The Illusionists

‘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 will provide a significant contribution to our funds, I agree. I acknowledge that. My skills as an actor, as the master magician who will conjure your smallness, will be another invaluable element. I am also our financial negotiator, as you know.’

‘Hah,’ sniffed Carlo.

‘And all my experience dictates that your stature should be our stage secret.’

‘What do you mean by that? I am not ashamed. I want the world to know who I am, Carlo Boldoni, straight from performing before the crowned heads of …’

‘Quite,’ Devil said. ‘I am only suggesting that to reveal your stature to the public would be to take away some of the intrigue of the illusion.’

There was a silence. Carlo’s personal vanity and ambition strained visibly.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘For this trick, to appear onstage as a full-sized man. Is there perhaps a way you can do that?’

‘Hah,’ Carlo sniffed again. He made a return to his baggage and this time brought out a pair of wooden struts with shaped foot-pieces at either end. Devil watched with interest as he sank to fit these stilts to his boots, then used Devil’s long leg as a prop to haul himself upright again. Their eyes met almost on a level.

‘Walk,’ Devil ordered.

The stilt-walk was well practised, tinged with swagger, like everything Carlo did.

‘That’s good. Very good,’ Devil said again. ‘You could use those to step out in the world like a normal man, couldn’t you?’

Carlo’s face went dark. ‘I am a normal man. My body is the same as yours, bar its length. My feelings are the same as yours and all, except I’m too mannerly to tell you that you’re an ignorant numpty. Until you force me to do so, that is.’

Devil kept a straight face. ‘I am very sorry, and you are quite right. I was rude and tactless. Will you forgive me?’

He held out his hand and after only a moment’s hesitation the dwarf extended his own and they shook. This was a significant moment and they both chose to ignore it.

‘So I get a costume?’ Carlo persisted.

‘Allow me time to work out the details of our drama, and we will have the finest costume in London sewn for you.’

Then Devil unbuttoned his waistcoat and put it aside before rolling up his shirtsleeves. From the heap of timbers he selected and held up one pair of cheap chair legs, roughly turned and bristling with splinters. He was no master carpenter, but he had built plenty of stage devices in the past. This one would have to be the best of them.

‘Let’s get to work,’ he said.

The lantern light threw up their shadows, large and small, against the dirty wall. For the rest of the night the coffin maker’s workshop was as loud with the sounds of sawing and hammering as during the daylight hours.

Dawn was breaking when the two men finally emerged into the street. Carlo was grey with fatigue, rubbing his face and stretching to ease his aching body. Devil looked as alert and handsome as he had done before their night’s work started.

‘I will need a coffin myself if I don’t get some rest,’ Carlo grumbled. ‘I’m going back to your place for a sleep.’

‘I shall see you later,’ Devil replied.

He walked through the tiny alleys and the crowded courts of the area that housed timber merchants, furniture makers, metalworkers, printers and block makers, and emerged into Clerkenwell Road. The sky lightened from grey to pearl and the cobbles underfoot glistened with damp. Birdsong rose from the eaves of the houses and the trees in St John’s Square, competing with the rumble of carters’ wheels. Devil walked slowly, savouring the bite of the chill air and the smell of frying kidneys that drifted from an open window. In Farringdon Road the omnibuses were already crowded and a steady stream of black-coated clerks flowed out of the railway station. Devil was washed along in the tide of men, passing under the florid ironwork of the new viaduct and on down to Ludgate Circus. When he glanced up Ludgate Hill he saw that the dome of St Paul’s was rinsed in the glowing light of the rising sun. He stopped to admire the view. It didn’t often occur to him that the city was beautiful. In general he thought it was the opposite but today, with the satisfaction of a good night’s work completed and the gold ribbon decorating his dreams, he saw its richness and promise reflected in all the domes and roofs and sun-gilded windows.

He was whistling with satisfaction as he paced along the Strand and reached the Palmyra theatre at last.

