“Willard lost no time. ‘Get in here,’ he commanded, and pushed me into a place that was entirely dark, and confined. I had to climb upward, boosted by him, until I came to what seemed to be a shelf, or seat, and on this he pushed me. ‘Now you’ll be all right,’ he said, in a voice that carried no confidence at all that I would be all right. It was a desperate voice. ‘Here’s something for you to eat.’ A box was pushed in beside me. Then a door below me was closed, and snapped from the outside, and I was in utter darkness.

“After a while I felt around me. Irregular walls, seeming to be curved everywhere; there was even a small dome over my head. A smell, not clean, but not as disgusting as the privy at the fair. A little fresh air from a point above my head. I fell asleep again.

“When I woke, it was because I heard the whistle of a train, and a train-like thundering nearby. But I was not moving. I was wretchedly hungry, and in the darkness I explored Willard’s box. Something lumpy and sticky inside it, which I tried to eat, and then greedily ate it all. Sleep again. Terrible fatigue all through my body, and the worst pain of all in my bottom. But I could not move very much in any direction, and I had to sit on my misery. At last, a space of time that seemed like a geological age later, I felt movement. Banging and thumping which went on for some time. A sound of voices. The sound of another whistle, and then trundling, lumbering movement, which increased to a good speed. For the first time in my life I was on a train, but of course I didn’t know that.

“And that, my friends, is the first instalment of my subtext to the memoirs of Robert-Houdin, whose childhood, you recall, was such an idyll of family love and care, and whose introduction to magic was so charmingly brought about. Enough, I think, for one evening. Good-night.”

(5)

When I made my way to bed, some time later, I tapped at Eisengrim’s door. As I had expected, he was awake, and lay, looking very fine, against his pillows, wearing a handsome dressing-robe.

“Kind of you to come in and say good-night, Dunny.”

“I expected you’d be waiting up to see what your notices were.”

“A disgusting way of putting it. Well, what were they?”

“About what you’d expect. Kinghovn had a fine sense of the appearance of everything. I’ll bet that as you talked he had that fair all cut up into long shots, close-ups, and atmosphere shots. And of course he’s a devil for detail. For one thing, he wondered why nobody wanted to use the privy while you were left in it for so long.”

“Simple enough. Willard wrote a note which said ‘INFECTION: Closed by Doctor’s Order’, and pinned it to the door.”