But Freddy shook his head. “You were going to give me fifty dollars when I brought back your hat,” he said, “and I haven’t seen that yet. Under the circumstances, I prefer the cash to a promise.” Zingo didn’t dare refuse. He sent Presto out to the box office for the money, and Freddy waited until it was handed to him before he stepped down.
But as he was leaving the stage Zingo stopped him. With a hand on Freddy’s arm he turned to the audience. “You will remember, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “that last week when I accepted the challenge of my young colleague here to explain his tricks, I did not demand immediate payment in cash when I exposed his rather childish mystifications. But I will ask you to excuse his bad manners, ladies and gentlemen, for he is very young and very suspicious. And to show you that I am not offended by what some might call downright boorishness, I am going to ask him to remain on the stage during the rest of the performance. I wish to give him every opportunity to observe my work, and if he can duplicate or explain my effects, I will be only too happy to stand by the terms of my offer.”
A murmur of sympathy for the magician came from the audience, and Freddy felt that he had lost some ground with them. A few of his friends knew of the mean tricks Zingo had played on him, but those who knew nothing of Zingo’s real character felt that his performance was being interfered with.
Freddy knew that he looked ridiculous in his feathered war bonnet and plaid coat; he knew that Zingo’s purpose in asking him to remain on the stage was to make the audience laugh at him; and he suspected that the magician would try to make him look a complete fool by playing tricks on him. But Freddy also had some tricks up his sleeve—or rather concealed among the eagle feathers of his headdress and in the secret pockets of his coat. And, what was better than all his tricks, Freddy had the ability to keep his temper. He knew that he had the advantage of Zingo there. For in a fight, or in a contest of any kind, the one who keeps his temper has an advantage that is equal to two shotguns and a small cannon. And so he just stood back and waited.
Zingo came down to the front of the stage. He stood there, twirling his moustache, just smiling at the audience. Freddy reached up and adjusted his war bonnet more firmly on his head. And immediately, without turning round, Zingo said: “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable if you took that headdress off, chief.”
The audience laughed and wondered how Zingo had known what Freddy was doing; and Freddy wondered too. Zingo had his back turned; he was facing the darkened auditorium—there was no mirror …“Mirror!” thought Freddy. “Oh, golly!” For he suddenly remembered Zingo’s ring, with the bit of looking glass mounted in it. The glass that was always on the inside of his finger. “That’s how he recognized me!” Freddy thought. “When he was twirling his moustache, and had his back turned, he was watching me all the time!”
His first idea was to explain the trick and collect another ten dollars. Then he thought he’d better wait. Zingo did other tricks with that ring—better ones. And anyway, it was a good idea to let Zingo push him around a little first; It would make the audience stop feeling quite so sorry for the magician.
After a minute Zingo turned and looked at him. And then he began laughing. He stared and laughed and pointed at Freddy; he slapped his knees and guffawed. Still shaking with laughter, he led Freddy to the front of the stage and bending over him, peered down into the circle of feathers that made up the top part of the war bonnet. “My goodness, chief,” he said, “don’t you ever comb your hair?” He reached in and apparently pulled out a number of objects which he held up one by one, then threw on the stage—three pieces of coal, an old bird’s nest, and four or five old chicken bones. “Very untidy,” he said. “Very bad manners to come before an audience without cleaning up a little beforehand.”
“My goodness, Chief …”
“I’m sorry,” said Freddy, “but I thought a magician had to be sort of grubby. Of course I’ve never seen any magician but you, and you can’t blame me, when you’re so sloppy.”
Zingo’s grin faded and he said sharply: “What do you mean, I’m sloppy?”
“Well,” said Freddy, “would you just let me take that hat a minute?”
“Certainly not!” said Zingo, pulling away. But voices in the audience shouted: “Aw, let him have it!” “Give it to him!” “Very well,” said Zingo reluctantly, “but be careful of it—it’s a very expensive hat, and if you—” He stopped abruptly, for Freddy had taken the hat, reached into it, and pulled out a mouse, two caterpillars and three beetles, which he held up one by one, as Zingo had, and then set down on the table.
