“The man was certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his science went he was NO impostor,” said MacAndrew, “and I'm prepared to give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson, so soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I've no faith in all this publicity for experimental trials.” And to that end, while all the world was reading of the certain failure of the new flying machine, MacAndrew was soaring and curvetting with great amplitude and dignity over the Epsom and Wimbledon divisions; and Banghurst, restored once more to hope and energy, and regardless of public security and the Board of Trade, was pursuing his gyrations and trying to attract his attention, on a motor car and in his pyjamas--he had caught sight of the ascent when pulling up the blind of his bedroom window--equipped, among other things, with a film camera that was subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmer was lying on the billiard table in the green pavilion with a sheet about his body. 2. THE MAGIC SHOP I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick, packs of cards that LOOKED all right, and all that sort of thing, but never had I thought of going in until one day, almost without warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. I had not thought the place was there, to tell the truth--a modest-sized frontage in Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about just out of patent incubators, but there it was sure enough. I had fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or round the corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible it had been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of Gip's pointing finger made a noise upon the glass. “If I was rich,” said Gip, dabbing a finger at the Disappearing Egg, “I'd buy myself that. And that”--which was The Crying Baby, Very Human--“and that,” which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card asserted, “Buy One and Astonish Your Friends.” “Anything,” said Gip, “will disappear under one of those cones. I have read about it in a book. “And there, dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny--, only they've put it this way up so's we can't see how it's done.” Gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to enter the shop or worry in any way; only, you know, quite unconsciously he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear. “That,” he said, and pointed to the Magic Bottle. “If you had that?” I said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with a sudden radiance. “I could show it to Jessie,” he said, thoughtful as ever of others.