"Yes, sir."
"What's up?"
She shook her head sadly. "'E keeps on calling for vittles, sir.
'_Eavy_ vittles 'e wants. I get 'im what I can. Pork 'e's had, sooit
puddin', sossiges, noo bread. Everythink like that. Left outside, if you
please, and me go away. 'E's eatin', sir, somethink _awful_."
There came a piping bawl from inside the door: "That Formalyn?"
"That you, Pyecraft?" I shouted, and went and banged the door.
"Tell her to go away."
I did.
Then I could hear a curious pattering upon the door, almost like some one
feeling for the handle in the dark, and Pyecraft's familiar grunts.
"It's all right," I said, "she's gone."
But for a long time the door didn't open.
I heard the key turn. Then Pyecraft's voice said, "Come in."
I turned the handle and opened the door. Naturally I expected to see
Pyecraft.
Well, you know, he wasn't there!
I never had such a shock in my life. There was his sitting-room in a state
of untidy disorder, plates and dishes among the books and writing things,
and several chairs overturned, but Pyecraft----
"It's all right, old man; shut the door," he said, and then I discovered
him.
There he was, right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as
though some one had glued him to the ceiling. His face was anxious and
angry. He panted and gesticulated. "Shut the door," he said. "If that
woman gets hold of it----"
I shut the door, and went and stood away from him and stared.
"If anything gives way and you tumble down," I said, "you'll break your
neck, Pyecraft."
"I wish I could," he wheezed.
"A man of your age and weight getting up to kiddish gymnastics----"
"Don't," he said, and looked agonised.
"I'll tell you," he said, and gesticulated.
"How the deuce," said I, "are you holding on up there?"
And then abruptly I realised that he was not holding on at all, that he
was floating up there--just as a gas-filled bladder might have floated in
the same position. He began a struggle to thrust himself away from the
ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. "It's that prescription," he
panted, as he did so. "Your great-gran----"
He took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and it
gave way, and he flew back to the ceiling again, while the picture smashed
on to the sofa. Bump he went against the ceiling, and I knew then why he
was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his person. He
tried again more carefully, coming down by way of the mantel.
It was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat,
apoplectic-looking man upside down and trying to get from the ceiling
to the floor. "That prescription," he said. "Too successful."
"How?"
"Loss of weight--almost complete."
And then, of course, I understood.
"By Jove, Pyecraft," said I, "what you wanted was a cure for fatness! But
you always called it weight. You would call it weight."
Somehow I was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time.
"Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He
kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a
flag on a windy day.
"That table," he said, pointing, "is solid mahogany and very heavy. If you
can put me under that----"
I did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while I stood
on his hearthrug and talked to him.
I lit a cigar. "Tell me," I said, "what happened?"
"I took it," he said.
"How did it taste?"
"Oh, _beastly_!"
I should fancy they all did. Whether one regards the ingredients or
the probable compound or the possible results, almost all my
great-grandmother's remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily
uninviting. For my own part----
"I took a little sip first."
"Yes?"
"And as I felt lighter and better after an hour, I decided to take the
draught."
"My dear Pyecraft!"
"I held my nose," he explained. "And then I kept on getting lighter and
lighter--and helpless, you know."
He gave way suddenly to a burst of passion. "What the goodness am I to
_do?_" he said.
"There's one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn't do. If you
go out of doors you'll go up and up." I waved an arm upward. "They'd have
to send Santos-Dumont after you to bring you down again."
"I suppose it will wear off?"
I shook my head. "I don't think you can count on that," I said.
And then there was another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent
chairs and banged the floor. He behaved just as I should have expected a
great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circumstances--that
is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and of my great-grandmother with an
utter want of discretion.
"I never asked you to take the stuff," I said.
And generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, I sat down
in his armchair and began to talk to him in a sober, friendly fashion.
I pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself,
and that it had almost an air of poetical justice. He had eaten too much.
