“It was a hot day, and hotter still inside Abdullah. Also, Abdullah had a heavy smell, because of all the papier mâché and glue and size with which he was made. During my thirty-six hours or so of imprisonment I had been compelled to urinate, in spite of my awful thirst, and this had done nothing to freshen the atmosphere of that close confinement. Moreover, although I did not know it then, I learned later that the former operator of Abdullah had been a dwarf who cannot have been fastidious about his person, and there was a strong whiff of hot dwarf as I grew hotter myself. I suppose I became rather feverish, but although I would not describe my emotion as happiness I was possessed by an intensity of interest and ambition that was better than anything I had ever known in my life. When you were teaching me magic, Ramsay, I felt something like it, but not to the same degree, because—please don’t be hurt—you were so tooth-achingly rotten at all your simple tricks. But this was the real thing. I didn’t know quite what this reality was, but it was wonderful, and I was an important part of it.

“Charlie, who was as good-hearted as he was soft-headed, did all he could to make a game of it. He played the part of the Rube, and he did his best to include every kind of Rube he could think of. He was a terrible ham, but he was funny. He approached Abdullah as Uncle Zeke, the euchre champion of Pumpkin Centre, and as Swifty Dealer, the village tinhorn sport, and as Aunt Samantha, who didn’t believe she could be bested by any Chinaman that ever lived, and as a whole gallery of such caricatures. I had to beg him not to be so funny, because I couldn’t concentrate on my work when I was laughing so much. But Willard never laughed. He was the taskmaster, demanding the greatest skill I could achieve in the management of the mechanism. Charlie was a hearty praiser; he would gladly tell me that I was a wonderful kid and a gift to the carnival business and the possessor of a golden future. But Willard never praised a good piece of management; he was sharp about mistakes, and demanded more and more refinement of success. I didn’t care. I felt that inside Abdullah I had entered into my kingdom.

“Come five o’clock Willard and Charlie thought we were ready to show our work to Gus. I had never been associated with any kind of show folk, and I thought it quite wonderful the way Gus climbed into the freight-car and behaved as if she had never seen any of us before; Willard and Charlie too behaved as if it were a real show and Gus a stranger. Willard gave a speech that I had not heard before, about the wonders of Abdullah, and the countless hours and boundless ingenuity that had gone into his construction; during all of it I kept as still as a mouse, and fully convinced myself that Gus did not know I was anywhere near; perhaps she thought I had run away. Then Gus, at the right time, came forward reluctantly and suspiciously, like a real Rube and not one of Charlie’s comic turns, and cut the deck and chose a card: either Gus knew some sleight-of-hand herself or Willard had prepared a sharp test for me, because it was the Ace of Spades; there was no card to top it. And then I had one of those flashes which, I think I may say without boasting, have lifted my work above that of even a very good illusionist. At the bottom of the tray that held the court-cards in spades, there was a Joker, and that was what I caused Abdullah to put down on the tray to top Gus’s Ace. Of course it would not do so, but it showed that I was able to meet an unexpected situation, and Charlie gave a whoop that would have drawn a crowd if there had been anybody hanging around the railway siding on a late Sunday afternoon.