At last they stopped a hurried lady, and asked her the way to Maskelyne and Cooke’s.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said, pushing past them. “I always shop at the Stores.” Which just shows, as Jane said, how ignorant grown-up people are.
It was a policeman who at last explained to them that England’s Mysteries are now appropriately enough enacted at St George’s Hall. So they tramped to Langham Place, and missed the first two items in the programme. But they were in time for the most wonderful magic appearances and disappearances, which they could hardly believe—even with all their knowledge of a larger magic—was not really magic after all.
“If only the Babylonians could have seen _this_ conjuring,” whispered Cyril. “It takes the shine out of their old conjurer, doesn’t it?”
“Hush!” said Anthea and several other members of the audience.
Now there was a vacant seat next to Robert. And it was when all eyes were fixed on the stage where Mr Devant was pouring out glasses of all sorts of different things to drink, out of one kettle with one spout, and the audience were delightedly tasting them, that Robert felt someone in that vacant seat. He did not feel someone sit down in it. It was just that one moment there was no one sitting there, and the next moment, suddenly, there was someone.
Robert turned. The someone who had suddenly filled that empty place was Rekh-marā, the Priest of Amen!
Though the eyes of the audience were fixed on Mr David Devant, Mr David Devant’s eyes were fixed on the audience. And it happened that his eyes were more particularly fixed on that empty chair. So that he saw quite plainly the sudden appearance, from nowhere, of the Egyptian Priest.
“A jolly good trick,” he said to himself, “and worked under my own eyes, in my own hall. I’ll find out how that’s done.” He had never seen a trick that he could not do himself if he tried.
By this time a good many eyes in the audience had turned on the clean-shaven, curiously-dressed figure of the Egyptian Priest.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr Devant, rising to the occasion, “this is a trick I have never before performed. The empty seat, third from the end, second row, gallery—you will now find occupied by an Ancient Egyptian, warranted genuine.”