This he disputed, and for a time we argued the point.
He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson.
"And then," said I, "you committed the sin of euphuism. You called it, not
Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You----"
He interrupted to say that he recognised all that. What was he to
_do?_
I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to
the really sensible part of the business. I suggested that it would not be
difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his hands----
"I can't sleep," he said.
But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to
make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with
tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button at the side. He
would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said; and after some
squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards it was quite delightful to see
the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which the good lady took all these
amazing inversions.) He could have a library ladder in his room, and all
his meals could be laid on the top of his bookcase. We also hit on an
ingenious device by which he could get to the floor whenever he wanted,
which was simply to put the _British Encyclopaedia_ (tenth edition)
on the top of his open shelves. He just pulled out a couple of volumes and
held on, and down he came. And we agreed there must be iron staples along
the skirting, so that he could cling to those whenever he wanted to get
about the room on the lower level.
As we got on with the thing I found myself almost keenly interested. It
was I who called in the housekeeper and broke matters to her, and it was I
chiefly who fixed up the inverted bed. In fact, I spent two whole days at
his flat. I am a handy, interfering sort of man with a screw-driver, and I
made all sorts of ingenious adaptations for him--ran a wire to bring his
bells within reach, turned all his electric lights up instead of down, and
so on. The whole affair was extremely curious and interesting to me, and
it was delightful to think of Pyecraft like some great, fat blow-fly,
crawling about on his ceiling and clambering round the lintel of his doors
from one room to another, and never, never, never coming to the club any
more...
Then, you know, my fatal ingenuity got the better of me. I was sitting by
his fire drinking his whisky, and he was up in his favourite corner by the
cornice, tacking a Turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me.
"By Jove, Pyecraft!" I said, "all this is totally unnecessary."
And before I could calculate the complete consequences of my notion I
blurted it out. "Lead underclothing," said I, and the mischief was done.
Pyecraft received the thing almost in tears. "To be right ways up
again----" he said.
I gave him the whole secret before I saw where it would take me. "Buy
sheet lead," I said, "stamp it into discs. Sew 'em all over your
underclothes until you have enough. Have lead-soled boots, carry a bag of
solid lead, and the thing is done! Instead of being a prisoner here you
may go abroad again, Pyecraft; you may travel----"
A still happier idea came to me. "You need never fear a shipwreck. All you
need do is just slip off some or all of your clothes, take the necessary
amount of luggage in your hand, and float up in the air----"
In his emotion he dropped the tack-hammer within an ace of my head. "By
Jove!" he said, "I shall be able to come back to the club again."
"The thing pulled me up short. By Jove!" I said, faintly. "Yes. Of
course--you will."
He did. He does. There he sits behind me now, stuffing--as I live!--a
third go of buttered teacake. And no one in the whole world knows--except
his housekeeper and me---that he weighs practically nothing; that he is a
mere boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere clouds in clothing,
_niente, nefas_, the most inconsiderable of men. There he sits
watching until I have done this writing. Then, if he can, he will waylay
me. He will come billowing up to me...
He will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it doesn't
feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing off a little. And always
somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say, "The secret's
keeping, eh? If any one knew of it--I should be so ashamed... Makes
a fellow look such a fool, you know. Crawling about on a ceiling and all
that..."
And now to elude Pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable strategic
position between me and the door.
XXIX.
THE MAGIC SHOP.
I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or
twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens,
wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick,
packs of cards that _looked_ all right, and all that sort of thing,
but never had I thought of going in until one day, almost without warning,
Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted
himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. I had not
thought the place was there, to tell the truth--a modest-sized frontage in
Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run
about just out of patent incubators,--but there it was sure enough. I had
fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or round the corner in Oxford
Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible
it had been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here it was
now quite indisputably, and the fat end of Gip's pointing finger made a
noise upon the glass.
