“And,” I continued dyspeptically, “when I try to tell them how busy you are, they always counter with, ‘Well, he’s a magician, isn’t he? Have him wave his wand or something.’ I’m sick and tired of that crack. I don’t know an answer for it, if any. Why haven’t you done something about a science of practical and applied magic? I’d take a course myself if I could say Presto and have something useful happen. Rabbits from top hats, ladies sawed in half, ducks that vanish! Why? Who cares?”
“Not so fast,” Merlini rebutted. “You got the drink, didn’t you? Have another. Some liver pills, too. But, seriously, I will make a deal with you. Drive up with me tonight. Burt has to stay on the job here, and I’d love company. After the convention is out of the way, we’ll vanish into the Adirondacks beside a mountain stream for a day or two — I know just the spot. We’ll cool off, and I’ll give some attention to those proofs. Honest Injun, cross my heart.”
“Well,” I said, “I would like to see a tree again for a change. But if you cross me up—”
Burt returned from the shop, walking a shade faster. We couldn’t know it then, but this slight change of tempo was the cue that dimmed the house lights and sent the curtain rolling up on Act I.
“Customer outside,” he announced. “Wants to see a headless lady. Looks like a sale. You’d better see her.”
“Headless lady?” I asked. “Now what? Has the firm added a body-snatching department?”
Merlini said, “Who is it, Burt?”
The latter shook his head. “Don’t know. Girl who won’t take no for an answer. In a hurry, too.”
He was right about that. The door from the shop swung inward abruptly, and she came toward us moving with a graceful but determined stride and a display of energy which in that temperature was almost foolhardy. She was as interesting and — as we were about to discover — as tantalizing a young woman as had ever set foot on the premises. She was in her middle twenties, tall, dark-haired, undeniably good-looking — and as nervous as a cat. Nervous in the same way — outwardly poised, self-assured, sleek — but jumpy. Beneath the dark outdoor tan of her complexion there was a hard, taut quality, also present in the deep-throated masculine voice.
She gave me a glance whose briefness was no compliment, decided I wasn’t it, and turned to face Merlini as that gentleman, finally coming into action, swung down from the workbench.
“Mr. Merlini?” Her tone was polite but businesslike.
“Yes.” He nodded, taking her in.
“I need a headless lady,” she said. “I have to have it at once. This gentleman says—”
“That at once is too soon,” Merlini finished. “I know. That particular item has been selling faster than twenty-dollar bills wrapped around cakes of soap at two for a quarter. It’s a good pitch. Everyone wants a headless lady.”
“Except me,” I corrected quietly but firmly.
The girl went on, “He says you have one here. A demonstrator.”
Merlini nodded. “Yes. But I can’t display it for you at the moment. The Merlini Super-Improved Model with the visible, circulating blood feature and the respiratory light attachment, built to last a lifetime, takes down quickly, easily, and packs for carrying in two suitcases. Those.” He pointed toward two squat squarish cases that were with the others in the corner. “It’s there now. I’m taking it to a magician’s convention in Albany tonight.”
“I don’t need a demonstration,” the girl said. “I know what it’s like. The price is three hundred dollars, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Discount of two percent for cash.”
“We’ll skip that,” she said, flipping open her purse. She took out a folded packet of perhaps a dozen bills, dealt off three, and handed them to Burt. They were hundred-dollar bills. Burt’s response was automatic and prompt. He procured a receipt pad in about the same length of time it takes Merlini to produce a coin from thin air.
“Name?” he asked, pencil poised.
She scowled at him. “Is that necessary?”
Burt nodded, “Yes.”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment longer, then said suddenly. “Christine — Mildred Christine.”
“Address?”
“Wait,” she said. “You don’t understand. I’m taking it with me.”
Burt looked at his boss. Merlini absently took a playing card from the workbench and balanced it impossibly on one edge on the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, Miss”— he paused noticeably—“Christine. I can’t let you have this one. The factory is a week behind on orders. I couldn’t possibly make delivery before — well, I might get them to rush an assembly by Monday. Today’s Thursday. Will that—”
“No.” Miss Christine was quite certain. “I’m leaving town tonight. I have to have it now.”
“I’m sorry.” Merlini was equally definite. “Perhaps an Asrah Levitation, a ‘Burning a Woman Alive,’ or a nice fast trunk-escape at one-half off, or—”
The girl took a step or two toward Merlini, restlessly. “Look,” she said. “You’d sell the demonstrator at a price, wouldn’t you?”
Merlini considered that for a moment, frowning. His dark eyes met hers intently. “I might,” he said finally. “It would be more, of course.” He drawled his words, slowly, as if puzzling over something.
“I realize that,” she said.
Merlini still hesitated, his frown deeper. Then he said quickly and flatly, “It would be three hundred more.”
Burt gave a surprised start that was almost a jump, but Mildred didn’t as much as blink. The corners of her mouth even curled upward slightly. She promptly repeated her production trick with the purse, and three more hundred-dollar bills passed across to Burt.
“My car is down the street,” she said. “I’ll be back in half an hour. Will you have the cases taken down for me, please?” She turned on her heel, and started for the door.
“Just a minute,” Merlini said hastily. “This has gone far enough.”
She stopped in the doorway. “What do you mean?” Her eyes snapped. “You named your price. You got it. You can’t—”
“I know.” Merlini took a cigarette from his pocket and hunted thoughtfully for a match. “I wanted to see just how badly you did want it. You surprised me. But I’m not a shake-down artist. You may have it at the regular list price — on one condition.”
“Yes?” she scowled.
Merlini lit his cigarette, leaned back against his workbench, and observed calmly, as if he were thinking aloud, “You don’t need the apparatus so quickly because it means a job. You’ve got too many of those century notes. Possession and exhibition of the illusion four days sooner than I can supply one from regular stock will hardly net you the extra three hundred you’re willing to pay. If you’ll explain this curious haste and tell me why the monogram on your purse is an H rather than a C — you can have it.”
Merlini’s business is mystery and the mystification of others, yet the one thing he can’t abide is to have someone drop anything even faintly baffling into his own lap. Everything Mildred did and said bristled like a hedgehog with question marks — big curly ones. Merlini was puzzled, and he didn’t like it. He apparently didn’t like it three hundred dollars worth.
Mildred wasn’t exactly overjoyed. “You mean that?” she asked, frowning.
Merlini nodded.
She unsnapped her purse again. “I’ll make it seven hundred.”
Merlini shook his head decisively. “No.”
The girl looked at Burt. “Is he always like this?”
Burt glanced at the money he held. “You can expect anything, Miss. He’s stubborn, too.”
“So am I.” She took the bills. “But if I should change my mind — how much longer will you be here?”