THE MAGIC EGG
“Don’t take it so to heart, Joe,” begged Harry, after a moment’s pause.
“I didn’t mean to spring it on you this way. I thought maybe you knew
something about it.”
“I didn’t know a thing!” exclaimed Joe. Professor Rosello and the boy
helper were busy putting away their apparatus, so Joe and Harry could
talk together for a time. “How did they come to accuse me?” Joe asked,
after a pause.
“Well, you ran away, you know,” began Harry. “Of course that wasn’t so
bad, considering what you had to put up with. And the same night you
went off, the deacon was robbed.”
“Of much?”
“To hear him tell it you’d think it was. About a hundred dollars of his
money and nearly forty dollars of his wife’s.”
“She kept hers in the clock and his was in the desk,” said Joe.
“Better not let any one else hear you say that,” Harry cautioned him.
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll only be more suspicious of you, seeing you knew where
the money was kept.”
“Oh, that isn’t anything. I couldn’t very well help knowing, being in
the house all the while. But was anything else taken?”
“Yes, some valuable papers.”
“And what about a fire?” asked Joe.
“Well, the deacon says he heard a noise, got up to see what it was, and
saw some one getting out of the window near his desk. Whoever it was
kicked over the lamp, which exploded. The deacon says he knows you
didn’t mean to start the fire.”
“What made him think it was I getting out the window?”
“He didn’t—that is, not at the time. But when he went to call you, and
found you weren’t in your room, then he jumped to the conclusion that
you had taken the money and papers and climbed out of the window.”
“I didn’t do either,” Joe said. “I went out the door in a hurry when I
heard the deacon after me. That is, I thought I heard him. I’m beginning
to believe now it was the noise made by the real burglars that
frightened me. But is that all the evidence they have against me?”
“No, Hen Sylvester and Tim Donovan saw you running away in the middle of
the night, and jump the midnight freight. They chased after you and
fired some shots, but you wouldn’t stop.”
“By Jove! That’s right!” cried Joe. “That _will_ look suspicious.”
“Then you _did_ run away from them?” asked Harry.
“Yes, but not because I had robbed the deacon. I was late for the
freight. You see it pulled out earlier than usual because there wasn’t
so much of the fireworks to load, on account of the fire. I didn’t want
to miss it, and I ran. I wouldn’t stop when the constables called to me.
Yes, that sure will look suspicious;” and Joe shook his head.
“But we don’t believe you did it,” said Harry. “Tom, Charlie, Henry and
I will stick to you, Joe.”
“Thanks. Did Tom get his suit all right?”
“Oh, yes. But I sure was surprised when I saw you come out on the stage
to-night. We hadn’t any idea where you’d gone, though Deacon Blackford
said he guessed you’d join some circus.”
“This isn’t quite a circus,” said Joe. “But I like it,” and then he told
his chum his experiences since joining his fortunes with those of
Professor Rosello.
“Say, it’s great!” cried Harry, with sparkling eyes. “I wish I were a
magician.”
“Oh, I’m not one yet,” replied Joe. “It takes a lot more experience than
I’ve had. But I’m learning. How did you like the show?”
“Fine! That watch trick of yours was a dandy. You didn’t really smash
the watch and put it together again, did you, Joe?”
“Of course not. There was a trick about it, but I don’t feel at liberty
to tell you how it’s done. You see the trick, in a way, belongs to
Professor Rosello.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to tell me. It would spoil it for me when I saw it
again. I’m coming to-morrow night.”
“Come on,” urged Joe. “Here, I’ll write you out a pass. It isn’t often I
get a chance to do that for a friend.”
They were showing two nights in this particular town, and Professor
Rosello gladly allowed Joe to give Harry a free ticket.
“Say, you’re sure making out better than you ever would in Bedford,
Joe,” commented his chum, as they parted that evening.
“Yes, I couldn’t stand it there. The deacon wasn’t fair to me.”
“Well, we boys miss you,” Harry said.
“Give ’em my regards when you go back,” Joe suggested, “and tell the
deacon I never took his money.”
“I sure will, Joe.”
A few nights later, Joe, in his capacity as assistant, was helping the
professor, who was doing an egg trick—balancing the egg on the end of a
straw. The straws were genuine ones, as were the eggs. The secret lay in
a little piece of apparatus, so small as to be readily palmed almost
before the very eyes of the audience. It consisted of a little celluloid
cup, so shallow as to be almost flat, but concave enough to hold the end
of an egg. There was a little stem, half an inch long, on the lower side
of this celluloid cup.
After the professor had invited some one in the audience to make an egg
stand up on end on the point of a straw, which the person, of course,
could not do, the professor did it himself, deftly slipping the
projection of the celluloid cup into the hollow of the straw. The egg
then stood up in the little piece of celluloid, which, being the exact
color of an egg and as thin as the shell, was never noticed.
As Joe watched this familiar trick being done, there came into his mind
the idea for another one, even more simple, and requiring no apparatus
whatever except an ordinary glass jar. He spoke to the professor about
it the next day, and was given permission to work it.
Just before he “put on” his watch trick the next night, Joe announced
that he would try a little experiment with an egg.
“You all know that a perfectly fresh egg will sink in water,” he said.
“In fact, that is a test for a fresh egg. Now I have here three
perfectly good and fresh eggs. I know they are fresh because I bought
them this afternoon from your popular grocer, Mr. McCabe, and he told me
he never sold any _but_ fresh eggs.”
There was a laugh at this, and every one turned to look at the grocer,
who was in the audience, a fact that Joe knew, for he had really
purchased the eggs at the grocery. Thus he had his audience with him at
the start, a reference to a local personage from the stage by a
traveling performer invariably producing an effect.
“Now as you all know,” Joe went on, “a fresh egg sinks in water. You can
prove it at home, and I’ll prove it here for you. Just pick out any one
of these eggs,” he said, and, extending them on a plate to a woman in
the audience, he took from her the egg she picked up.
“The lady looks like a good cook, she ought to know good eggs,” said
Joe, and again there was a laugh.
“Now I’ll just put this egg in this jar of water,” went on the young
magician; “but instead of sinking, when I speak the magic word, it will
remain floating half-way between the top of the water and the bottom of
the jar. Now watch me closely.”
Joe gently lowered the egg into the jar of water that stood on a table
near him. Slowly the egg settled through the limpid fluid.
“By the magic of this wand, I command you to stop!” cried Joe, as the
egg was half-way down, and as he waved his stick the egg did stop
midway.
“You see how easy it is,” the young performer continued. “I did not
touch the egg after I placed it in the water, nor did I approach the
glass jar. You may examine both in a moment. I will now dissolve the
magic spell I have cast about the egg. With my wand I make some
passes—so——”
Joe put his wand into the water and stirred it about the egg, but did
not touch it. In a second the egg slowly sank to the bottom of the jar,
to the mystification of the audience.
“You may think there is some trick about it,” said Joe. “But any one of
you is at liberty to try and make the egg halt half-way down, as I did.
Will you try it?” he said to the woman who had picked out the egg.
She blushed and shook her head.
“Then you, please,” and Joe indicated a young man, who, sheepishly
enough, came up on the stage. Joe handed him the jar of water, the young
man reached down into it, got the egg and put it in the jar as Joe had
done. But the egg at once sank to the bottom, and though the young man
tried again, he had no success.
“You see, it’s magic,” laughed Joe, as he made ready for his smashed
watch trick.