"If I was rich," said Gip, dabbing a finger at the Disappearing Egg, "I'd
buy myself that. And that"--which was The Crying Baby, Very Human--"and
that," which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card asserted, "Buy One
and Astonish Your Friends."
"Anything," said Gip, "will disappear under one of those cones. I have
read about it in a book.
"And there, dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny--only they've put it this
way up so's we can't see how it's done."
Gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to
enter the shop or worry in any way; only, you know, quite unconsciously,
he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear.
"That," he said, and pointed to the Magic Bottle.
"If you had that?" I said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with a
sudden radiance.
"I could show it to Jessie," he said, thoughtful as ever of others.
"It's less than a hundred days to your birthday, Gibbles," I said, and
laid my hand on the door-handle.
Gip made no answer, but his grip tightened on my finger, and so we came
into the shop.
It was no common shop this; it was a magic shop, and all the prancing
precedence Gip would have taken in the matter of mere toys was wanting. He
left the burthen of the conversation to me.
It was a little, narrow shop, not very well lit, and the door-bell pinged
again with a plaintive note as we closed it behind us. For a moment or
so we were alone and could glance about us. There was a tiger in
_papier-mâché_ on the glass case that covered, the low counter--a
grave, kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a methodical manner; there
were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of
magic fish-bowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that
shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor were magic mirrors; one to
draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs,
and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while, we were
laughing at these the shopman, as I suppose, came in.
At any rate, there he was behind the counter--a curious, sallow, dark man,
with one ear larger than the other and a chin like the toe-cap of a boot.
"What can we have the pleasure?" he said, spreading his long magic fingers
on the glass case; and so with a start we were aware of him.
"I want," I said, "to buy my little boy a few simple tricks."
"Legerdemain?" he asked. "Mechanical? Domestic?"
"Anything amusing?" said I.
"Um!" said the shopman, and scratched his head for a moment as if
thinking. Then, quite distinctly, he drew from his head a glass ball.
"Something in this way?" he said, and held it out.
The action was unexpected. I had seen the trick done at entertainments
endless times before--it's part of the common stock of conjurers--but I
had not expected it here. "That's good," I said, with a laugh.
"Isn't it?" said the shopman.
Gip stretched out his disengaged hand to take this object and found merely
a blank palm.
"It's in your pocket," said the shopman, and there it was!
"How much will that be?" I asked.
"We make no charge for glass balls," said the shopman politely. "We get
them"--he picked one out of his elbow as he spoke--"free." He produced
another from the back of his neck, and laid it beside its predecessor on
the counter. Gip regarded his glass ball sagely, then directed a look of
inquiry at the two on the counter, and finally brought his round-eyed
scrutiny to the shopman, who smiled. "You may have those two," said the
shopman, "and, if you _don't_ mind one from my mouth. _So!_"
Gip counselled me mutely for a moment, and then in a profound silence put
away the four balls, resumed my reassuring finger, and nerved himself for
the next event.
"We get all our smaller tricks in that way," the shopman remarked.
I laughed in the manner of one who subscribes to a jest. "Instead of going
to the wholesale shop," I said. "Of course, it's cheaper."
"In a way," the shopman said. "Though we pay in the end. But not so
heavily--as people suppose... Our larger tricks, and our daily provisions
and all the other things we want, we get out of that hat... And you know,
sir, if you'll excuse my saying it, there _isn't_ a wholesale shop,
not for Genuine Magic goods, sir. I don't know if you noticed our
inscription--the Genuine Magic Shop." He drew a business card from his
cheek and handed it to me. "Genuine," he said, with his finger on the
word, and added, "There is absolutely no deception, sir."
He seemed to be carrying out the joke pretty thoroughly, I thought.
He turned to Gip with a smile of remarkable affability. "You, you know,
are the Right Sort of Boy."
I was surprised at his knowing that, because, in the interests of
discipline, we keep it rather a secret even at home; but Gip received it
in unflinching silence, keeping a steadfast eye on him.