The frontage looked the same, still boarded up and whiskered with buddleia stalks. Down the side alley, however, there was a change. A heavy new door had been fitted, secured with iron hinges and locks. For good measure a padlock and chain were attached to a massive bolt. That was all good. The threshold and step were spread with sawdust. Devil stooped down and rubbed the damp grains between his fingers. There was work being undertaken here, just as there was at the coffin maker’s. Then, not hoping for anything, he put his shoulder to the door and pushed. It didn’t yield even by a fraction. He resorted to thumping on the door panels but no response came except from a knot of urchins looking out for trouble at the street corner.

‘Ain’t nobody in, mister,’ they jeered. ‘Forgot yer key, did yer?’

They raced away as soon as Devil headed for them. He walked along the flank of the building, running his fingertips over the flaking paint and crumbling stonework. The old theatre seemed to breathe in response to his touch.

‘Here I am,’ he muttered to it. ‘And we’ll see what we shall see, eh?’

Recalling the dim interior, he wanted nothing more than to explore the place properly, in daylight, and without the vulgar insistence of Jacko Grady at his shoulder. For one thing, the box trick he and Carlo had in mind would require trapdoors, and other installations beneath whatever kind of stage would replace the ruined one. He needed to inspect the whole area and take measurements for the construction of his cabinet. Clearly, though, this wasn’t going to happen today. He bestowed a last touch on one of the fluted pilasters flanking the ruined front doors, and looked upwards to the little cupola surmounting the building. He touched the brim of his bowler.

‘See you later.’ He smiled almost tenderly.

He had it in his mind to pay a visit to the wax modeller, who happened to be one of the very few of his acquaintances with any knowledge of the days before Devil Wix, when he had been Hector Crumhall. But this craftsman’s place of work was in Camden Town, a long way north of the Strand. Devil thought he would go home to his lodging first and snatch an hour’s sleep, if that were to prove possible against the racket of Carlo’s snoring.

The series of alleys, growing ever narrower, twistier and more foetid as they led towards the rookery, obliterated all Devil’s benign thoughts regarding the city’s early-morning loveliness. He passed Annie Fowler, already seated in her doorway with a cup of gin, but he ignored her. The low door of the house where he lodged creaked open and Devil stepped inside. A heavy figure immediately placed itself in front of him.

‘Good morning, Mrs Hayes,’ Devil greeted his landlady. ‘It’s a fine day.’

Mrs Hayes folded her arms. ‘It may well be. For those who don’t have to see a blasted midget creeping up and down their stairs, in and out at all hours. What’s that creature doing in my house?’

‘He is my associate, Carlo Boldoni the famous theatre performer, until recently a member of Morris’s Amazing Performing Midgets, no less, and fresh from performing before the crowned heads of Europe …’

She came one step closer to him. ‘Do I care who he is? I can tell you straight off, I do not. He is a dwarf and I find he’s sleeping under my roof without so much as a handshake. I don’t care for him. This is a respectable house.’

‘It is a temporary arrangement, Mrs Hayes. You see, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go at present and I am a kind-hearted fellow. I suffer for my kindness, but I hope you will understand.’ Devil’s voice grew softer. ‘I believe you will, Maria, of all women. You have shown such particular kindness to me.’

Maria Hayes hesitated. She was a large woman in her forties with some of the prettiness of her youth still in her face, her black hair unpinned, and the white folds of her body unconfined by stays. Devil might have assumed she had only just stepped out of her bed, had he not known that she could be encountered in a similar state of undress at any hour of the day. She raised a hand and brushed a stray coil of hair from her flushed cheek.

‘I have, Mr Wix. I have been as kind as I could be.’

Devil lifted a matching coil of hair from the opposite cheek. They were already standing close together and the confined space of the vestibule offered no latitude. Devil used his elbow to nudge open the door of the landlady’s room. It was not a very much more spacious resort. One glance was enough to reveal that Mr Hayes was absent, as usual, nor was there any sign of the slow-witted son of the house.

Maria’s mouth was only six inches from his. He leaned down to close the distance. Her lips obligingly parted.

