‘Got it,’ he said eventually. ‘OK, if the answer’s anywhere, it’ll be in this building. Give me an hour or so and I’ll call you back. Same number? Got it. Bye for now.’
Alf silently hung up and looked at the receiver thoughtfully. He loved a challenge – even in the dead of night – and helping out the Young Magicians was fast becoming a particular forte of his.
‘What have you got yourself into now, young’uns?’ he murmured, smiling.
‘Well, if you find out,’ said a voice, creeping up behind him, ‘you’ll be sure to let me know?’
Alf whirled round. There were very few people in this world that could successfully sneak up on a ghost and cause them to gasp, but then this person standing before Alf had been known to deceive even the sharpest of minds.
‘What are you doing here?’
18
2 A.M.
The interior of a World War Two communications post doesn’t have much in the way of in-house entertainment, unless you’re entertained by the sight of a very tall, gangly boy pacing impatiently back and forth while waiting for a phone that hasn’t rung in seventy-five years to ring.
Zack squatted down next to Sophie, looking at her expectantly as Alex continued to tend to his sodden blazer, cautiously removing his tricks from the waterlogged pockets like they were fledgling chicks.
‘OK then,’ Zack said with a grin, ‘memory palaces! You promised to tell us how they work!’
‘What, now?’
‘Well, we’ve certainly got the time. Or we could go for a lovely clifftop walk in the moonlight instead?’
An extra-strong gust of freezing spray whistled past the entrance as if to reinforce the point. Sophie smiled.
‘OK, free tutorial. Right. First you need your palace, which doesn’t have to be an actual palace, just a place you know well. Like your home. I presume you know your home well enough to find your way around blindfolded, right?’
‘Sure,’ Zack said, like it was normal for someone to be able to navigate their house, get dressed and cook while blindfolded.
‘Next, you get the things you want to remember. Maybe it’s a series of numbers or names. Maybe it’s instructions for a recipe …’
Zack laughed. ‘My kind of recipe hardly needs a memory palace. Open tin. Pour into mouth!’
‘OK, bad example. But say you want to memorize pi to twenty digits …’
‘Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six,’ Zack said promptly.
‘OK, very impressive, but say you want to memorize something that you haven’t already committed to memory!’ Sophie was getting exasperated. ‘Like the serial number on a banknote. In your head, you visualize putting each of the digits – in this case – into specific bits of your memory palace. Say, for example, I imagine walking from the living room to my bedroom … I would literally put a big fluffy number two as I opened the door going into the hallway. At the bottom of the stairs I’d visualize a flashing number three, with a number five waiting for me at the top of the stairs. And so on …’
Zack handed Sophie a couple of notes from his wallet. She stared at them briefly, before recounting both sets of numbers from memory, plus the sum of all the digits.
Zack sat back, agog.
‘I mean, obviously I haven’t got a calculator to check whether that sum is correct,’ Zack managed, wondering if there were any limit to Sophie’s mental capabilities – but also not forgetting to take the notes back.
‘Good,’ said Sophie, ‘because I just made that last bit up, but it was worth it for the look on your face!’
Zack threw his head back and laughed. Sophie sure did like her bold methods – hit them with something sure-fire at first, then befuddle them with something entirely fabricated after!
On the other side of the communications post, Alex had located a semi-dry pack of cards and had started to go through the strange dealing routine Zack had spotted him fumbling with twice now.
And, whatever he was meant to be doing, it still wasn’t working.
Zack and Sophie wandered over.
‘What’s up?’ Zack asked. Alex looked up at them and blinked.
‘Remember how I dealt the cards on the train?’ he asked innocently. Zack grinned.
‘And did me out of a slice of choccy cake? Of course I remember!’
Alex held out the pack in his palm, face down, and showed them the top card.
‘Seven of spades,’ they both answered.
Alex put the card back on the top of the pack.
‘Say a number between one and fifty-two,’ he told them.
‘Thirteen?’ Sophie suggested.
Alex’s hand flicked back and forth over the pack as he dealt out thirteen cards on to the floor, counting them out one by one. Then he took the top card off the pack again and showed it to them with a smile.
‘Still seven of spades,’ Zack said, grinning.
‘Again, in slow motion?’ Sophie asked, her eyes narrowed in concentration.
Alex smiled and put the cards back together again before holding them up.
‘Left hand holds the pack,’ he said by way of explanation, ‘while the right hand deals.’
Alex slowly started to deal the cards again, one by one. Zack and Sophie fixed their attention on Alex’s hands.
As Alex’s right hand moved across the pack to take hold of the top card, it briefly and partially obscured the pack from view. Alex had the thumb of his left hand resting on top of the pack. As soon as his right hand came over, Alex pressed down with his thumb and slid the top card to one side, so that the fingers of the right hand now took hold of the second card down. Alex dealt the second card, and at the same time moved the first card back to the left again with his thumb.
‘It’s called the second deal,’ Alex said shyly, ‘because you deal the second card without anyone noticing. Or at least that’s what it’s meant to look like!’
‘Smooth as anything!’ Zack agreed admiringly.
