Because the parlor door opened, and, preceded by the beaming, sneezing, hand-wiping form of Herr Arturo Snivelwurst, hair pomaded Napoleonically and drippy little nose bright cherry-red, came the dark, glowering figure of my late employer, Count Karlstein. And he looked up at me, standing close enough for me to spit in his eye if I’d cared to, and—bowed! There was a nasty air of ironical triumph about him, as distinctive as the odor of cloves about someone with the toothache. The company fell silent; those who knew him because they did, and those who didn’t because something about him told them they ought to.

“Good evening,” he said in his rasping voice, that metallic tone that appeared when he was trying to be genial. “I have heard of the wonders of this Doctor Cadaverezzi and I have come to patronize his performance.”

Snivelwurst was motioning to some of the audience to move aside, and within a minute or two Count Karlstein, with his sniffling, snuffling, sneezing secretary beside him, was seated and provided with wine.

Then Doctor Cadaverezzi, who must have been watching the whole thing from behind the curtain, began his performance.

First of all, a gong was struck—a mighty, Chinese sound, somehow accompanied by invisible dragons and the fumes of opium. Then the curtains were whisked aside, and there beside the Cabinet, lit by some garish and sinister light, was the doctor himself—bowing suavely and fixing his glittering eyes on, seemingly, everyone at once. There was a burst of applause that he’d done nothing to deserve except stand there and look impressive; but some people are like that—you’d sooner watch them clean their boots than anyone else walk a tightrope across a cage of hungry tigers. Magnetism—that’s what it is.

He held up his hand, and the applause halted.

“My friends: you have no doubt seen many traveling players—fortune-tellers, threadbare actors pretending to be Harlequin or Julius Caesar or Hamlet—of course you have. Please do not confuse me with people of that sort. I have spent a lifetime in the lonely pursuit of knowledge; I have been privileged to serve many monarchs. I was physician to the Great Mogul in India, I was Privy Councillor to the noble Alfonso, King of Brazil. I have risked my life in exploring distant regions of the earth, where no traveler’s foot had been set before. And the fruits of all my researches, the treasures I have spent my life assembling, are here in this mystic Cabinet!”