After the kiss Devil ran his hands over her breasts. He put his mouth to her ear.

‘Tell me, is My Lady Laycock at home today?’

Maria smirked. ‘I’ll have to see if Her Ladyship is receiving visitors this morning.’

‘Won’t you tell her Mr Devil Wix is calling?’

Maria grasped his wrist and yanked him over the threshold. Devil kicked the door shut and she slid the bolt behind them. He put his arms round her and they half waltzed to the stuffy alcove with the bed concealed behind a curtain. The sheets were far from clean and the bolster leaked feathers from its case of greasy ticking. Devil untied the strings of Maria’s chemise and the thought of the golden ribbon came happily into his mind again. His landlady pressed herself against him and her tongue sought his.

‘I find she is at home, and waiting for you,’ she murmured. Her fingers were tugging at his shirt buttons, then her hand moved downwards. ‘It’s a good name for you, wherever you got it. Devil by nature as well, aren’t you?’

Cheerfully Devil tipped her backwards on to the bed and pulled up her grubby petticoat. He got busy, at the same time tasting the sweat of her neck and the rankness of her black hair.

Afterwards they lay on the mattress with a coil of bedding twisted round them. Maria was an energetic performer and Devil hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours. His eyelids were so heavy that he was wondering how he was going to get up the stairs to his own bed. A sudden thumping on the door jolted him upright quickly enough, however. Groaning at the thought of Mr Hayes on the threshold he pulled his clothing together. Maria went undressed to the tiny window and stuck her head out.

‘Stop that racket. Get down to Ransome’s and bring me back a jug of porter,’ she yelled. From this exchange Devil understood that it was her son at the door, not the husband. When she pulled herself back into the room they grinned at each other.

‘You’ll wet your whistle?’ Maria asked.

Devil took her reddened hands and kissed the knuckles of each.

‘I have to go to work, my lovely girl.’

The delighted smile she gave him was almost shy, and her blush did make her look girlish. Devil slid out of the room and softly closed the door before she could mention the dwarf again. Aching for rest he climbed the bare flights of stairs, past doorways to rooms hardly larger than cupboards, which nevertheless housed families of lodgers, until he reached the attic. As he had expected he found Carlo lying on his makeshift bed, fast asleep and snoring like an engine. Devil kicked him as he stepped past, but this had no effect at all. Ten minutes later, his own snores provided a counterpoint.

In the two weeks that followed Devil worked harder than he had ever done, and he had laboured for long, bitter hours on plenty of occasions before this. Nights with Carlo at the coffin maker’s followed on from late evenings of performing his own act at whichever of the taphouses or small halls would offer him a booking. He took the money wherever he could get it. One evening he arrived at the workshop still in his stage costume, such was his eagerness to resume work on the cabinet trick. Carlo eyed him as he discarded his greatcoat.

‘What’s this?’ the dwarf sniggered.

Devil preened. He wore a suit of red cloth, cut to fit so snugly that it might have been a second skin.

‘Ah, my performance costume? It is for a trick called the Infernal Flames. Tonight at Prewett’s they were begging for more.’ This was not strictly true, but Devil was always good at reinterpreting reality in his own favour. ‘But for our grand opening at the Palmyra we will do far better than Jacko Grady has bargained for.’

They turned to their work. The cabinet interior was empty except for a double shelf. Tonight’s work was to line all the inside surfaces with a seamless layer of jet-black velvet. Devil undid a draper’s brown-paper package and smoothed a bolt of fabric on a swept circle of floor. He took a tailor’s tape and called out the measurements in feet and inches and Carlo pencilled them on a sheet of paper. Each measurement was taken twice, to ensure accuracy. The velvet had been expensive to buy and none of Devil’s techniques of persuasion had achieved even a pennyworth of discount. Carlo set to with a pair of shears. He was a dextrous worker and the first neat rectangle was soon cut to the precise size. Devil had applied brush and glue to the cabinet wall and with some cursing and arguing they succeeded in sticking the light-absorbing material in place.

