The audience is uneasy but curious. Presumably this is some kind of punishment but what is to follow? The punkah-wallah has again been sent on an errand and reappears bearing — a sword in its scabbard. It is Major Marmont’s, a thing reserved for ceremonial purposes surely. But no, because now the Major impatiently takes the scabbard from the boy and withdraws the sword. He examines the thin blade, which gleams in the light. Then, without warning, he turns and plunges it into the wicker basket. From within there comes a shriek which echoes round the audience. Again and again, like a man possessed, he plunges the sword into the basket, darting round to jab the point in from every side. All this while, the noises from inside diminish, turning from shrieks to cries to whimpers… to silence. Even worse than this, perhaps, blood starts to seep from the basket, dripping from between the wickerwork and gathering in a pool about the base. At last the Major’s fury is sated. He stops. His bloody sword droops in his hand.
It is too much for several of the women in the audience who shriek themselves hoarse and too much for at least one man, who gets up from his seat in the stalls and starts to clamber over his neighbours although whether he means to leave the theatre and summon help or to intervene himself, who knows?
But Major Marmont turns a stern eye on the audience and shakes his head. He waves the sword in the air once more. He gestures to the punkah-wallah who has been standing by all this time, horror-struck. The second boy walks warily towards the basket which stands centre stage. He lifts the lid. He peers into the interior. He looks up, horror turning to puzzlement. The Major himself peers inside. Together they tilt and angle the basket so that its interior is visible to all points of the house.
The basket is empty. No horrific corpse, no lacerated remains. Thank God for that! Then a stir from the back of the auditorium and a boy in white clothing is running down the aisle and scrambling across the pit. He leaps nimbly on to the stage. It is the boy from the basket, unharmed. Such a relief! Even the Major seems pleased. A smile splits his stern features. He pats the boy on the head. The punkah-wallah claps his hands in delight. The audience applauds.
The trio on stage turn their attention to the basket once more. There is no sign of blood, no pool of red on the boards. But the basket is no longer empty for from within its depths Major Marmont now plucks a coiled rope. He takes one end and throws it up into the air. The rope seems to hover for a moment of its own accord before beginning a sinuous ascent to the renewed sound of flute music from the pit. It stretches in a quivering line from the ground to a point below the top of the proscenium arch, seemingly held aloft by nothing at all. The music stops. By now a gentle dusk is descending on the scene. The snow-capped mountains of the backdrop are bathed in a golden light.
Suddenly from out of the tree there leaps a monkey. The audience gapes. The creature bounces up and down, it howls and it gibbers. It bares its teeth. It bounces on all fours to the footlights and stares beyond them, as if trying to pierce the darkness of the house. It capers round the Major and his boys before seizing the sword which the Major is still grasping. This wretched monkey handles the sword with the dexterity of a fencer, darting in the direction of the others, daring them to come near. Then it makes a jump for the rope. The rope sways under the monkey’s impact as, grasping the sword with one paw, it scrambles up the cord, a tangle of black fur and long limbs.
Major Marmont snaps his fingers at the punkah-wallah. His meaning is obvious. Follow that monkey! The boy does not hesitate but seizes the bottom of the rope and proceeds to climb hand over hand, fast enough but with less nimbleness than the monkey. The creature meantime has reached the point where the rope appears to terminate. And then an extraordinary thing occurs. The monkey continues its climb through the empty air until it vanishes into the shadows, its long prehensile feet waving in mockery below the proscenium arch. Urged on by the Major, the punkah-wallah follows until he seems to be climbing through nothing, and his bare feet too are the last sight the audience have of him.
There is a momentary pause in the action. A silence. Then the rope stretching up from the stage and into the shadows slackens and falls down in a coiled clatter. How is the boy (and the monkey) to get back down to the ground again? Without the rope it is a dangerous even fatal drop, at least twenty feet. But there are greater dangers. The monkey has the Major’s sword while the punkah-wallah is unarmed. Grunting sounds and gasps come from the area out of sight above the arch. Swishing noises, as of a blade slicing through the air. Gibbering and howling too.
The audience fear the worst. They hope for the worst. They are not to be disappointed. A pale object falls from the skies and lands with a terrible soft thump on the stage. The Major and the remaining boy, who have been gazing up with fixed expressions, start back. It is — it looks like — yes, a limb. A leg severed above the knee, all gouty with blood. Not a monkey’s leg but a delicate brown one. The punkah-wallah’s. This is followed by a positive shower of limbs and parts. A foot, a pair of hands, an arm, something dreadful which might have been a torso. That monkey is as keen as a surgeon. The audience shriek as one. If they’d had time to think, they would have been worried for their own safety. What would happen if this dreadful monkey escaped from the stage and ran amok through the house? They have never seen anything so shocking. They are thoroughly enjoying themselves. It is ghastly. It is delightful.
Another Disappearance
Tom and Helen Ansell were sitting with Major Marmont in his dressing room at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. He had sent them free tickets for the show, the wicker basket trick and the Indian rope trick. He insisted they join him afterwards, claiming that he wanted to speak to them. When the Ansells arrived after the show in the dressing room backstage, they saw an object they had not yet seen. It was, explained Marmont, the new disappearing cabinet he had been working on, a device even better than the Perseus. He called it the Goldoni.
‘Named after the famous Venetian magician of the eighteenth century. You’ve heard of him? No? Well, some say that he never existed.’
Tom and Helen were alone with the military magician. He had told Dilip Gopal to take himself and the boys to the nearest chop-house and to treat themselves to a slap-up supper to celebrate the end of the run. The Major lit a cigarette and poured a generous brandy for himself. He offered some to Tom and Helen but they refused, wanting to keep clear heads.
Like the rest of the audience, the Ansells were relieved to see the safe return of the punkah-wallah who’d ascended the rope. He appeared from the side of the stage, complete with all four limbs and quite unharmed. Tom recognized Alfred as the punkah-wallah (or perhaps Arthur) just as he thought it was probably Albert concealed inside the monkey costume. The monkey appeared from the opposite wing and he too took a bow.
The Ansells had been back in London for some weeks. Helen had horrified her mother all over again with a heavily edited account of what had happened up north, while Mrs Scott repeatedly blamed herself for despatching her daughter to persuade Aunt Julia against Eustace Flask. Tom gave a rather more detailed story to David Mackenzie and was pleased to see that even the sedate senior partner allowed his pipe to go out as he listened to the twists and turns of their adventures in Durham.
Events had brought about a kind of resolution to the double mission that Tom and Helen had been carrying out in the north. Sebastian Marmont never did complete the affidavit business since there was no chance of his recovering the Lucknow Dagger, the murder weapon used on Eustace Flask. The Dagger had been given by the Durham police for safe-keeping to Inspector Traynor (who brought it back to the Yard with the intention of donating it to the museum, whose delights he had promised to show to Rhoda Harcourt). And Aunt Julia’s infatuation with the medium was over — although no one apart from Septimus Sheridan was aware of her new interest in Madame Blavatsky.
Now, in company with Sebastian Marmont, they surveyed the whole business of the Durham Deception. The Major, however, seemed uneasy. After they had complimented him on the Indian rope trick, Helen said, ‘But it seems a rather ruthless departure for you, Major, that pretended killing in the basket, the limbs falling from the sky. My flesh crept.’
‘It was meant to, my dear,’ said the magician. But he spoke without his usual relish. ‘You would prefer me to do disappearances and read minds? You don’t like to think of me killing people?’
‘But that is what you did, isn’t it, Major?’ said Tom, sensing the time had come for a final explanation. Helen and he had talked about this moment before they arrived at the theatre, wondering how to get round to the subject.