“I leave it to you, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “which of us is the more careless about combing his hair. But there’s something else here,” he went on. He reached in the hat again and brought out three teaspoons. He looked at the handles. “H’m,” he said, “Centerboro Hotel. That’s where you stay, isn’t it? Mr. Groper told me he’d been missing a lot of cutlery lately. H’m, let’s see if there’s any more stolen property here.”
He reached in the hat, but Zingo snatched it away from him. “That’s enough of this,” he said. “Let’s get on with the show.”
Freddy moved back and leaned against the table, so that his confederates—the mouse and the caterpillars and beetles—could crawl back into his pockets without being noticed, and Zingo picked up a pack of cards and began to do sleight-of-hand tricks with them. He got Mr. Bean and Mr. Rohr up on the stage and had them pick out cards, or even just think of them, and the cards they had picked would fly up out of the pack or be found in their pockets, or he would throw the pack in the air and all the other cards would fall face down, but the one they had chosen would fall face up. He did a lot of very clever card manipulation, and Freddy couldn’t explain any of it. But at last he did a trick that Freddy caught on to.
Mr. Rohr took the cards, shuffled them thoroughly, then handed them one by one, face down, to Zingo, who passed them right on to Mr. Bean. And as he passed them on he would name each one—jack of diamonds, two of spades, and so on—and Mr. Bean would look at them. Each time Zingo was right.
“I claim another ten dollars,” said Freddy. “I can explain that trick.”
“Oh, go away,” said Zingo. “You’re interrupting the performance.”
“Come, come, sir,” said Mr. Rohr. “Play fair, sir; play fair.”
So Zingo had to stand by while Freddy explained about the ring with the mirror set in it. “You see,” he said, “the mirror is on the inside of his finger, and it reflects the face of each card as he hands it to Mr. Bean.”
So Zingo had to send Presto out for another ten dollars.
Now a good magic performance takes a lot of preparation. Each secret pocket in the magician’s coat must contain one or more articles, which are to be made to appear later. Colored silk handkerchiefs, folding bird cages, fish bowls—there is no end to the things that can be concealed by a clever performer. But under Freddy’s instructions, the mice had given Zingo’s coat a good working over. They had done a lot of gnawing on it. They had gnawed the seams so that they were just held together by one or two threads, and they had gnawed the pockets partly through, so that at the slightest strain everything in them would fall out. And to be sure that everything did fall out at the proper time, one of the beetles, who had exceptionally strong jaws, had volunteered for the dangerous job of concealing himself in one of the pockets and snipping the last threads after the performance began. The mice had also loosened buttons, and chewed through the elastic “pulls,” fastened inside the sleeves to make objects disappear. Cousin Augustus had had two front teeth loosened when one of these elastics snapped back on him when he was cutting it.
So now as Zingo went on with his performance, things began to happen to him. The first was when several things refused to vanish when he commanded them to. He covered up the failure cleverly, making them disappear by sleight-of-hand with his nimble fingers. But the tricks didn’t go smoothly and the audience didn’t applaud.
&n
bsp; Then a glass pitcher fell through one weakened pocket and crashed to the floor. “I can explain that trick,” said Freddy. “There’s a hole in your pocket.” But he didn’t claim ten dollars.
Zingo was too experienced to show anger, or the dismay that he must have felt. He tried to turn it off by saying to Freddy: “You quit throwing crockery at me or you’ll have to leave the stage.”
Then things began really to go wrong. Presto brought a sword from the back of the stage and with a bow presented it to Zingo, who began making passes with it in the air. At the tip of the sword would appear after one pass a string of colored lights, after another, a bouquet of flowers. Freddy didn’t know how this was done, but he was sure that if Zingo continued to jump about so actively something would happen. And it did. First several buttons popped off the magician’s vest and rattled on the floor; then, as he turned for a moment from the audience to sweep the sword high in the air, the back of his coat split from collar to tail. Another pocket gave way and three eggs fell and broke, a pair of handcuffs dropped from somewhere, followed by a shower of smaller articles.
