wasn’t ready for sleep. He thought long and hard, tapping his thumbnail against his teeth as his mind worked.
The workshop belonged to a coffin maker. Coils of wood shavings had been roughly swept aside and the air was fugged with glue and varnish. Carlo stuck his hands on his hips and scowled about him.
‘Gives me the creeps, this place does.’
Devil raised his eyebrows. ‘We can’t be choosy, my friend. And contrary to your dainty feelings it strikes me as perfect for working up a box trick. Shall we begin?’
‘Don’t try to tell me we haven’t got all night,’ Carlo grumbled. The workshop’s owner had gone off at seven o’clock, warning them that he would be back again first thing in the morning by which time they were to be cleared out, and not to disturb any of his handiwork in the meantime. ‘I’m going to eat a bite first.’
With this he settled himself on the coffin maker’s bench, unwrapped a square of cloth, and tore into a hunk of bread laid with cold mutton. With difficulty, Devil held his tongue. After just two days of Carlo’s company he knew not only that the dwarf’s small body could absorb surprising quantities of food, but that he was always to be the one who paid for it. The end would be worth the outlay, he reassured himself. If the intimations he had already picked up about Carlo’s box trick turned out to be correct.
Jacko Grady was not so stupid as not to have an inkling of the potential too, because without overmuch protest he had signed two copies of the contract prepared by Devil. Ten per cent of box office returns, on every house of more than eighty per cent capacity.
The arithmetic ran in Devil’s head like a ribbon of gold.
Once the dwarf had finished his meal, they turned to the collection of materials assembled to Carlo’s precise instructions and eventual approval. As well as the borrowing of a handcart and the negotiating with sawyers and metal smiths, the procuring of everything had obliged Devil to use almost the last of the sovereigns he kept hidden under the floorboards and in various other niches in his lodgings. The bribe to the coffin maker for night-time use of his premises had taken most of what was left.
‘This had better be a dazzler,’ he muttered.
To answer him Carlo rummaged in one of his bags and produced an armful of metal. This he assembled to make a knife with a blade as long as himself. He whipped the air with it, then drove the point into the rough floorboards before leaning on the handle to demonstrate the weapon’s strength and flexibility.
‘In my costume as whoever you please, Pharaoh perhaps, or the Medusa, or Milor’ the Frenchie Duke – it don’t matter – I will stand, so,’ said the dwarf, taking up his position in what might be the centre of the stage. ‘For whatever reason it is, you will cut off my head. It will drop into a basket, most like, and my body will fall to the ground.’
‘Good,’ Devil replied. ‘Is that all?’
Carlo glared. ‘Wait, can’t you? My headless torso remains. Onstage with us we’ll have the cabinet, ornate as you like, on four legs.’
‘Or on what appears to be four sturdy legs?’
‘Yes, yes. You know what the mirrors are for.’
‘And what I paid for them,’ Devil added.
‘Don’t you ever shut up? You will cross the stage to open the cabinet and within it will appear …’
‘Your severed head. Floating in mid-air, I assume?’
‘Aye. So we talk. There’ll likely be some pact, and your end of the bargain will be to put my head back.’
‘So I close the cabinet doors.’
‘You do. There’s the mumbo jumbo and the lights flash. In an eye-blink there is my living, speaking head secure on my neck again.’
‘I hold the basket up, empty except for the horrible bloodstains.’
The dwarf yawned. Devil tapped his teeth with his thumbnail.
‘No, wait … I’ve got it. A river of gold pours out of the basket. It’s alchemy, that’s what the trick is. It’s all about the philosopher’s secret.’
‘Theatricals are your department,’ Carlo shrugged.
The two men eyed each other. Devil had been optimistic in his first definition of their relationship. In fact their mutual mistrust was not much diminished by the two days and a night they had been obliged to spend together, nor even by the strange liking that crept up between them. Neither would have cared to admit to this last. Carlo stuck his jaw out while Devil pondered the mechanics.
‘It’s not a new illusion. Monsieur Robin has something similar.’
‘It’s still a sweet trick, and it can be as new as tomorrow if we choose to make it that way.’
This was true. Devil well knew that apart from endless practice it was audacity, force of personality and the glamour of the stage itself that created magic out of mere mechanics. His thoughts ran ahead.
‘As it happens, I know a wax modeller who is employed by the Baker Street Bazaar.’ He strode across to their cache of materials and held up two short ends of deal planking. ‘Show me,’ he ordered.
Carlo returned to a squatting position on the coffin maker’s bench and indicated that Devil was to hold the boards up to his neck. The little man’s head protruded between them as he settled on his muscular haunches. Then he folded his limbs. His knees splayed to the sides and his ankles crossed as he brought his feet towards his chin. His short spine telescoped further, his shoulders rose towards his ears as his arms wrapped round his torso. Devil had to lower the boards, and lower them again as Carlo shrank into a ball of muscle.
‘That’s good. That’s really very good,’ he said. He was impressed. The dwarf had compressed his body into a space that seemed hardly more than a foot square.
‘Watch me,’ Carlo snapped. He breathed in deeply, exhaled, and reduced himself by another inch in all directions.
‘Stop,’ Devil laughed. ‘I am afraid that you will vanish altogether. Can you still speak and move your head?’
‘Of course.’
The dwarf’s head, which was not undersized, rotated freely above the boards. There was no sign of physical strain in his face and his voice was as smooth as cream.
The ribbon of gold in Devil’s head looped and tied itself off into a giant bow.
He put the boards aside and silently admired the way that Carlo unfolded his limbs before stretching his little body upright again.
‘There is just one detail.’
Carlo tipped his head. ‘What’s that?’
‘Your size.’
‘What? My size is our money.’
‘It
