if I wanted an easy mark for a trick, I’d pick Fussmer. The fellow probably gave him a good dose of misdirection and then flimflammed his choppers right out of his head. I think I could do it myself.”

Boldini said, “That’s so. You’ll have to put up something better than that, Malvolio.”

It was now the turn of the squint-eyed, little magician to grow white with anger, as he saw slipping away his scheme to get control of Mageia and oust The Great Robert by sacrificing Adam. It was not enough to have schemers, fools and ready stooges such as Abdul Hamid, Mephisto and Zerbo on his side; he must win over the more sensible and intelligent members of the community as well. He racked his brains and finally snarled venomously, “You think so, do you? Very well then, what about Ninian?”

“Well, what about poor old Ninian?” queried Wang Fu. “He finally got it made. What that’s go to do with it?”

“I say,” interjected Mephisto, “Malvolio’s right. Did you ever know Ninian to do anything successful in his life?”

“I vas vatching heem,” said Hamid. “Ninian couldn’t do zot trick in hundred million years. And I tell you something else; no vun could.”

Now this time the voice of reason fell silent. For everyone in the room experienced in magic knew that this was true. There were only certain things in their craft that could be done, and producing an active goldfish bowl in full view of the audience, without recourse to a cloak or a fêked table, was not one of them.

Malvolio was quick to press his advantage. “There you are,” he said, “exactly what I meant.”

“But only Ninian would know how he did it,” said Frascati the Fantastic, himself a veteran of astonishing manifestations and then added, in a lower voice, “or whether he did it.”

Malvolio pounced on that one too. “Precisely!” he cried. “Ninian is the key. If I can get him here and sweat the truth out of him, will you believe me?”

“I’m afraid we should have to,” announced the magician called Rajah Punjab, gravely, and no one else denied him.

Malvolio tried to keep the flush of triumph from his expression, for he felt that he was closer to success. A ruthless man, he had no hesitation about stepping into the shoes of The Great Robert over the corpse of Adam the Simple and, in fact, this was exactly what he intended to do.

“Very well, then,” he said, “I move we adjourn now. We’ll meet again at noon tomorrow and I’ll send a note to Ninian to attend. Nothing to frighten him—just routine. And when we get him here—well, leave it to me. And we don’t want The Great Robert to know. Mum’s the word until tomorrow.”

But to his henchmen, Zerbo, Mephisto, Hamid and Fussmer—the last now willy-nilly committed to him—he gave different instructions.

And this was how the whispering campaign was started in Mageia. For by now there was hardly anyone in the town who had not heard from those present at the tests of the wonderful and inexplicable trick that the strange conjurer had performed. Already there was a severe shortage of eggs in the market and grocers’, as magicians bought up the supplies, cracking one after another, studying and wrestling with the problem of how it might be done.

As failure after failure attended them, they were all the more receptive to the insidious rumor that somehow was circulating with the speed of lightning: “It wasn’t a trick at all. Malvolio says he must be a real magician. It’s the only explanation. Keep your eyes open and don’t tell anyone,” which, of course, was just as good as saying, “And pass the word along.”

XI

M
OPSY
B
REAKS
U
P A
D
INNER
P
ARTY

I
f Ninian, now seated uneasily at the somewhat stilted dinner party at The Great Robert’s house that evening, had known what had transpired that afternoon in the basement of the Town Hall and the plot that was being hatched against him, he would have been even more nervous and fidgety than he was.

The Great Robert was very much his public self; bluff, jovial, the expansive host. His son Peter had a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary expression on his countenance, and Mrs. Robert was barely polite, because she had taken a dislike to the stranger and, with a woman’s intuition, was even inclined to be a little afraid of him. Besides, she had not been consulted by her husband about having a guest in the house and this always made her cross. And she was anti-dog as well. She was not an unattractive person, except for her eyes being slightly too close together and her mouth somewhat too small for generosity. She took her position as the wife of the Chief Magician very seriously.

And Adam was puzzled and upset because his friend and assistant Jane had not appeared for dinner at all.

“Tired. Too much excitement. She’s very young, you know,” The Great Robert explained. “Wonderful performance of yours this morning, my boy, but a little too much, for her. She’s not used to that sort of thing. Brought on a headache. Her mother thought she had better go to bed early. She’ll be as right as rain in the morning.”

Adam had believed him, for it was quite true that Jane was a sensitive child. But Mopsy had not been taken in one bit and had growled, “I shouldn’t think there was a word of truth in it. There’s something fishy going on here.”

Ninian, of course, was nervous at suddenly finding himself elevated from the lowly and the ignored to the highest society in Mageia. But he was much more frightened that he would be asked to explain his goldfish bowl trick.

If the guests had not had their private thoughts they would have been even more fascinated than indeed they were by The Great Robert’s mechanical inventions at mealtime. Miniature railroad tracks were laid the length of the table, complete with switches and sidings in front of each place. These tracks ran into the kitchen, closed off by two small doors which, however, when service was ready, swung open to admit a train pulled by an electric engine, with the dishes attractively set out upon flatcars. The train stopped in front of each guest, to permit him to help himself, and then went on merrily to the next. There was a little artificial pond in the center of the table with tiny swan boats containing salt, pepper, mustard and catsup and at the push of a button, they came sailing over to where they were wanted. A fountain dispensed red wine, white wine, fruit juices or beer from four different spouts.

After a rousing turkey dinner, the train appeared for the last time with a fabulous load of vari-flavored ice creams, fresh strawberries, tarts, cookies, spiced cakes and bonbons. Then coffee was served out of a silver balloon which descended from the ceiling.

Adam thought of Jane nursing a headache, perhaps in a darkened room upstairs and only hoped that some of these goodies had gone to her on a tray. He blamed himself for having provided her with perhaps more excitement than she could stand. But also he missed her and in a curious way felt that he had been denied an ally.

The Great Robert, in splendid form, discoursed enlighteningly and entertainingly on the subject of magic and magicians of the past, going back to the very beginning of time, taking as his theme his own definition that a conjurer was at all times only a skilled and highly trained actor, playing the part of a magician.

“There were, of course, magicians from the dawn of history,” The Great Robert expounded, “men who became priests and hence powerful because they were cleverer than other men at fooling their fellows. But do you know the first recorded, magical trick, Adam? Do you, Ninian?”

Both shook their heads.