The Man Who Was Magic (7 page)

“Begin!” commanded The Great Robert.

A hush settled on the room and none of the other candidates, successful as well as unsuccessful, around the sides stirred. They wished him well and were all holding their breath, because of the sense of impending disaster.

Ninian threw an agonized look in the direction of the Chief Magician and quavered, “I h-have here, as everyone can s-see, a live c-canary in a real c-c-c-cage. When I say ‘Presto! Change-o!’ c-c-cage and c-c-c-canary will v-v-vanish into the th-thin air.”

Adam heard Malvolio whisper, “That’s what he thinks. Odds on it doesn’t,” and Dante said, “Shut up, Malvolio!”

Now the big moment had arrived.

“Presto! Change-o!” intoned Ninian and gave a tremendous twitch, not only to his left wrist but his arm, shoulder and his whole left side as well. But, alas, there was no ‘Change-o’.

Cage and Albert within, now in a perfect frenzy of flutterings, scoldings and complainings, remained exactly where and how it was between Ninian’s hands. Something had got stuck.

The magician struggled. He jerked his left arm again. He heaved and pulled and tugged. Nothing happened.

“Change-o! Change-o! Change-o!” cried the unfortunate man. “Oh, please Change-o, just this once!”

Jane was gripping Adam’s arm. “Poor Ninian,” she cried. “Adam
do
something.”

“What he needs,” Adam said, “is an assistant. Mopsy, go out there and create a disturbance.”

“Oh boy! Goody!” cried Mopsy. “Won’t I just. Watch me, everybody!” And with that he ran to the center of the floor, not far from the struggling magician, began to chase his tail and naturally, drew all eyes upon himself.

For since it was already difficult enough when the animal was in repose to tell which was front and which was rear, when he went spinning into a circle, the result was colossal as well as mystifying. The general effect was as though a feather duster had suddenly become endowed with life and gone mad.

As he spun Mopsy was shouting happily:

“One for the money, two for the show,

Around and around and around we go!”

The Great Robert now arose, an annoyed expression upon his large features. He cried, “Here, here, what’s all this? To whom does that nasty thing belong? And what is it, anyway?”

Adam arose and said, “Begging your pardon, Your Worship, he’s mine. He’s my talking dog, Mopsy.”

“Well, get him out of there, then,” Robert commanded. “He oughtn’t be in here in the first place.”

“I’m sorry, Your Worship,” and then he ordered, “Mopsy, you naughty dog, come here at once!”

Mopsy, of course, did nothing of the kind, since this was a part of the game. He merely reversed his direction and went spinning the other way, singing:

“One, two, three; one, two, three,

No one can tell the end of me!”

“Then I shall have to come and fetch you,” said Adam, who strode to the center of the room, and picked up Mopsy. But to do so, he passed in front of Ninian, blocking him thus for an instant from the view of the Judges.

“Now!” he whispered to the frightened and miserable magician. “Try not to look too surprised.” Then with Mopsy wriggling in his arms and screaming with laughter, he returned and sat down next to Jane, who was staring unbelieving, her mouth wide open and her eyes as big as teacups at what had happened.

“Try not to look too surprised!”
That was a good one! For Ninian’s own eyes bulged as though they were about to drop out of his head. There, between his hands, was no longer the flimsy bird cage with the hysterical Albert, but a large, solid, glass bowl of water with fish swimming about inside it.

But neither the bowl nor the contents were ordinary. Of the latter, one was a gold fish, the second was a silver fish and the third was a blue fish, the national colors of Mageia that appeared in all the flags and bunting that decorated the city. Around the rim of the bowl were alternating lights in those colors and blue, silver and gold streamers hung down from the edge.

All in all it was one of the prettiest tricks of transformation ever seen in Mageia and the other magicians sitting around the room burst into spontaneous applause, while many of the Judges clapped as well and murmured, “Bravo!”

Ninian’s hands were trembling so that for the moment it was feared he might drop both bowl, water, fish and all. But at last he mastered himself and managed to look as though that was what he had intended to do all along.

