‘I don’t believe it will, but to offer you some of our astonishing new tricks will be a great pleasure.’
The cabinet was carried offstage and they followed it, leaving Grady at his vantage point. As soon as the stagehands deposited the piece Carlo pressed his ear to the mechanism that controlled the hidden doors.
‘The hinge is catching. It takes a full second longer for the door to spring. You might pay more attention to the act, Wix, and less to your personal ambitions,’ he grumbled.
‘You heard the audience tonight. My ambition will pay off, and then perhaps you will appreciate what I have been trying to do.’
‘No one will ever appreciate you as sincerely as you do yourself.’
Devil ignored him. The dwarf’s carping pessimism and sense of his own importance were irksome, but whenever he thought of reclaiming for himself his lodgings and his act – the two halves of his life, because he had nothing else – he was forced back to the bare truth that he needed Carlo more than the dwarf needed him.
‘Ten per cent of every house more than eighty per cent full,’ he murmured. ‘Tonight we were three-quarters sold.’ The ribbon of gold that had shone so enticingly in Devil’s dreams at the beginning of the enterprise had drooped and grown tarnished, but in recent days it had started to glitter all over again.
‘New hinges,’ Carlo bared his wolf’s teeth. ‘Tomorrow.’
Heinrich Bayer passed with Lucie in his arms, her unmarked satin slippers skimming an inch from the floor. She had a new costume, a narrow skirt of heavy oyster-coloured silk worn over a high bustle in the latest style. But it was the other automaton, the manikin glimpsed in Bayer’s studio, which occupied Devil’s thoughts.
He was going to need Carlo’s cooperation for a trick much more difficult to execute than the Philosophers illusion. The dwarf would have to be kept sweet.
‘Tomorrow, my friend, of course,’ he agreed in a voice as silken as Lucie’s gown.
If the fine art students were piqued by the apprentices’ appropriation of their theatre, they did not retaliate by withdrawing their support for it. Stark black cloaks became the preferred costume for a certain section of the house, and each night the swoop of the executioner’s blade and the crash of the head into the basket were greeted with a louder roar. The severed head’s words from the black depths of the cabinet carried a whispering echo as twenty others mouthed them from the stalls. With the warm swell of approval buoying him up, Devil’s snapping of the sword blade and plea for forgiveness found a real pathos that even Carlo could not fault. The smoke coiled with devilish effect in the flashes of blue and silver gaslight that were now, with long practice, perfectly synchronised. The bitter cascade of gold coins at the end drew a storm of applause.
The Execution of the Philosopher illusion had reached its point of perfection. Word of mouth spread from the students to their friends, their families, and their friends’ friends and families. The palm trees had caused their own stir, and there had even been a picture and a teasing paragraph about it in the London Illustrated News. For an entire week the number of seats sold was greater with each successive night. Devil quickly concluded that the rumbustious youths who had taken to attending performances in costume were also in some way responsible for the street decorations. So long as the business was not a plot of Jacko Grady’s, he did not much care what young gentlemen mysteriously did with their time and money. As patrons of the Palmyra went they were on the harmless side, and therefore more than welcome.
Two nights before Christmas Eve, two hundred people took their places for the evening performance.
‘Two hundred,’ Devil repeated to Carlo as they waited to take the stage. Perched on his stilts, with the wicker cage supporting his gown, the dwarf’s enlarged shoulders nudged his. Devil added, ‘I may not have a Varsity man’s head for mathematics, but I do know that figure represents eighty per cent of capacity. I am looking forward to seeing Jacko Grady’s face.’
‘You think he’ll give you the money, do you?’ Under the make-up Carlo’s face was flushed and his eyes glassy.
‘We shall see,’ Devil said simply.
At the end of the show the place where Grady sat to hand out the performers’ shillings and pence was taken by his deputy, a terrier of a man who wore his hat tipped on the back of his head like a bookmaker.
‘Two hundred seats,’ Devil growled when the man passed him the usual two shillings and sixpence.
‘What’s that?’
‘Eighty per cent capacity. Tonight Carlo and I get ten per cent of the takings.’
Grady’s deputy sneered. ‘Next,’ he called to the waiting line and waved Devil and Carlo aside. Devil planted himself squarely in front of the table and leaned over the man.
‘Ten per cent. According to my contract, signed by Jacko Grady.’
‘Take it up with Grady, then. Next.’
Devil’s fist smashed down, sending a little pile of coins rolling.
‘Contract!’ he shouted.
‘You can roll up your so-called contract and stick it up your arse. So far as I am concerned,’ the man said. Devil grabbed him by the coat lapels and hoisted him out of his seat. Coins spilled all over the floor and the other performers catcalled and jostled as they snatched them up. The deputy’s legs feebly kicked in the air and the table overturned.
Carlo sadly shook his head.
‘Won’t help,’ he sighed.
‘Give us our money,’ Devil snarled into the man’s face.
‘Not mine to give,’ the other retorted. Recognising the truth of this Devil slammed him back into his chair and took up the rickety card table as if he were about to joust with it. Impatience at the delay began to ripple down the queue. Devil poked the legs of the table at the deputy’s chest.
‘Tell Grady. I want my money. Tomorrow.’
‘Tell him yourself. Next, I say, and look sharp the rest of you if you’re wanting to get paid tonight.’
Devil dropped the table on the deputy’s feet. With the man’s yelp of pain to console him he stalked away and Carlo followed. Outside it was bitterly cold, with clots of wet snow swirling through the sepia glimmer of the street lamps. In silence they began to trudge towards Holborn but Carlo walked so slowly that Devil gave up the pursuit of his own furious thoughts to look round for him. The dwarf pressed his hand against a leprous wall for support as he coughed and spat the product into the gutter.
‘Are you ill?’ Devil asked him.
‘Yes.’ Carlo was too tired even to attempt a sharp retort.
Devil sighed. ‘Come on.’ With their heads down they trod the familiar way back through the alleys to the lodging house. When they reached the attic room it was hardly warmer than outside. The squalor of it struck even Devil after he had lit the lamp. He looked around at the mounds of props and boxes, the unswept boards and dirty pots. Carlo’s white doves sat in their cage, reproachful black eyes on Devil. He stirred up a fire and the dwarf sank into his blanket. He drank the toddy that Devil mixed for him and then lay in a piteous huddle. He closed his eyes.
‘This is how our Sallie went,’ he murmured.
‘You’re not going anywhere. Except to the Palmyra theatre.’
Carlo only shivered.
‘We are about to make our fortunes, my friend. Two hundred seats sold, remember.’
‘I want to