Sport Royal, and Other Stories

The manager held a hasty conference with the Loadstone: he seemed to urge her; but she shook her head again and again, and would do nothing but lie back in a chair, and pass her hand to and fro over her head. The rajah looked at her with a slight smile. The clamor increased. I think a sort of panic – an angry panic – seized the audience.

“Bring him down! Bring him down!” they cried, pointing to the pallid Waterer, who sat as rigid as a trussed fowl.

After another despairing appeal to the Loadstone, the manager came forward and made a lame speech. The Loadstone was exhausted with her unparalleled exertions. She must rest; presently she would bring him down. Then Waterer’s friends arose and ascended the platform. They walked about, they stood on one another’s shoulders; they made it clear that no cords held Waterer. A pair of steps was called for and brought. Placed on a sturdy table, they just enabled a man to reach Waterer’s feet. One mounted amidst intense excitement. Turning to the rajah, I exclaimed, “Look!”

He was asleep again; and the Loadstone stood stiffly upright, beckoning toward Waterer. Slowly and gradually he descended, leaving the man on the ladder grasping at empty air, till he sat again on his seat. The applause burst out, and the Loadstone sank back in a faint on the floor. The rajah awoke, and the manager dropped the curtain, hiding the Loadstone, Waterer, and his friends from our view.

“Give me your arm,” said the rajah; “I am tired.” I escorted him to a cab, and we drove home.

The Loadstone gave no performance the next evening: she was too fatigued; and Waterer was absent from the boat and from the sight of men two days. When he reappeared he made no reference to his friend the conjurer. He slunk about the Quad, looking very pale and upset. I met him once, when I was with the rajah, on our way to lecture. The rajah smiled urbanely at Waterer, and said to me, when he had passed:

“It’s such a rude thing to call a gentleman a nigger, isn’t it?”

Waterer has not done it again. And the Loadstone never did that trick again. She took the pony, though. The manager called on Waterer, and asked for a check. I think that incident pleased the rajah most of all.

“It is a ready utilization of the unexpected,” he remarked, “which does our friend much credit.”

A SUCCESSFUL REHEARSAL

Mr. Aloysius Tappenham, of Stamford Road, was a dealer in frauds. It must not be understood from this statement that he was either a company-promoter or the manager of a philanthropic undertaking. On the contrary, he was as honest a man of business as you would find in London, and he earned his living by discovering and introducing new attractions in the shape of “Wonders,” “Phenomenons,” and so forth. The music-halls were Mr. Tappenham’s best customers, and when he successfully launched a new impostor, he reaped a handsome return in the way of commissions on the salary of the impostor and the profits of the entrepreneur. All his protégés were a success – a fact chiefly to be attributed to his unvarying habit of insisting that he himself should be shown “how it was done.” He promised and observed absolute secrecy; but, as he always said, he could not properly judge of the merit of any particular fraud, unless he were allowed a private view of the machinery by which it was worked. Some few years ago, in the very prime of life and the full tide of a profitable trade, Mr. Tappenham suddenly retired from business. This was the reason:

One day Mr. Tappenham discovered a treasure in the shape of a very attractive young lady whose name was Hopkins, but who proposed to call herself Mlle. Claire. Claire was hardly suitable to the music-halls; Mr. Tappenham thought that she was above that, and proposed to “run” her himself in Bond Street, on half-profit terms. Her specialty was the production of any spirit you liked to order. She received in a dimly lighted room; you told her who you were, and whose spirit you wished to interview, and forthwith, without any nonsense of hand-holding or table-turning, she caused to appear a shadowy yet clearly perceptible figure which was exactly like the person you named, spoke with that person’s voice, and exhibited full – or reasonably full – knowledge of everything which that person, and that person only, might be expected to know.

Mr. Tappenham was much struck with the dexterity of this performance. Of course, when explained, it resolved itself into some clever optical illusion, a little ventriloquism, and a good deal of tact in returning to the inquirer in another form information pumped out of him beforehand. The materials were simple, the result was highly artistic; and Mr. Tappenham determined to furnish the only thing needful to set London aflame with the new marvel – namely, capital. However, before taking the last irreparable step, he decided on a final trial. He prepared the mise-en-scène with due completeness, and invited Mlle. Claire to experiment on himself.

“Consider me as one of the public,” he said, “and give me a hair-raiser.”

Mlle. Claire protested that he was too much behind the scenes; but, on being pressed, she consented to try, and asked Mr. Tappenham to name his spirit.

