“And you would be wrong. I am of the last class I mentioned. There is only one sport of any interest to me in life, and that is the opportunity of making capital out of my fellow humans. You see, I am candid with you, Mr. Hatteras!”
“Pray excuse me. But you know my name! As I have never, to my knowledge, set eyes on you before, would you mind telling me how you became acquainted with it?”
“With every pleasure. But before I do so I think it only fair to tell you that you will not believe my explanation. And yet it should convince you. At any rate we’ll try. In your right-hand top waistcoat pocket you have three cards.” Here he leant his head on his hands and shut his eyes. “One is crinkled and torn, but it has written on it, in pencil, the name of Edward Braithwaite, Macquarrie Street, Sydney. I presume the name is Braithwaite, but the t and e are almost illegible. The second is rather a high sounding one—the Hon. Sylvester Wetherell, Potts Point, Sydney, New South Wales, and the third is, I take it, your own, Richard Hatteras. Am I right?”
I put my fingers in my pocket, and drew out what it contained—a half-sovereign, a shilling, a small piece of pencil, and three cards. The first, a well-worn piece of pasteboard, bore, surely enough, the name of Edward Braithwaite, and was that of the solicitor with whom I transacted my business in Sydney; the second was given me by my sweetheart’s father the day before we left Australia; and the third was certainly my own.
Was this witchcraft or only some clever conjuring trick? I asked myself the question, but could give it no satisfactory answer. At any rate you may be sure it did not lessen my respect for my singular companion.
“Ah! I am right then!” he cried exultingly. “Isn’t it strange how the love of being right remains with us, when we think we have safely combatted every other self-conceit. Well, Mr. Hatteras, I am very pleased to have made your acquaintance. Somehow I think we are destined to meet again—where I cannot say. At any rate, let us hope that that meeting will be as pleasant and successful as this has been.”
But I hardly heard what he said. I was still puzzling my brains over his extraordinary conjuring trick—for trick I am convinced it was. He had risen and was slowly drawing on his gloves when I spoke.
“I have been thinking over those cards,” I said, “and I am considerably puzzled. How on earth did you know they were there?”
“If I told you, you would have no more faith in my powers. So with your permission I will assume the virtue of modesty. Call it a conjuring trick, if you like. Many curious things are hidden under that comprehensive term. But that is neither here nor there. Before I go would you like to see one more?”
“Very much, indeed, if it’s as good as the last!” I replied.
In the window stood a large glass dish, half full of water and having a dark brown fly paper floating on the surface. He brought it across to the table at which I sat, and having drained the water into a jug near by, left the paper sticking to the bottom.
This done, he took a tiny leather case from his pocket and a small bottle out of that again. From this bottle he poured a few drops of some highly pungent liquid on to the paper, with the result that it grew black as ink and threw off a tiny vapour, which licked the edges of the bowl and curled upwards in a faint spiral column.
“There, Mr. Hatteras, this is a—well, a trick—I learned from an old woman in Benares. It is a better one than the last and will repay your interest. If you will look on that paper for a moment, and try to concentrate your attention, you will see something that will, I think, astonish you.”
Hardly believing that I should see anything at all I looked. But for some seconds without success. My scepticism, however, soon left me. At first I saw only the coarse grain of the paper and the thin vapour rising from it. Then the knowledge that I was gazing into a dish vanished, I forgot my companion and the previous conjuring trick. I saw only a picture opening out before me—that of a handsomely furnished room, in which was a girl sitting in an easy chair crying as if her heart were breaking. The room I had never seen before, but the girl I should have known among a thousand. She was Phyllis, my sweetheart!
I looked and looked, and as I gazed at her I heard her call my name. “Oh, Dick! Dick! come to me!”
Instantly I sprang to my feet, meaning to cross the room to her. Next moment I became aware of a loud crash. The scene vanished, my senses came back to me, and to my astonishment I found myself standing alongside the overturned restaurant table. The glass dish lay on the floor shattered into a thousand fragments. My friend, the conjuror, had disappeared.
Having righted the table again, I went downstairs and explained my misfortune. When I had paid my bill I took my departure, more troubled in mind than I cared to confess. That it was only what he had called it, a conjuring trick, I felt I ought to be certain, but still it was clever and uncanny enough to render me very uncomfortable.
In vain I tried to drive the remembrance of the scene I had witnessed from my brain, but it would not be dispelled. At length, to satisfy myself, I resolved that if