‘On the train, I dealt the top card to Jonny as normal,’ Alex went on. ‘You’d put the king as the second card, so after Jonny’s card that meant it was on top. So I just dealt you and Sophie the ones after it, and kept the king for myself.’
‘How did you make sure I got the ace?’
‘That was just a very fortunate coincidence. I got lucky, so I pretended it was all part of the routine!’ Another devilishly good ploy!
‘It couldn’t have gone better if you’d planned it!’ Sophie laughed.
‘So why do you keep dropping cards? It’s the second time I’ve seen it happen now,’ Zack said, intrigued. ‘You’ve clearly got the second deal sussed.’
‘I’m working on the centre deal now,’ Alex explained, ‘where you deal the card from the centre of the pack without anyone knowing – and it’s a lot harder!’
‘I bet. Though why would anyone want to do that?’
‘No idea. But, once I’ve tackled that, I’ll move on to mastering the bottom deal.’
‘Which, presumably, is where you deal cards out of your bottom, right?’ Zack sniggered.
‘That’s a Jonny joke,’ Sophie chided him.
‘True,’ Zack admitted. ‘I should think more carefully about stealing other people’s material –’
Jonny came barrelling between them, making a grab for the handset as the phone began to ring … like he’d almost sensed it in the air.
‘Alf!’ he shouted into it, before catching himself. ‘I mean, um, Alf? Hey! No, of course I haven’t been pacing back and forth waiting for you to call back! So – did you manage to …?’
He trailed off, and the friends saw his whole body stiffen with surprise.
‘Sorry,’ Jonny said, not quite believing his ears, ‘who did you say is with you?’
The Magic Circle’s library was somewhat of a unique space in the magic world.
First the architect had been given a lower-ground area the size of, oh, let’s
call it about the size of Wales. Then someone had shown them all the different kinds of books that would be going in. Hundreds of thousands of them, from the size of a miniature pack of playing cards (that would fit inside a Christmas cracker) to the size of a dining-room table. And a big one at that.
Then they had said, ‘Find a way to fit all that in.’ So the architect – who liked a challenge, but was already feeling a bit overawed – immediately started to think: balconies. Spiral staircases. Ladders. Delicate, curly-wurly wrought iron everywhere. Massive bookcases. Wiggly ones, lopsided ones, skew-whiff ones – whatever it took.
Then it had been explained to the architect – whose brain was by now starting to melt slightly – that the filing system would be based on a special method thought up by the then-President of the Magic Circle. Less Dewey Decimal, more Decidedly Deranged.fn1
The one thing that could be said for it – because many magicians are eccentric, but very few are outright stupid – was that the books were arranged alphabetically. Once you knew which section you wanted, it wouldn’t be hard to find the works of a particular author. But finding the section in the first place – that would be the hard part.
Let’s just take it as read that there were no terminals, no soft-play areas, no children’s corner, no DVD section. Though some wished there were.
Accessibility? Never heard of it. Good luck, was the Magic Circle’s response to that one.
There were also one or two built-in security systems the Young Magicians had come into contact with when they were last together, but we won’t go into that right now because they didn’t so much matter to Alf as he ran back and forth, hither and thither, piling up reference material in the central reading area and trying not to lose his bearings. Truth be told, Alf didn’t know this place half as well as he would have liked.
But – then again – he had a guide.
‘So what’s my grandson got embroiled in this time?’ Ernest Haigh asked jovially. ‘Telepathy and vanishing, I heard you say? It sounds like quite the act.’
Ernest wasn’t as gangly as his grandson because he had grown into his height over the course of an impeccably long life, and his hair – what there was left of it – was the purest white, like on top of a drawn-out snowy owl. Apart from that, he looked like Jonny would if you fed his photo into one of those programs that can artificially age your image and show you what you might look like in a hundred years’ time. He moved slowly, with a stick. His joints were old and sore now, so he tended to stay in one place when he could help it. Just like he was doing now, sitting next to Alf’s ever-growing pile and using his stick to point out handy sources of information.
Alf had taken about half a second to decide whether or not he could trust Ernest. He too had been surprised and hurt by what Ernest had done. But Alf knew that, deep down, Ernest had only had the best interests of the Magic Circle at heart … plus, the bloke had gone to prison for it. As far as Alf was concerned, he had paid his debt to society and wasn’t it enough that Ernest had lost the love and respect of his grandson already? And who was Alf to judge?
Alf continued to fill Ernest in on what scant information Jonny had divulged over the phone.
‘Well, bless my heart,’ Ernest laughed. ‘If they can solve the Spencers’ act, there’ll be no stopping those youngsters. It’s baffled me to this day.’ He waved a bony hand at the pile of dusty books Alf was slowly forming into a small mound. ‘There’s plenty of theories, of course, but none of them really hold water. Do you know, I’ve just remembered there was a particularly good review of their act in the society scrapbook around October 1926 … I believe in that pile there, if I recall correctly.’
He waved his stick to indicate.
‘This whole Pickle vanishing feat, though,’ Ernest murmured while Alf continued to rifle through the mix of books and old society magazines. ‘That seems most mysterious … but perhaps useful in some way. I just don’t know why or how!’
‘It hit young Jonny hard, what you did,’ Alf commented, without looking up, as he continued to leaf through pages.
