“What were they to do with me? I am sure Willard had spoken truly when he wished me dead, but he hadn’t the courage to kill me when he had his chance. Now that Gus, who was the whole of the law and the prophets in the World of Wonders, knew about me, that moment had passed. As I have said, none of them had any capacity for thought or reasoning, and as they talked on and on Gus’s mood turned from rage to fear. Willard was more at home in the air of fear than in that of anger.
“ ‘Honest to God, Gus, nothing would ever have happened, if the kid hadn.t shown some talent.’ This was a lucky string to touch. Gus was sure she knew everything there was to know about Talent—a word she always pronounced with the air of one giving it a capital letter. And so it came out that when Willard had given me a quarter, out of pure open-heartedness, I had immediately done a trick with it. As neat a palm-and-pass as Willard had ever seen. Good enough for the Palace Theater in New York.
“ ‘You mean the kid can do tricks?’ It was Charlie who spoke. ‘Then why can’t we fix him up a little with some hair-dye and maybe colour his skin, and use him as a Boy-Conjuror—Bonzo the Boy Wonder, or like that?’
“But this did not sit well with Willard. He wanted no rival conjurors in the show.
“ ‘Jeeze, Willard, I only meant as a kind of assistant to you. Hand you things and like that. Maybe do a funny trick or two when you’re not looking. You could plan something.’
“Now it was Gus who objected. ‘Charlie, you ought to know by now that you can’t never disguise anybody from somebody that knows him well. The law’s going to follow the show; just keep that in mind. The kid’s Dad, this reverend, comes into the show, sees a kid this size, and no hair-dye and blackface is going to hide him. Anyway, the kid sees his Dad, this reverend, and he gives him the high-sign. Use whatever head you got, Charlie.’
“Now it was Willard’s turn to have a bright idea. ‘Abdullah!’ he said.
“Even though I was busy with the biscuits I stopped eating to look at them. They were like people from whose minds a cloud had lifted.
“ ‘But can he handle Abdullah?’ said Gus.
“ ‘I betcha he can. I tell you, this kid’s Talent. A natural. He’s made for Abdullah. Don’t you see, Gus? This is the silver lining. I made a little slip, I grant ya. But if Abdullah’s back in the show, what does it matter? Abdullah’s the big draw. Now look; we put Abdullah back, and I go to the top of the show, and let’s not hear any more about Happy Hannah or that gaffed morphodite Andro.’
“ ‘Just hold your horses, Willard. I’ll believe a kid can handle Abdullah when I’ve seen it. You got to show me.’
“ ‘And I’ll show you. Gimme time, just a very little time, and I’ll show you. Kid, can you handle a pack of cards?’ Nothing could make me admit that I could handle a pack of cards. Ramsay had taught me a few card tricks, but when my father found it out he gave me such a beating as only a thoroughgoing Baptist can give a son who has been handling the Devil’s Picture Book. It had been thoroughly slashed into my backside that cards were not for me. I denied all knowledge of cards before I had thought for an instant. Yet, immediately I had spoken, the four suits and the ways in which they could be made to dance began to rise in my memory.
“Willard was not troubled by my lack of knowledge. He had the real showman’s enthusiasm for a new scheme. But Gus was dubious.
“ ‘Just give me today, Gus,’ said Willard. ‘Only just this one Sunday, to show you what can be done. I’ll work him in. You’ll see. We can do it right here.’
“That was how I became the soul of Abdullah, and entered into a long servitude to the craft and art of magic.
“We began at once. Gus bustled away on some of the endless business she always had in hand, but Charlie remained, and he and Willard began to uncover something at the very back of the car—the only object in it which the handlers had not unloaded for Monday’s fair, which was under several tarpaulins. Whatever it was, this was the prison in which I had spent my wretched, starving hours.
“When it was pulled forward and the wraps thrown aside, it was revealed as, I think still, the most hideous and offensive object I have ever seen in my life. You gentlemen know how particular I have always been about the accoutrements of my show. I have spent a great deal of money, which foolish people have thought unnecessary, on the beauty and workmanship of everything I have exhibited. In this I have been like Robert Houdin, who also thought that the best was none too good for himself and his audiences. Perhaps some of my fastidiousness began with my hatred of the beastly figure that was called Abdullah.