"It's only the Right Sort of Boy gets through that doorway."
And, as if by way of illustration, there came a rattling at the door, and
a squeaking little voice could be faintly heard. "Nyar! I _warn_ 'a
go in there, dadda, I WARN 'a go in there. Ny-a-a-ah!" and then the
accents of a downtrodden parent, urging consolations and propitiations.
"It's locked, Edward," he said.
"But it isn't," said I.
"It is, sir," said the shopman, "always--for that sort of child," and as
he spoke we had a glimpse of the other youngster, a little, white face,
pallid from sweet-eating and over-sapid food, and distorted by evil
passions, a ruthless little egotist, pawing at the enchanted pane. "It's
no good, sir," said the shopman, as I moved, with my natural helpfulness,
doorward, and presently the spoilt child was carried off howling.
"How do you manage that?" I said, breathing a little more freely.
"Magic!" said the shopman, with a careless wave of the hand, and behold!
sparks of coloured fire flew out of his fingers and vanished into the
shadows of the shop.
"You were saying," he said, addressing himself to Gip, "before you came
in, that you would like one of our 'Buy One and Astonish your Friends'
boxes?"
Gip, after a gallant effort, said "Yes."
"It's in your pocket."
And leaning over the counter--he really had an extraordinary long body--
this amazing person produced the article in the customary conjurer's
manner. "Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the
springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string box, from which he
drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off--
and, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. And then he lit a
candle at the nose of one of the ventriloquist's dummies, stuck one of his
fingers (which had become sealing-wax red) into the flame, and so sealed
the parcel. "Then there was the Disappearing Egg," he remarked, and
produced one from within my coat-breast and packed it, and also The Crying
Baby, Very Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready, and he
clasped them to his chest.
He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms
was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions. These, you
know, were _real_ Magics.
Then, with a start, I discovered something moving about in my hat--
something soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeon--no doubt
a confederate--dropped out and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into
a cardboard box behind the _papier-mâché_ tiger.
"Tut, tut!" said the shopman, dexterously relieving, me of my headdress;
"careless bird, and--as I live--nesting!"
He shook my hat, and shook out into his extended hand, two or three eggs,
a large marble, a watch, about half a dozen of the inevitable glass balls,
and then crumpled, crinkled paper, more and more and more, talking all the
time of the way in which people neglect to brush their hats _inside_
as well as out--politely, of course, but with a certain personal
application. "All sorts of things accumulate, sir... Not _you_, of
course, in particular... Nearly every customer... Astonishing what they
carry about with them..." The crumpled paper rose and billowed on the
counter more and more and more, until he was nearly hidden from us, until
he was altogether hidden, and still his voice went on and on. "We none of
us know what the fair semblance of a human being may conceal, Sir. Are we
all then no better than brushed exteriors, whited sepulchres-----"
His voice stopped--exactly like when you hit a neighbour's gramophone with
a well-aimed brick, the same instant silence--and the rustle of the paper
stopped, and everything was still...
"Have you done with my hat?" I said, after an interval.
There was no answer.
I stared at Gip, and Gip stared at me, and there were our distortions in
the magic mirrors, looking very rum, and grave, and quiet...
"I think we'll go now," I said. "Will you tell me how much all this comes
to?...
"I say," I said, on a rather louder note, "I want the bill; and my hat,
please."
It might have been a sniff from behind the paper pile...
"Let's look behind the counter, Gip," I said. "He's making fun of us."
I led Gip round the head-wagging tiger, and what do you think there was
behind the counter? No one at all! Only my hat on the floor, and a common
conjurer's lop-eared white rabbit lost in meditation, and looking as
stupid and crumpled as only a conjurer's rabbit can do. I resumed my hat,
and the rabbit lolloped a lollop or so out of my way.
"Dadda!" said Gip, in a guilty whisper.
"What is it, Gip?" said I.
