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. "p.u.s.s.y!" he said, with a hand out to the rabbit as it came lolloping past us; "p.u.s.s.y, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt and defiance. "You"d like to see our show-room, 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 show-room 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, daddy!" 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 show-room, a gallery broken up by stands and stalls and pillars, with archways leading off to other departments, in which the queerest-looking a.s.sistants 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.
"This is the genuine magic," he said. "The real thing."
"It"s a little too genuine for my taste," I said again.
After that he fell to showing Gip tricks, odd tricks, and still odder the way they were done. He explained them, he turned them inside out, and there was the dear little chap nodding his busy bit of a head in the sagest manner.
I did not attend as well as I might. "Hey, presto!" said the Magic Shopman, and then would come the clear, small "Hey, presto!" of the boy.
But I was distracted by other things. It was being borne in upon me just how tremendously rum this place was; it was, so to speak, inundated by a sense of rumness. There was something a little rum about the fixtures even, about the ceiling, about the floor, about the casually distributed chairs. I had a queer feeling that whenever I wasn"t looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and played a noiseless puss-in-the-corner behind my back. And the cornice had a serpentine design with masks--masks altogether too expressive for proper plaster.
Then abruptly my attention was caught by one of the odd-looking a.s.sistants. He was some way off and evidently unaware of my presence--I saw a sort of three-quarter length of him over a pile of toys and through an arch--and, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid things with his features! The particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. He did it just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out like a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner until it was like a long, red, flexible whip. Like a thing in a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it forth as a fly-fisher flings his line.
My instant thought was that Gip mustn"t see him. I turned about, and there was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking no evil.
They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was standing on a little stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of big drum in his hand.
"Hide and seek, dadda!" cried Gip. "You"re He!"
And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped the big drum over him. I saw what was up directly. "Take that off," I cried, "this instant! You"ll frighten the boy. Take it off!"
The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared?...
You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand out of the unseen and grips your heart about. You know it takes your common self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty, neither angry nor afraid. So it was with me.
I came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside.
"Stop this folly!" I said. "Where is my boy?"
"You see," he said, still displaying the drum"s interior, "there is no deception---"
I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement.
I s.n.a.t.c.hed again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to escape. "Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after him--into utter darkness.
THUD!
"Lor" bless my "eart! I didn"t see you coming, sir!"
I was in Regent Street, and I had collided with a decent-looking working man; and a yard away, perhaps, and looking a little perplexed with himself, was Gip. There was some sort of apology, and then Gip had turned and come to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment he had missed me.
And he was carrying four parcels in his arm!
He secured immediate possession of my finger.
For the second I was rather at a loss. I stared round to see the door of the magic shop, and, behold, it was not there! There was no door, no shop, nothing, only the common pilaster between the shop where they sell pictures and the window with the chicks!...
I did the only thing possible in that mental tumult; I walked straight to the kerbstone and held up my umbrella for a cab.
""Ansoms," said Gip, in a note of culminating exultation.
I helped him in, recalled my address with an effort, and got in also.
Something unusual proclaimed itself in my tail-coat pocket, and I felt and discovered a gla.s.s ball. With a petulant expression I flung it into the street.
Gip said nothing.
For a s.p.a.ce neither of us spoke.
"Dada!" said Gip, at last, "that WAS a proper shop!"