‘I know.’ Ernest bowed his head and was silent for a few moments. ‘I had to make a decision – the good of my grandson or of the Magic Circle. I still don’t know if I chose the right one. My one consolation is that it hurt me to hurt him even more than it hurt him to be hurt by me.’
Alf had to take a moment to figure his way round that last sentence as his fingers ran over the headline of the October 1926 issue of the Magic Circular now facing him:
STUNNING BLEND OF OLD AND NEW TAKES MAGIC CIRCLE BY STORM
The latest technology met with the most ancient of magical arts in the Magic Circle’s Grand Theatre on Thursday 5th. For once, even the oldest and most infirm members present did not have to strain their ears to hear, due to the installation of Mr Marconi’s astonishing electrical sound-amplification system at great cost over the last few months. The curtain rose to show a lonely microphone on its stand in the middle of the stage. From either side came the Spencers: Mr Spencer in hat and tails, Mrs Spencer led on by her nurse, because the one thing anyone could be certain of in this evening of marvels and illusion was that Mrs Spencer is certifiably, medically blind …
After that, the review pretty well described what Sophie had already told the other Young Magicians, though somehow it sounded even more baffling, for this was undeniable written proof that Sophie hadn’t been making it up, or passing on a story that had already been embellished by multifarious mouths in the intervening decades. This was the real deal from someone who had been there, and it was just as astonishing as Sophie had described. The certifiably, medically blind Nancy Spencer had turned her back on the audience, Ron Spencer had gone into the audience and thereafter she had correctly described whatever object an audience member had given her husband, infallibly, with one hundred per cent success rate.
Mr Spencer travelled all the way round the theatre, even to the very highest seats from where his wife was just a dot onstage, relying on the amplification system for his words to be heard below. The finest, keenest eyes of the magical world were upon her, yet no one could divine the secret of Mrs Spencer’s astonishing, unbroken success rate.
Alf and Ernest spent some time flicking through the rest of the material, checking they hadn’t missed any extra detail, or any other mention of the act.
‘Nope, I think we have all that we need,’ said Alf, pleased to have something to report back to the Young Magicians waiting for him patiently (yeah, right!) at the other end of the line.
‘I agree,’ intoned Ernest, looking up at Alf with sad eyes. ‘It’s nice to be of help, in what little way I can.’
Alf plucked the decaying society magazine from the table and headed for the door as Ernest began to hoist himself up the metal stairs, his walking stick tap-tapping on the floor all the way. From downstairs, they made their way back to the front office. Alf picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Impressive,’ Ernest said behind him. For someone so antique – his words – the elderly man was certainly quick. ‘I was watching you take down their message and you didn’t note down the number. Maybe you’re a mind-reader too?’
Alf smiled.
‘I’ve always had a good memory! Like Father d–’ He didn’t have time to say anything else because the phone had already been picked up at the other end and the sound of Jonny talking at him now wobbled his earlobes.
‘Um, yes – so your grandfather and I found something …’ Alf began to reply. He paused. ‘Your grandfather. Yes, that’s right. Ernest has been helping me out … No, I don’t know how or when he got out either, but …’
There was a long silence.
‘Hello? Jonny?’
Alf frowned and put his hand over the bottom end of the handset.
‘He’s there. I can hear him breathing. He’s just not saying anything.’
‘Just tell him what we found,’ Ernest advised gently. ‘I don’t think he’s ready to let me back into his li
fe just yet.’
Alf nodded gravely. Despite everything that had happened, Alf still trusted Ernest, even if Jonny wouldn’t and couldn’t right now. They had been through too much together.
‘OK, here it is,’ Alf reported. ‘There’s nothing on the disappearing act, I’m afraid, at least nothing you don’t already know. And no clues on the telepathy method itself, but I do have a review of the Spencers’ act … You know, like an eyewitness account, if you want me to read it out? OK then. Are you sitting comfortably?’
Alf winced and held the phone away as four voices told him emphatically that they were presently in a freezing cold, concrete World War Two building with no furniture or anything that would ever meet the criterion for ‘comfortably’.
‘OK, well, quickly then,’ said Alf, smiling.
He read them the review, fast enough so as not to get another earful, but clear enough for them not to miss any of the key details.
‘So … was that helpful?’ he asked hopefully.
The silence that followed gave Alf an indication as to what the answer was.
‘Yes. Maybe,’ said a voice thoughtfully out of the blue. Alf imagined the others staring at Zack, and Zack holding up his hands defensively. ‘Hey, I don’t know! There was just something in the description that made me think the solution to this whole thing was staring us in the face. I just don’t know precisely what, though!’
A mighty yawn seized Alf. It was close to three in the morning after all.
‘Well, if there’s nothing else right now … You’ll be sure to let me know how it all turns out, won’t you? And yes, lovely to hear from you all again too. Until next time!’
Alf hung up and turned to face Ernest, his half-formed words drying in his mouth as he realized that Ernest had vanished. Alf cocked his head to one side as he heard the unmistakable sound of the old man’s stick tap-tapping away into the depths of the dark building, fading away into nothing.
The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot Page 17
