Eisengrim looked at him with a not very agreeable smile. “Have you any recollection of being Nobody?” he said.

“Not really. No, I can’t say I have.”

“Have you ever met anyone who was Nobody?”

“I don’t believe so. No, I’m sure I haven’t. But then, if one met Nobody, I don’t suppose Nobody would make much of an impression on one.”

“Obviously not,” said Eisengrim.

It was I who saw the film-makers to their car and watched them begin the descent from Sorgenfrei to the village where their inn was. Then I went back to the house as fast as my artificial leg would carry me and caught Eisengrim as he was getting into bed.

“About the Devil,” I said, “I’ve been thinking more about what we said.”

“Have you pinned him down, then?”

“Nothing like it. I am simply trying to get a better hold on his attributes. The attributes of God have been very carefully explored. But the Devil’s attributes have been left vague. I think I’ve found one of them. It is he who puts the prices on things.”

“Doesn’t God put a price on things?”

“No. One of his attributes is magnanimity. But the Devil is a setter of prices, and a usurer, as well. You buy from him at an agreed price, but the payments are all on time, and the interest is charged on the whole of the principal, right up to the last payment, however much of the principal you think you have paid off in the meantime. Do you suppose the Devil invented numbers? I shouldn’t be surprised if the Devil didn’t invent Time, with all the subtle terrors that Time comprises. I think you said you spent seven years in hell?”

“I may have underestimated my sentence.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“You’re developing into a theologian, Dunny.”

“A diabologian, rather. It’s a fairly clear field, these days.”

“Do you think you can study evil without living it? How are you going to discover the attributes of the Devil without getting close to him? Are you the man for that? Don’t bother your old grey head, Dunny.”

That was Magnus all over. He simply had to be the damnedest man around. What an egotist!

(7)

We were eating sandwiches and drinking beer at a lunch-break the following day. Magnus was not with us, because he had gone off to make some repairs and alterations in his make-up, about which he was extremely particular. Robert-Houdin had been a handsome man, in a French style, with strong features, a large, mobile mouth, and particularly fine eyes: Magnus would make no concession to a likeness, and insisted on playing the role of the great illusionist as his handsome self, and he darted away to touch up his face whenever he could. As soon as he was out of the way, Kinghovn turned the conversation to what we had heard the night before.

“Our friend puzzles me,” he said. “You remember that he said the image of Abdullah was the ugliest thing he had ever seen? Then he described it, and it sounded like the sort of trash one would expect in such a poor little travelling show, and just what would seem marvellous to a small boy. How much is he colouring his story with opinions he formed later?”