Zingo threw down the sword in a rage. His face was purple with mortification and his teeth glinted in an angry snarl as he came down to the footlights, his split coat flapping ridiculously. He started to say something, then seemed to lose all control of his temper, for he whirled about, snatched up the sword and charged straight at Freddy.
Chapter 17
Now Freddy had exposed only two tricks so far, and had got back only twenty of his hundred and thirty dollars. But he was having an awfully good time. And yet as he stood and watched Zingo’s performance go to pieces, he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the magician. Zingo was a crook; he had stolen from Freddy and cheated and abused him; and yet Freddy had begun to feel that he wanted to help him.
Some people would think this was pretty weak of Freddy, and others would say that it was simply good sportsmanship not to jump on an enemy when he was down. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Anyway, Freddy didn’t feel like that very long. When Zingo started for him with the sword Freddy ducked around behind the table, and pulled out the magician’s pistol. “Stop!” he shouted, “or I’ll shoot!”
Of course the pistol was empty, but Zingo didn’t know that. “Go ahead and shoot!” he said, but he stopped.
About the only way anybody could ever tell if Freddy was scared was when his tail came uncurled. When he was gay and on top of the world it was curled up as tight as a watch spring, but when he was depressed or frightened all the curl came right out of it. It was uncurled now. But nobody in the audience knew it because it was hidden by his coat. He said: “Stand right where you are, Signor Zingo. I’m going to hypnotize you.”
Zingo sneered. “Don’t make me laugh!” he said. “Pointing a loaded gun at anybody isn’t hypnotizing them!” He half turned towards the audience. “Hypnotism, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “is like mind-reading and escaping from locked trunks. It is only done by the most experienced and accomplished magicians. I may say that I am a skilled performer in all those branches of the black art. It is simply laughable to think that this stupid pig could know anything of such things.” He paused a moment, then he said: “I know that he is a neighbor of many of you; you feel a pardonable pride in the cleverness which, I am told, he has shown as a detective. I have no quarrel with that. But he should stick to his detective work, and not venture into a field of which he knows nothing. As a magician, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that he is clumsy and stupid, and I propose to show him up once for all.” He turned to Freddy, and laying the sword on the table and folding his arms, said: “All right; go on and hypnotize me.”
Freddy hesitated. “I suppose you think I can’t!” he said.
Zingo grinned. “I know you can’t, my silly friend.”
But there was still something Freddy wanted to get from Zingo before he put the matter to a trial, so he pretended to be rather uncertain. “Well now,” he said hesitantly, “if you … that is, if I can make you feel pain in any part of your body I point at, will that convince you?”
“Sure, sure,” said the magician, becoming more and more confident. “That will certainly convince me. If you can do that, I’ll …”
“Will you hand me that fifty dollars you promised to give me for your hat?” Freddy said quickly.
Zingo hesitated, and his eyes narrowed. Then he grinned again, for he was certain that Freddy was bluffing. “Sure,” he said again. “Go ahead. You give me a pain in the neck anyway—let’s see if you can improve on it.”
“OK.,” said Freddy. “I’ll give you a real pain in the neck.” He made a few passes with his arms, and under his breath he whispered: “All right, Jacob. When I point, do your stuff.” Then he threw one arm out straight and pointed at Zingo. “You have a terrible pain in the back of your neck!” he shouted.
“You have a terrible pain in the back of your neck!” he shouted.
And immediately Zingo gave a loud yell, crouched down, and seized the back of his neck with both hands.
Only a few of Freddy’s friends in the audience had any idea what he was up to. The rest merely saw that they were witnessing a contest between two magicians, which was of course a great deal more exciting to watch than a regular magic performance, and they had sat spellbound. But when it was evident that Freddy really had given Zingo a pain just by pointing at him, they stood up and shouted and cheered. They hadn’t even seen Jacob.