Jane hugged Adam’s arm and whispered, “Oh, that was wonderful! However did you do it? I didn’t see you give it to him.”

“Hush!” said Adam. “Maybe it was Mopsy.”

“Nothing to it,” said the dog, happily, waving his tail.

“Well, well,” said The Great Robert. “I must say! Let’s have that over here.”

Still trying desperately to conceal his own astonishment, Ninian marched over and set the bowl with a good solid thump upon the table in front of the Chief of the Magicians. The Judges now leaned forward or half stood up, or craned to get a better look at it, while Robert tapped its sides with a pencil, so that they rang, and even dipped a finger into the water, agitating the gold, silver and blue fish into faster circles. There was no question, the bowl was glass, the water was water and the fish were fish, the lights genuine and the colored streamers of the purest silk.

The Great Robert was a master at feeling the public pulse and trimming his sails to the wind, which was why he was a successful politician. Now, putting on his benign air he said, “Ninian, you’ve done it this time. If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it.”

“Well, I didn’t see it,” protested Malvolio. “That long-legged fellow going after that thing he calls a dog, got in the way.”

“Zot’s right,” put in Abdul Hamid, the Egyptian in the fez; he had an oily voice, oily manner and oily face. “I theenk he hand it to him.”

The magician called Zerbo the Matchless, who Jane had said was a tease and who looked it, with his eyes set too close together and a self-satisfied air, put in, “Ninian couldn’t do a trick like that by himself in a million years.”

“Hmm,” said The Great Robert and cleared his throat. Now the wind was suddenly blowing from the other direction and he was a little afraid of Malvolio. Then he asked, “Professor Alexander, what is your opinion?”

Old Professor Alexander, the Dean of all the Magicians, shook his white head. “I think that Malvolio, Hamid and Zerbo are talking through their hats,” he said firmly. “Even if the fellow with the dog was a confederate, which is permissible anyway, he didn’t have anything in his hands; he wasn’t wearing a cloak, which is the only way you can conceal a goldfish bowl about your person, and he never came close enough to Ninian to have passed it to him if he had it. It was done in some other way and I vote it one of the most brilliant tricks we’ve seen and congratulate Ninian. I move he be accepted.”

Everything Professor Alexander said carried great weight and there was an instant murmur of approval that ran round the room and through the ranks of the Judges as well, with the exception of Malvolio who growled, “Well, I’d like to see him do it again.” But now no one paid any attention to him.

The Great Robert altered course rapidly once more and pronounced, “I agree with Professor Alexander. Exactly my view. Moved and passed, and my heartiest congratulations.” He now intoned unctuously, “Fussmer, mark Ninian eligible for the finals.”

And as Ninian, blushing raspberry red, returned to his seat next to Adam, the Council Chamber was still filled with the great rustle and murmuring from the rest of the Judges and the other Magicians. They were beginning to wonder and break their heads over the problem of how it was that a live canary, even one in a trick cage they knew about, had been turned into a solid bowl of fish, in front of their eyes.

Or at least so it had appeared, since they had forgotten that at the moment of the transformation they had been watching a small, hairy dog chasing his tail, or a tail chasing a small, hairy dog. Yet, the fact remained that up to that time the only way of producing a gold fish bowl, even one of the simplest kind, was either out from beneath voluminous, oriental robes or from the depths of a trick table, and Ninian had had neither. It certainly seemed that there
was
something new under the sun.

As the Clerk called the name of the next candidate who took the floor to begin his routine, Ninian leaned down to Adam and whispered, “It was you. You did it, didn’t you?”

“Shsh!” hushed Adam. “Be quiet! What does it matter?”

“What did you think of my act?” asked Mopsy. “Great, wasn’t it?”

Ninian said: “I knew it. It was you, Mr. Adam. It couldn’t have been me. I’ll never forget you as long as I live.” Then suddenly he started. “Oh! Albert! What’s become of him?” and he began to feel frantically inside his sleeves.

Adam laid a hand upon his arm. “I shouldn’t worry,” he said. “I expect you’ll find him back in his cage, wherever you left it, having his poppy seed treat.”