Halfway through the task they stood back to gauge the effect. The finished walls of the box seemed to melt into black space. Even Carlo the perfectionist was pleased.

‘I have some more good news,’ Devil announced. ‘Tomorrow your head will be ready. I am to collect it after we leave here.’

‘At last. So we must begin to work up the beheading. I’ll be needing a suit of tall clothing.’

Devil sighed. There was a deal of investing to be done before any return could be hoped for, but still his confidence held.

Devil and Carlo together had visited the wax-modelling studio of Mr Jasper Button in Camden Town, and Carlo had made his way there alone on three subsequent occasions. He had sat patient and motionless on a stool, with the smells of warm wax and linseed oil and turpentine all round him, while the modeller built up sub-layers and then sculpted pellets of wax over a wire frame. On the last visit the modeller had sorted through a basket filled with plaited hanks of cut human hair, holding up one specimen after another next to Carlo’s head and muttering to himself as he searched for the best match. He ran his fingers through the dwarf’s abundant locks and pulled at the sprouting tufts of his eyebrows.

‘Where does it all come from?’ Carlo had asked.

‘Plenty of people hereabouts are glad to sell the hair off their heads for a shilling or two.’ Jasper held up a long plait of rich copper-gold. ‘This one belonged to a woman who knew that all her youth and loveliness shone out of it, but the day came when she had nothing else to sell. Her hair was just the start of it.’ He dropped the plait into the basket again.

‘If this was quality work, I’d be using human hair on you. See? This is the closest for colour and texture.’ He brandished a salt-and-pepper bunch next to the dwarf’s face and Carlo twisted away from it in disgust. ‘Devil Wix won’t pay for that, of course. You and your model will be making do with an identical pair of horsehair wigs. What are you supposed to be? The good philosopher, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll be generous to you both and give you your eyebrows in real hair.’

Carlo stared at the egg-bald wax head on its stand. The coffin maker’s was creepy enough, but this shadowy place deep in the wrecked streets surrounding the railway yards more than matched it. There was a box containing dozens of glass eyes on the floor at his feet, all unwinking and all fixed on him.

‘You and Wix know each other from back when?’

The other held up a loop of wire, measuring by eye the breadth of skin between Carlo’s brows.

‘A long time.’

No more was forthcoming.

Without meeting the gaze of the glass eyes Carlo tried another topic on the modeller. ‘Odd sort of a job you do, wouldn’t you say?’

Jasper gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘My waxwork of Miss Nellie Bromley in Trial by Jury is the favourite figure in the Baker Street exhibition. I’d not call my artistic work odd. Not by comparison with your own, for example.’

Carlo scowled but said nothing. After that they had posed and modelled in silence.

After a long night at the coffin maker’s Devil walked up from Holborn to Euston and thence along the sooty roads that led to Camden Town. All along the way rough tent encampments lay beside the railway lines and under the arches and bridges. The men, women and children who existed here were black-faced and their ragged clothes were black, as were the heaps of brick rubble and even the dead leaves hanging on the few weak trees. Black smoke billowed from cooking fires and smouldering brick kilns, and the occasional threatening figure lurched out of this murk and mumbled at him. By shrinking inwardly Devil made himself seem smaller and darker too, and he passed through these places without difficulty.

By the time he rattled the latch of the studio door Jasper Button was already at work.

‘Jas? You there?’

‘Where else would I be?’

‘I’d say anywhere you could be, if only you had the choice.’

Jasper ignored him. The streets outside might be warrens of decrepit houses and belching chimneys and gaunt sheds but his studio was snug enough. A blanket hung over the doorway to keep in the warmth, there was a coal fire in a narrow little grate and a black kettle on the hob.

‘You want some tea?’

‘You don’t have anything stronger?’

It was a question that didn’t expect an answer. Jasper Button never touched a drop, and given what had happened to his mother and father Devil understood why not. The modeller warmed an earthenware teapot and lifted the kettle using a knitted potholder.