Now Jacob was a friend of Freddy’s, a slim and elegant black and yellow wasp, who lived with his large family in a sort of apartment house made out of grey paper under the eaves of the cow barn. He and his two younger brothers, Eph and Fritz, had been hidden in the feathers of the war bonnet. They had sat around during the first part of the performance, polishing their stings, and giggling over what they would do to Zingo when Freddy said “Go!” When Freddy whispered, Jacob took off and circled up to gain height; and then when Freddy pointed, he dove. With all four wings humming he shot straight down so fast that none of the audience could have seen him even if they had been looking for him, and he drove his sting into Zingo’s neck just above the collar.
“That’s for the time you slapped me,” said Freddy.
But there were still two pinches to be avenged. He whispered: “Now, Eph!” made a few magic passes, and flung his arm out straight, pointing at the magician’s knee. Eph circled up, dove, and Zingo gave a second yell, louder than the first, and his hands, which had been clawing at the back of his neck, flew to his knee. He danced around the stage, now bending forward as he rubbed his knee, now backward as he grabbed at his neck. And Freddy pointed again and Fritz whirred down and stung him on the nose.
The third sting completed Zingo’s defeat. Yelling like a banshee he ran twice around the stage, flapping his arms and dodging further imaginary attack, his coat and vest, whose seams had now given out entirely under the strain, fluttering about him. Then he dashed behind the scenes. And Freddy came forward and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, do you agree with me that I won the fifty dollars fairly?”
A shout of “Yes! You won!” went up from the audience.
But Presto, who had followed his master back stage, came out and held up one paw for silence. Signor Zingo, he announced, had something to say; he would return in a moment.
It was more than a moment before Zingo reappeared, and the audience began to get restless. They whistled and imitated cats and dogs and then they began all stamping in unison and chanting: “Give—Freddy—his money! Give—Freddy—his money!” I think it was Judge Willey who started it.
But at last Zingo came out. He had covered the wreck of his coat with his long red-lined cape, and he had on his silk hat, and he looked very dignified and impressive except for his nose, which was now a good two sizes too large for his face. He said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been the victim of a cruel and malicious trick. I do not admit that I was hypnotized. I was stung by hornets. And to prove this, I will ask a
committee of any three gentlemen to come up on the stage and examine my nose and the back of my neck. Now if you will come up, sir—” he pointed to Mr. Metacarpus—“and you—”
“Just a minute,” said Freddy. “This is all unnecessary. You all heard Signor Zingo say that he would be convinced that he had been hypnotized if I made him feel pain in the part of his body I pointed at. I submit, my friends, that I did just that. Therefore—”
“It was a trick!” said Zingo angrily.
“Everything you do on this stage is a trick.” Freddy retorted. “When you pick a bouquet of flowers out of the air it is a trick—you don’t really pick it out of the air. And so if I did not really hypnotize you—”
The stamping and the chant of “Pay—Freddy—his money!” began again and drowned out his words.
Freddy motioned for silence. “Thank you, my friends,” he said. “It is evident to you by this time, if you did not already know it, that there is a feud between Signor Zingo and me. Up to this evening Signor Zingo has had all the best of it. Those of you who were here a week ago tonight will remember that Signor Zingo won a hundred and thirty dollars from me by exposing and duplicating my tricks. Now I am not a professional magician, and I had no intention of making that offer of five dollars for each trick exposed. This rabbit, Presto, made the offer in my name, and though I had not authorized it, I felt I should stand by it.
“That was a trick which Signor Zingo played on me. By another trick he attempted to have me put in jail. Therefore, if I am playing malicious tricks on Signor Zingo tonight, I don’t believe there is anybody here who will blame me.
“This whole affair, ladies and gentlemen, is a contest in trickery. However I wish to be fair. I will make Signor Zingo a sporting proposition. You heard him say that he was a skilled mind reader. Therefore, instead of insisting on his paying me the fifty dollars which you, by your applause, have awarded to me, I will challenge him to a contest in mind reading. I will challenge him to put up, instead of fifty, a hundred dollars, and I will put up a like amount. And the one who in your estimation gives the best mind reading performance will take the money.”
Freddy the Magician Page 12