“And give him my regards,” said Mopsy. “He got off easy this time.”

Jane tugged at Adam. “Please tell me how you did it,” she whispered, “Please, please, please! I know you couldn’t have handed it to him, because you didn’t have it.”

“Magic,” replied Adam. “How else?”

Tears of sudden anger and frustration came into Jane’s eyes as she cried, “Oh, I think you’re horrid not to tell me! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

People nearby were beginning to turn around and look because of this outburst, when over all sounded the piping voice of Fussmer, “Next candidate! Adam—Adam the Simple. Step lively now, please don’t keep the Judges waiting.”

“That’s us,” said Adam, arising. “Come along Jane and Mopsy.”

VIII

P
LAIN AND
S
IMPLE
M
AGIC

“A
dam the Simple,” Fussmer repeated and then with more than just a touch of malice in his voice read off from his sheet, “Honest Magic,” which caused Malvolio to remark, “Honest magic, indeed! Is he trying to say that our magic isn’t honest?”

The Great Robert was so startled at seeing his daughter, clad in her assistant’s costume, accompanying the stranger in the outlandish garb that his eyeglasses fell off the end of his nose, but fortunately were caught by the black ribbon to which they were attached. “Jane!” he shouted, “What on earth are you up to? What do you mean by coming here?”

Jane stood there trembling and silent.

It was Adam who replied. “I hope you will forgive her, Your Worship. It was my fault. When I came to Mageia I didn’t realize I must have an assistant, until I was told. I happened to encounter your delightful daughter and asked whether she would help me.”

“She help anyone? Ha-ha, that’s a good one!” Peter said.

The Great Robert, ever mindful of his public image and not immune to flattery either, said, “Ahem—delightful daughter, you say? Quite so. But she was supposed to be locked up in the house for a-ah-ahem—a slight error, Ha, ha, discipline, you know.”

“She said she was sorry, Your Worship.”

“That’s right,” put in Mopsy. “I heard her say it.”

“There you are,” added Adam, “Mopsy my talking dog, heard it too and he’s a witness.”

Now all the Council Members half rose from their chairs to peer over the table and Zerbo remarked, “You mean that thing there, under all that hair, is a dog?”

“Please, Adam,” Mopsy begged, “may I be allowed to have a go at that one?”

“No!” Adam replied firmly.

“He heard Jane say she was sorry?” Robert queried, pointing at Mopsy.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Have him say it again,” Robert ordered.

Mopsy said, “Haven’t they got ears?”

“Apparently not like ours,” Adam replied.

“What was all that?” demanded Robert.

“You asked him to repeat it and he did,” replied Adam. “He said he heard Jane say she was very, very sorry she had scratched Peter and wouldn’t do it again.”

“All right then, just this once,” said her father, magnanimously, “I revoke the punishment.”

His son Peter whispered something to him and he bent down to catch it. Then arising, he declared, “But I’m afraid she can’t serve as your assistant. You see, she’s under age. It’s in the rules.”

“Couldn’t you make an exception, Your Worship,” Adam pleaded, “as a matter of hospitality to a stranger? I’ve come from a long way off, over the Mountains of Straen, to take part in your trials.”

There was another murmur of astonishment at this, since everyone knew that no one had ever come from there. Malvolio was heard to mutter audibly, “Fussmer, you old fathead! Don’t tell me you fell for that one?”

But Jane begged, “Daddy, please, mayn’t I just this once? He hasn’t anyone to help him.”

Professor Alexander leaned towards the Chief Magician and whispered, “If he’s satisfied with the child, where would the harm be? At least, until we see what he can do.” There was a murmur of approval from several of the other members of the Council.

Once more The Great Robert caught the drift and saw what was necessary for the maintenance of his authority. Besides, Malvolio was beginning to irritate him, and the Chief Magician felt that he had the majority of the Board on his side. Therefore he announced grandly, “A stranger at our gates has begged for our hospitality. Let no one say that we in Mageia are lacking in proper manners and generosity in such matters. Hence, in the name of our fair city and the company here assembled, I will make an exception to the rule and permit my dear daughter, Jane, to assist him this once.”