“Hush, child! You are treading on the edge of Mysteries.” He walked around me, scrutinizing me closely. “Yes,” he said finally. “You will make a perfect assistant.”

Then I nearly did drop the Skull.

“What?” I gasped. “An assistant? What do you mean, sir?”

“You are running away, are you not?”

“Well—yes—but how do you know?”

“Easy to tell. What you need is somewhere to hide, and what I need is an assistant, since my servant has vanished. What is your name?”

“It’s Lucy—but may I hide here? Will you not give me away? I am in great danger, and my sister—”

“Give you away? A scandalous idea! As sure as my name is Dante Cadaverezzi, I shall not betray a fellow fugitive. The Skull, if you please.” He replaced Apollonius in the Cabinet, and began to arrange various mysterious articles on the stage nearby.

“Are you running away as well, Mr. Cadaverezzi?” I said, feeling more at ease. He was a daunting figure, but I felt oddly safe with him.

“Doctor Cadaverezzi, if you please. Yes, I am a mountebank, a vagabond,” he said. “An honorable calling, but an unstable one. Now, what did you say your name was? Lucy? No, that’s no good. You’ll have to be a princess….From India? Peru? No—I have it. Egypt, of course! And you shall prophesy—you shall tell fortunes!”

“Shall I? What do you mean?”

“For an extra fee they can have their fortunes told by the Magnetized Princess. Have you ever been Magnetized?”

“No, never—”

“Very easy. You close your eyes, I make the mystic passes, and then you open your eyes and look Magnetic. Very easy. Like this!”

I stood as he showed me, and he pretended to Magnetize me. He was right—it was quite simple.

“Now, if you are a princess, you must have a crown and some kind of robe. There! This will do—” He draped a tablecloth around me. “And for the crown—the very coronet of Charlemagne,” he said, producing an ancient crown of gold and setting it gently on my head.

“Isn’t it very precious?” I said. “I don’t want to break it or anything—”

“Extremely precious. But I can easily make another. Yes, you’re much better than my servant Max—a very good-hearted fellow, but a booby. If I Magnetized him, he’d fall over and drop the Skull and overturn the Cabinet and put his foot right through the crystal ball, and I don’t know what besides. Now let me show you how the Flying Devil works. There is a spring, here, which you must release when I give the signal….”