England -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction; Wishes -- Juvenile fiction
“It’s in Piccadilly,” said old Nurse, carefully counting out the proper
number of shillings into Cyril’s hand, “not so very far down on the
left from the Circus. There’s big pillars outside, something like
Carter’s seed place in Holborn, as used to be Day and Martin’s blacking
when I was a gell. And something like Euston Station, only not so big.”
“Yes, I know,” said everybody.
So they started.
But though they walked along the left-hand side of Piccadilly they saw
no pillared building that was at all like Carter’s seed warehouse or
Euston Station or England’s Home of Mystery as they remembered it.
At last they stopped a hurried lady, and asked her the way to Maskelyne
and Cooke’s.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said, pushing past them. “I always shop
at the Stores.” Which just shows, as Jane said, how ignorant grown-up
people are.
It was a policeman who at last explained to them that England’s
Mysteries are now appropriately enough enacted at St George’s Hall. So
they tramped to Langham Place, and missed the first two items in the
programme. But they were in time for the most wonderful magic
appearances and disappearances, which they could hardly believe—even
with all their knowledge of a larger magic—was not really magic after
all.
“If only the Babylonians could have seen _this_ conjuring,” whispered
Cyril. “It takes the shine out of their old conjurer, doesn’t it?”
“Hush!” said Anthea and several other members of the audience.
Now there was a vacant seat next to Robert. And it was when all eyes
were fixed on the stage where Mr Devant was pouring out glasses of all
sorts of different things to drink, out of one kettle with one spout,
and the audience were delightedly tasting them, that Robert felt
someone in that vacant seat. He did not feel someone sit down in it. It
was just that one moment there was no one sitting there, and the next
moment, suddenly, there was someone.
Robert turned. The someone who had suddenly filled that empty place was
Rekh-marā, the Priest of Amen!
Though the eyes of the audience were fixed on Mr David Devant, Mr David
Devant’s eyes were fixed on the audience. And it happened that his eyes
were more particularly fixed on that empty chair. So that he saw quite
plainly the sudden appearance, from nowhere, of the Egyptian Priest.
“A jolly good trick,” he said to himself, “and worked under my own
eyes, in my own hall. I’ll find out how that’s done.” He had never seen
a trick that he could not do himself if he tried.
By this time a good many eyes in the audience had turned on the
clean-shaven, curiously-dressed figure of the Egyptian Priest.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr Devant, rising to the occasion, “this
is a trick I have never before performed. The empty seat, third from
the end, second row, gallery—you will now find occupied by an Ancient
Egyptian, warranted genuine.”
He little knew how true his words were.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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