"I _do_ like this shop, dadda."
"So should I," I said to myself, "if the counter wouldn't suddenly extend
itself to shut one off from the door." But I didn't call Gip's attention
to that. "Pussy!" he said, with a hand out to the rabbit as it came
lolloping past us; "Pussy, do Gip a magic!" and his eyes followed it as it
squeezed through a door I had certainly not remarked a moment before. Then
this door opened wider, and the man with one ear larger than the other
appeared again. He was smiling still, but his eye met mine with something
between amusement and defiance. "You'd like to see our showroom, sir," he
said, with an innocent suavity. Gip tugged my finger forward. I glanced at
the counter and met the shopman's eye again. I was beginning to think the
magic just a little too genuine. "We haven't _very_ much time," I
said. But somehow we were inside the showroom before I could finish that.
"All goods of the same quality," said the shopman, rubbing his flexible
hands together, "and that is the Best. Nothing in the place that isn't
genuine Magic, and warranted thoroughly rum. Excuse me, sir!"
I felt him pull at something that clung to my coat-sleeve, and then I saw
he held a little, wriggling red demon by the tail--the little creature bit
and fought and tried to get at his hand--and in a moment he tossed it
carelessly behind a counter. No doubt the thing was only an image of
twisted indiarubber, but for the moment--! And his gesture was exactly
that of a man who handles some petty biting bit of vermin. I glanced at
Gip, but Gip was looking at a magic rocking-horse. I was glad he hadn't
seen the thing. "I say," I said, in an undertone, and indicating Gip and
the red demon with my eyes, "you haven't many things like _that_
about, have you?"
"None of ours! Probably brought it with you," said the shopman--also in an
undertone, and with a more dazzling smile than ever. "Astonishing what
people _will_, carry about with them unawares!" And then to Gip, "Do
you see anything you fancy here?"
There were many things that Gip fancied there.
He turned to this astonishing tradesman with mingled confidence and
respect. "Is that a Magic Sword?" he said.
"A Magic Toy Sword. It neither bends, breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It
renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen.
Half a crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on
cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful--shield of safety,
sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility."
"Oh, dadda!" gasped Gip.
I tried to find out what they cost, but the shopman did not heed me.
He had got Gip now; he had got him away from my finger; he had embarked
upon the exposition of all his confounded stock, and nothing was going to
stop him. Presently I saw with a qualm of distrust and something very like
jealousy that Gip had hold of this person's finger as usually he has hold
of mine. No doubt the fellow was interesting, I thought, and had an
interestingly faked lot of stuff, really _good_ faked stuff,
still----
I wandered after them, saying very little, but keeping an eye on this
prestidigital fellow. After all, Gip was enjoying it. And no doubt when
the time came to go we should be able to go quite easily.
It was a long, rambling place, that showroom, a gallery broken up by
stands and stalls and pillars, with archways leading off to other
departments, in which the queerest-looking assistants loafed and stared at
one, and with perplexing mirrors and curtains. So perplexing, indeed, were
these that I was presently unable to make out the door by which we had
come.
The shopman showed Gip magic trains that ran without steam or clockwork,
just as you set the signals, and then some very, very valuable boxes of
soldiers that all came alive directly you took off the lid and said----I
myself haven't a very quick ear, and it was a tongue-twisting sound, but
Gip--he has his mother's ear--got it in no time. "Bravo!" said the
shopman, putting the men back into the box unceremoniously and handing it
to Gip. "Now," said the shopman, and in a moment Gip had made them all
alive again.
"You'll take that box?" asked the shopman.
"We'll take that box," said I, "unless you charge its full value. In which
case it would need a Trust Magnate----"
"Dear heart! _No!_" and the shopman swept the little men back again,
shut the lid, waved the box in the air, and there it was, in brown paper,
tied up and--_with Gip's full name and address on the paper!_
The shopman laughed at my amazement.