“The first thing I would tell you would be that my earliest instructor was the man you see in that chair yonder: Dunstan Ramsay. God knows he was the worst conjuror the world has ever seen, but he introduced me to conjuring, and by a coincidence his textbook was The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, by the man we are all talking about and, if you are right in what you say, Mr Ingestree, serving! Robert-Houdin.”

This caused some sensation, as Eisengrim knew it would. Ingestree, having forced the oyster to yield a little, pressed the knife in.

“Wonderful! We would never have taken Ramsay for a conjuror. But there must have been somebody else. If Ramsay was your first master, who was your second?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to tell you,” said Eisengrim. “I’ll have to think about it very carefully. Your idea of a subtext—the term and the idea are both new to me—is interesting. I’ll tell you this much. I began to learn conjuring seriously on 30 August 1918. That was the day I descended into hell, and did not rise again for seven years. I’ll consider whether I’m going to go farther than that. Now I’m going to bed.”

(3)

Liesl had said little during the quarrel—or rivalry of egotisms, or whatever you choose to call it—but she caught me the following morning before the film crew arrived, and seemed to be in high spirits.

“So Magnus has come to the confessional moment in his life,” she said. “It’s been impending for several months. Didn’t you notice? You didn’t! Oh, Ramsay, you are such a dunce about some things. If Magnus were the kind of man who could write an autobiography, this is when he would do it.”

“Magnus has an autobiography already. I should know. I wrote it.

“A lovely book. Phantasmata: the Life and Adventures of Magnus Eisengrim. But that was for sale at his performance; a kind of super-publicity. A splendid Gothic invention from your splendid Gothic imagination.”

“That’s not the way he regards it. When people ask he tells them that it is a poetic autobiography, far more true to the man he has become than any merely factual account of his experience could be.”

“I know. I told him to say that. You don’t suppose he thought it out himself, do you? You know him. He’s marvellously intelligent in his own way—sensitive, aware, and intuitive—but it’s not a literary or learned intelligence. Magnus is a truly original creature. They are of the greatest rarity. And as I say, he’s reached the confessional time of life. I expect we shall hear some strange things.”

“Not as strange as I could tell about him.”

“I know, I know. You are obsessed with the idea that his mother was a saint. Ramsay, in all your rummaging among the lives of the saints, did you ever encounter one who had a child? What was that child like? Perhaps we shall hear.”

“I’m a little miffed that he considers telling these strangers things he’s never told to you and me.”