‘It was the transformation that surprised me,’ panted Thackeray, when the fifteen turns were made.
His companion sniffed. ‘Falling flaps. Get a good man up there on the catwalk and you can change a common lodging-house to Buckingham Palace in ten seconds, if you’ve a mind to. Right! Down she comes again, and then you’ll be wanted on the living statues.’
Fifteen turns later, he tottered away to report for his next task. Behind the gauze-cloth, Greece was being constructed, a series of columns secured with stage-braces in front of a cloth depicting the Acropolis.
‘Are you one of the heavies?’ someone asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. This one’s yours. Aphrodite. Keep your head well down, don’t jerk, and watch out for the Thinker coming towards you from the other side.’
‘Aphro . . . ?’
‘Miss Penelope Tring. Get yourself in position and she’ll climb up at once.’
A wooden structure on small wheels, not unlike an upright piano painted white, with two steps on the keyboard side, was waiting for him. Young women with sheets draped about them were standing nearby, ready to go on. He noticed two handles on the back of the structure and gripped them. It moved quite freely. He waited uncertainly.
The last of the footmen quitted the stage and the Grecian maidens arranged themselves behind the gauze-cloth in an arc, leaving free the area ahead of Thackeray. In the opposite wing he could see another of the heavy contingent crouching behind a similar plinth on wheels, but his already supported a white statue. The orchestra stopped playing and Albert’s mother made her final introduction, but Thackeray did not hear a word of it. Miss Penelope Tring was mounting his plinth . . .
Next moment the stage was bathed in light, the orchestra were playing some stately melody and someone was pushing him from behind. Automatically, he began the journey to the other side: automatically, because his mind refused to accept the reality of what he had just seen and could continue to see if he turned his eyes that way. It was manifestly impossible that he, Detective Constable Edward Thackeray of Scotland Yard, was at that moment crossing a stage in a satin suit, crouching behind a conveyance supporting a female person clothed only in white silk fleshings. Never mind the disturbingly life-like male figure being wheeled past on his right; never mind the warmth proceeding from the vaguely rotund areas of whiteness on his left, a few inches from his cheek. Fantasy, all of it. Why, Sergeant Cribb, for all his bullying ways, would never subject a man to such indignities.
‘Hold on, mate!’ a voice at his elbow cautioned. ‘You’ll shove the lady through the wall if you don’t put the brake on.’
As they halted, Miss Tring relaxed her pose and hopped down heavily from the plinth in front of Thackeray, sufficiently substantial to convince anyone else that she existed. Of course he had heard, over pints of ale, of things that happened across the Channel, of poses plastiques and tableaux vivants in Parisian theatres. That unquestionably accounted for the trick of his imagination that had produced the present illusion. Why, if he pinched himself or, better still, reached out a thumb and forefinger to Miss Tring, she would certainly vanish. But something restrained him, and presently the apparition accepted a cloak from someone and walked away to the dressing-rooms.
Above the stage Albert’s mother completed a final chorus of ‘Up in a Balloon’, the curtain was lowered, and so were she and her bulldog, with someone else assisting at the winch. But there was no respite for Thackeray. ‘Carry this to the centre,’ a bystander told him, ‘and place it on the blue spot.’ He found himself holding a species of umbrella-stand made of glittering chromium and containing a formidable array of swords. ‘For the illusionist,’ he was told. ‘Get moving, damn you!’
Swords! His thoughts raced back to the unfortunate conjurer languishing in Newgate, and his abortive trick with the girl in the cabinet. Would the perpetrator of these ‘accidents’ (if there were such a person) have the audacity to repeat his wickedness here? Cribb’s words came back to him: ‘Carry out your orders . . .’ He walked to the middle and found the blue spot. The swords had one good effect on him, anyway: his mind had cleared itself of illusions and was fully alive to the dangers in the present situation. Another order was barked at him: ‘Only the table now. On the yellow square.’ That looked harmless enough, thank goodness. A silk-covered card-table with conjurer’s impedimenta, a silk hat, wand, gloves and a glass containing a red liquid.
The curtain was up again almost before he was back in the wings, and from the other side a performer in white tie and tails had taken the stage. Thackeray recognised him at once as one of the guests at Philbeach House, and it shortly became quite clear why he had been there. The man picked up one of the swords, thrust back his head, opened his mouth wide and slowly inserted the blade until the hilt was six inches from his teeth. The sword-swallower!
He withdrew the blade, and repeated the feat twice, with broader swords, accompanied by drum rolls. In the wings, Thackeray breathed with relief as the weapons came out as clean and shining as they had gone in. Not for long, however. As though sword-swallowing were not spectacular enough, the performer produced a box of matches, lighted a spill and began a demonstration of fire-eating. Really! Did people like that deserve police protection?
‘My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, for my final trick,’ said the sword-swallower, when the fire-eating was safely completed, ‘and for your delectation, I should like to introduce my charming assistant, Miss Lola!’
She ran on to the stage from behind Thackeray, brushing him with her cloak as she passed. Lola Pinkus, like Miss Tring, had found a new forte in the profession. She curtsied most appealingly, tossing her blonde curls back as she straightened. How refreshing to see at last a young woman decently covered from neck to ankle!
‘Take it off!’ appealed some philistine in the audience.
‘Patience, sir, if you please,’ remonstrated the sword-swal- lower. ‘You may think, my friends, that you have seen all too little of Miss Lola. Soon you shall see less. In fact, she shall vanish altogether, before your very eyes.’ He picked up the glass. ‘In here is the most marvellous fluid in the world—’
‘Gin!’ shouted someone.’
‘No, sir! Not even gin has the properties of this particular brew. Take one draught of this and within seconds you will disappear completely. And I feel obliged to announce that it may not be purchased afterwards by gentlemen wishing to experiment on their mothers-in-law. Now, Miss Lola, would you care to give me your cloak? Our friends in the audience may wish to be assured that you are, in truth, flesh and blood and no mere illusion.’
Even this act! Thackeray noted a depressing sameness in the entertainment. Whatever their billing, the object of the performances seemed to be to display the fair sex in various degrees of indecency. Lola Pinkus was more adequately covered than Miss Tring, but somewhat less than respectability would have required in, say, a swimming-bath for females only. And the audience were behaving intolerably, whistling and shouting as though they had never seen a half undressed woman before. Perhaps they had not. Thackeray sniffed. There were compensations, after all, in a humble upbringing.
‘I shall now invite Miss Lola to drink this glass of the magical fluid,’ announced the sword-swallower, when he could get a hearing. ‘And then you must watch closely, for to see is to believe!’
Lola approached him and took her stance with particular care. Thackeray watched keenly. He already had an idea of how the disappearance might be effected. The drum-roll began. The sword-swallower made some spectacular movements with the cloak. The footlights and the side-lighting dimmed, leaving a single beam directed on the performers from the gallery. Lola held the glass high, lowered it and drank. Simultaneously the sword-swallower shielded her from the audience with the cloak. With a most convincing scream she dropped through the trap-door on which she was standing. The lights came on. The cloak was swept aside to show the disappearance accomplished. Gasps of amazement were heard from the auditorium.