The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

It did.

Jimmy and Kathleen had the start of the others, and when they got to the fair they mingled with the crowd, and were as unsuspected as possible.

They stood near a large lady who was watching the Coconut shies, and presently saw a strange figure with its hands in its pockets strolling across the trampled yellowy grass among the bits of drifting paper and the sticks and straws that always litter the ground of an English fair. It was Gerald, but at first they hardly knew him. He had taken off his tie, and round his head, arranged like a turban, was the crimson school-scarf that had supported his white flannels. The tie, one supposed, had taken on the duties of the handkerchief. And his face and hands were a bright black, like very nicely polished stoves!

Everyone turned to look at him.

“He’s just like a conjurer!” whispered Jimmy. “I don’t suppose it’ll ever come off, do you?”

They followed him at a distance, and when he went close to the door of a small tent, against whose doorpost a long-faced melancholy woman was lounging, they stopped and tried to look as though they belonged to a farmer who strove to send up a number by banging with a big mallet on a wooden block.

Gerald went up to the woman.

“Taken much?” he asked, and was told, but not harshly, to go away with his impudence.

“I’m in business myself,” said Gerald, “I’m a conjurer, from India.”

“Not you!” said the woman; “you ain’t no conjurer. Why, the backs of yer ears is all white.”

“Are they?” said Gerald. “How clever of you to see that!” He rubbed them with his hands. “That better?”

“That’s all right. What’s your little game?”

“Conjuring, really and truly,” said Gerald. “There’s smaller boys than me put on to it in India. Look here, I owe you one for telling me about my ears. If you like to run the show for me I’ll go shares. Let me have your tent to perform in, and you do the patter at the door.”

“Lor love you! I can’t do no patter. And you’re getting at me. Let’s see you do a bit of conjuring, since you’re so clever an all.”

“Right you are,” said Gerald firmly. “You see this apple? Well, I’ll make it move slowly through the air, and then when I say ‘Go!’ it’ll vanish.”

“Yes⁠—into your mouth! Get away with your nonsense.”

“You’re too clever to be so unbelieving,” said Gerald. “Look here!”

He held out one of the little apples, and the woman saw it move slowly and unsupported along the air.

“Now go!” cried Gerald, to the apple, and it went. “How’s that?” he asked, in tones of triumph.

The woman was glowing with excitement, and her eyes shone. “The best I ever see!” she whispered. “I’m on, mate, if you know any more tricks like that.”

“Heaps,” said Gerald confidently; “hold out your hand.” The woman held it out; and from nowhere, as it seemed, the apple appeared and was laid on her hand. The apple was rather damp.

She looked at it a moment, and then whispered:

“Come on! there’s to be no one in it but just us two. But not in the tent. You take a pitch here, ’longside the tent. It’s worth twice the money in the open air.”

“But people won’t pay if they can see it all for nothing.”

“Not for the first turn, but they will after⁠—you see. And you’ll have to do the patter.”

“Will you lend me your shawl?” Gerald asked. She unpinned it⁠—it was a red and black plaid⁠—and he spread it on the ground as he had seen Indian conjurers do, and seated himself cross-legged behind it.

“I mustn’t have anyone behind me, that’s all,” he said; and the woman hastily screened off a little enclosure for him by hanging old sacks to two of the guy-ropes of the tent. “Now I’m ready,” he said. The woman got a drum from the inside of the tent and beat it. Quite soon a little crowd had collected.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Gerald, “I come from India, and I can do a conjuring entertainment the like of which you’ve never seen. When I see two shillings on the shawl I’ll begin.”

“I dare say you will!” said a bystander; and there were several short, disagreeable laughs.

“Of course,” said Gerald, “if you can’t afford two shillings between you”⁠—there were about thirty people in the crowd by now⁠—“I say no more.”

Two or three pennies fell on the shawl, then a few more then the fall of copper ceased.

“Ninepence,” said Gerald. “Well, I’ve got a generous nature. You’ll get such a ninepennyworth as you’ve never had before. I don’t wish to deceive you⁠—I have an accomplice, but my accomplice is invisible.”

The crowd snorted.

“By the aid of that accomplice,” Gerald went on, “I will read any letter that any of you may have in your pocket. If one of you will just step over the rope and stand beside me, my invisible accomplice will read that letter over his shoulder.”

A man stepped forward, a ruddy-faced, horsy-looking person. He pulled a letter from his pocket and stood plain in the sight of all, in a place where everyone saw that no one could see over his shoulder.

“Now!” said Gerald. There was a moment’s pause. Then from quite the other side of the enclosure came a faint, faraway, singsong voice. It said:

Sir⁠—

Yours of the fifteenth duly to hand. With regard to the mortgage on your land, we regret our inability⁠—

“Stow it!” cried the man, turning threateningly on Gerald.

He stepped out of the enclosure explaining that there was nothing of that sort in his letter; but nobody believed him, and a buzz of interested chatter began in the crowd, ceasing abruptly when Gerald began to speak.

“Now,” said he, laying the nine pennies down on the shawl, “you keep your eyes on those pennies, and one by one you’ll see them disappear.”

And of course they did. Then one by one they were laid down again by the invisible hand of