“Ha, ha! My watch! You don’t think I fell for that, do you?” cried Count Karlstein. He took the handkerchief and held it high, showing it to everyone. “Let’s have a look, then,” he said, and opened it up. His expression changed as he pulled out a string of cogs, springs, bits of broken glass and bent silver, and a long watch chain. “What’s this?” he demanded.

“Your watch, as I explained,” said Doctor Cadaverezzi. “I said I was going to smash it, and these ladies and gentlemen will bear witness to the fact that you told me to go ahead and do it.”

Murmurs of agreement and nods came from the audience, who didn’t like the count.

“But—but—”

“So that is just what I have done.” Doctor Cadaverezzi shrugged, with all the melancholy politeness in the world; but a sparkle in his eyes told me, and the rest of the audience, that he’d won this little contest.

And the best was yet to come. As Count Karlstein sat down angrily and turned to Snivelwurst, the doctor produced an identical red handkerchief from somewhere else and took out of it…Count Karlstein’s watch! He looked at it with droll pride, slipped it into his breast pocket, and patted it with satisfaction. This little mime took only a second, but the audience saw it and roared with approving laughter—which only annoyed Count Karlstein the more, as he didn’t know what they were laughing at.

And so Doctor Cadaverezzi moved on, having captured his audience completely. They all knew, now, that he was a trickster—that if you turned your back on him, he’d pick your pocket; but it didn’t seem to matter, as they were all in a high good humor. And he did it so well, with such a delight in his own tricks, that you couldn’t help but enjoy it. So now we saw what all the strange knobs and handles and levers on the Cabinet were for: this one, for instance, worked a device called the Chromoeidophusikon, and Hans Pfafferl was shoved up out of the front row by his pals and made to press his face close to the eyepiece while Doctor Cadaverezzi turned a handle and a little windmill on top of the Cabinet revolved, and loud bangs and whizzing sounds and whistles came from inside. Hans was seeing, the doctor assured us, a clockwork representation of the Battle of Bodelheim, with musical, optical, and ballistical effects—and when Hans staggered away from the Cabinet, his face was printed a medley of colors that made him look like a savage from one of the heathen lands Doctor Cadaverezzi claimed to have visited. He didn’t understand the laughter at all.

Finally, there came the climax of the show.