“So you ran away with the show,” said Kinghovn, who had no tact.

“Ramsay tells me they say in Deptford that I ran away with the show,” said Eisengrim, smiling what I would myself have called a Mephistophelian smile, beneath which he looked like any other man whose story has been interrupted by somebody who doesn’t understand the form and art of stories. “I don’t think Deptford would ever comprehend that it was not a matter of choice. But if you have understood what I have said about the way Deptford regarded me, you will realize that I had no choice. I did not run away with the show; the show ran away with me.”

“Because you were so utterly entranced by Willard?” said Ingestree.

“No, I think our friend means something more than that,” said Lind. “These possessions of the soul are very powerful, but there must have been something else. I smell it. The Bible obsession must somehow have supported the obsession with the conjuror. Not even a great revelation wipes out a childhood’s indoctrination; the two must have come together in some way.”

“You are right,” said Eisengrim. “And I begin to see why people call you a great artist. Your education and sophistication haven’t gobbled up your understanding of the realities of life. Let me go on.

“Willard’s show had to be short, because there were ten exhibits in the tent, and a full show was not supposed to run over forty-five minutes. As one of the best attractions he was allowed something like five minutes, and after the trick with the coins he did some splendid things with ribbons, pulling them out of his mouth and throwing them into the bowl, from which he produced them neatly braided. Then he did some very flashy things with cards, causing any card chosen by a member of the audience to pop out of a pack that was stuck in a wineglass as far away from himself as his platform allowed. He finished by eating a spool of thread and a packet of needles, and then producing the thread from his mouth, with all the needles threaded on it at intervals of six inches. During the Oohs and Aahs, he nonchalantly produced the wooden spool from his ear, and threw it into the audience—threw it so that I caught it. I remember being amazed that it wasn’t even wet, which shows how very green I was.

“I didn’t want to see Andro, whose neatly compartmentalized sexuality meant nothing to me. As the crowd moved on to hear the loud-mouthed man bellow about the medical miracle called hermaphroditism—only one in four hundred million births, ladies and gentlemen, only six thoroughly proven hermaphrodites in the whole long history of mankind, and one of them stands before you in Deptford today!—I hung around Willard’s table. He leapt down from it and lighted another cigarette. Even the way he did that was magical, for he flicked the pack toward his mouth, and the cigarette leaped between his lips, waiting for the match he was striking with the thumbnail of his other hand. There I was, near enough to the Wizard to touch him. But it was he who touched me. He reached toward my left ear and produced a quarter from it, and flicked it toward me. I snatched it out of the air, and handed it back to him. ‘No, it’s for you, kid,’ he said. His voice was low and hoarse, and not in keeping with the rest of his elegant presentation, but I didn’t care. A quarter! For me! I had never known such riches in my life. My infrequent stealings had never, before this day, aspired beyond a nickel. The man was not only a Wizard; he was princely.