He thought for a moment, and then said, “When I was a young man, I knew a girl called Nellie Davies – a pretty girl, my dear. I dare say I didn’t treat her over well; but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s have her.”

Clever little Mlle. Claire asked a question or two – and Mr. Tappenham admired the neat and apparently undesigned nature of her questions – and then set to work, after drawing the curtains a shade closer, and turning the light a trifle lower.

Mr. Tappenham sat comfortably in an armchair, his hands crossed over his white waistcoat, and a smile of satisfaction on his face. Presently the shadowy shape began to form itself a yard or two from Mr. Tappenham.

“Capital, capital!” he chuckled. “That’ll fetch ’em.” The shape grew more definite.

“Will that do?” asked Mlle. Claire triumphantly. “Is it like?”

“Now, by Jove, it is rather! Make it speak.”

Mlle. Claire laughed, and, projecting her voice to the shape, began in low, sweet, sad tones. “You summoned me. What do you desire of your dead friend?”

She stopped, laughing again, and said, “It’s no use, when you’re up to it beforehand.”

Mr. Tappenham did not answer her. He sat looking at the shape, and seemed to be listening intently.

“Shall I go on?” she inquired.

Mr. Tappenham took no notice.

“What’s the matter with him?” thought Mlle. Claire. “I shan’t go on if he’s not listening.”

Assuming her pretended voice again, she said, “I will try to forgive. Farewell, farewell!” and, with a merry, boisterous laugh, she displaced the arrangement which produced the illusion, and said to Mr. Tappenham:

“Now are you satisfied?” Then she added, in a tone of surprise, “Whatever is the matter?” For, as she looked, the expression of his face changed from attention to surprise, from surprise to uneasiness. He turned to her and said, with a forced smile, “It’s too clever – a sight too clever. That’ll do; stop it, please.”

“Stop it?”

“Yes. I’ve had enough. It’s – it’s damned absurd, but it’s getting on my nerves. Stop it, I say – stop it!” His voice rose at the end almost into a cry.

“Why, I have stopped it this three minutes!” she answered in surprise.

His eyes had wandered from her to where the shape had been; but at her last words he turned to her again with a start. “What? No, no! No nonsense! Come, now, be a good girl and stop it. I’ve had enough.”

“Are you drunk?” asked Mlle. Claire impatiently. “It’s all over.”

“I won’t be made a fool of,” said he angrily. “Stop it, or not a farthing do you get from me.”

“Heaven bless the man, he’s mad!” exclaimed the lady, who began to be a little uncomfortable herself. It is an eerie thing to see a man looking hard at – nothing, and listening intently to – nothing.

Suddenly he jumped up and ran toward Mlle. Claire. He seized her by the arm, and cried, “Stop, you little devil, stop! Do you want to madden me? I never did it, I never did. At least, I never meant it – so help me, God, I never meant it.”

“Mr. Tappenham, you’re dreaming. There’s nothing there. I’m saying nothing.”

“She’s coming! she’s coming!” he cried. “Take her away! take her away!”

Mlle. Claire looked at his face. Then she too gave a shriek of fright, and, hiding her face in her hands, sank on the floor, sobbing. She saw nothing. But what was that face looking at?

As for Mr. Tappenham, he fled into the corner of the room. And when Mlle. Claire recovered herself enough to draw back the curtains, and let in the blessed sun, he lay on the floor like a man dead.

Mlle. Claire was a good girl. She had a mother and two little brothers to keep: so she stuck to the business; but she never liked it very much after that day. Mr. Tappenham could afford to retire, and he did retire. He lives very quietly, and gives large sums in charity. Mlle. Claire knows all the tricks that ever were invented; she is a thorough-going little skeptic, and believes in nothing that she does not see, and in very little of what she does. Therefore she merely exemplifies feminine illogicality when she thinks to herself, as she cannot help thinking now and then:

“I wonder what he did to Nellie Davies!”

She told me about it, and I believed her when she said that she was not playing a trick on Mr. Tappenham. But perhaps she was deceiving me also; if so, that is an explanation.

I repeated the story to a scientific man. He said that it furnished an interesting instance of the permanence of an optical impression after the removal of the external excitant. That is another explanation.

Or it may have been the working of conscience: that is an explanation in a way, though an improbable one, because, in spite of many opportunities, Mr. Tappenham’s conscience had never given him any inconvenience before. It has since.

THE END