“It was a crude effigy of a Chinese, sitting on top of a chest, with his legs crossed. To begin with, the name was crassly wrong. Why call a Chinese figure Abdullah? But everything about it was equally inartistic and inept. Its robes were of frowsy sateen; its head was vulgarly moulded in papier machae with an ugly face, sharply slanted eyes, dangling moustaches, and yellow fangs which hung down over the lower lip. The thing was, in itself, reason for a sharp protest from the Chinese Ambassador, if there had been one. It summed up in itself all that spirit combined of jocosity and hatred with which ignorant people approach whatever is foreign and strange.
“The chest on which this monster sat was in the same mode of workmanship. It was lacquered with somebody’s stupid notion of a dragon, half hideous and half cute, in gaudy red on a black background. A lot of cheap gold paint had been splashed about.
“Neither Willard nor Charlie explained to me what this thing was, or what relationship I was expected to bear to it. However, I was used to being ignored and rather liked it; being noticed had, in my experience, usually meant trouble. All they told me was that I was to sit in this thing and make it work, and my lesson began as soon as Abdullah was unveiled.
“Once again, but this time in daylight and with some knowledge of what I was doing, I crawled into the chest at the back of the figure, and thence upward, rather like an old-fashioned chimney-sweep climbing a chimney, into the body, where there was a tiny ledge on which I could sit and allow my feet to hang down. But that was not the whole of my duty. When I was in place, Willard opened various doors in front of the chest, then turned the whole figure around on the wheels which supported the chest, and opened a door in the back. These doors revealed to the spectators an impressive array of wheels, cogs, springs, and other mechanical devices, and when Willard touched a lever they moved convincingly. But the secret of these mechanisms was that they were shams, displayed in front of polished steel mirrors, so that they seemed to fill the whole of the chest under the figure of Abdullah, but really left room for a small person to conceal himself when necessary. And that time came after Willard had closed the doors in the chest, and pulled aside Abdullah’s robes to show some mechanism, and nothing else, in the figure itself. When that was happening, I had to let myself down into the secret open space in the chest and keep out of the way. Once Abdullah’s mechanical innards had been displayed I crept back up into the figure, thrust aside the fake mechanism, which folded out of the way, and prepared to make Abdullah do his work.
“Willard and Charlie both treated me as if I were very stupid, which God knows I was not. However, I thought it best not to be too clever at the beginning. This was intuition; I did not figure it out consciously. They showed me a pack of cards, and painstakingly taught me the suits and the values. What Abdullah had to do was to play cards, on a very simple principle, with anybody who would volunteer from an audience to try their luck with him. This spectator—the Rube, as Willard called him—shuffled and cut a deck which lay on a little tray across Abdullah’s knees. Then the Rube drew a card and laid it face down on the tray. At this point Willard pulled a lever on the side of Abdullah’s chest, which set up a mechanical sound in the depths of the figure, which in fact I, the concealed boy, set going by pumping a pedal with my left foot. While this was going on it was my job to discover what card the Rube had drawn—which was easy, because he had put it face downward on a ground-glass screen, and I could fairly easily make it out—and to select a higher card from a rack concealed inside Abdullah ready to my hand. Having chosen my card, I set Abdullah’s left arm in motion, slipping my own arm into the light framework in its sleeve; at the far end of this framework was a device into which I inserted the card that was to confound the Rube. I then made Abdullah’s right arm move slowly to the deck of cards on the tray, and cut them; this was possible because the fingers had a pincers device in them which could be worked from inside the arm by squeezing a handle. When Abdullah had cut the cards his left hand moved to the deck and took a card from the top. But in fact he did nothing of the sort, because his sleeve fell forward for a moment and concealed what was really happening; it was at this instant I pushed the little slide which shot the card I had chosen from the rack into Abdullah’s fingers, and it seemed to the spectators that this was the card he picked up from the deck. The Rube was then invited to turn up his card—a five, let us say; then a spectator was asked to turn up Abdullah’s card. A seven in the same suit! Consternation of the Rube! Applause of the audience! Great acclaim for Willard, who had never touched a card at any time and had merely pulled the lever which set in motion Abdullah, the Card-Playing Automaton, and Scientific Marvel of the Age!