t of his mouth. The
audience received this professional joke in excellent part, and, indeed,
roared its amusement. Henry blushed, would have given all the money he
had on him--some ninety pounds--to be back in the stalls, and felt a hot
desire to explain to everyone that the cards, the Bath-bun, and
especially the garter, had not really been in his possession at all.
That part of the episode over, the trick ought to have gone forward, but
Toscato's Italian temper was effervescing, and he insisted by signs
that one of the jury should actually get into the box bodily, and so
satisfy the community that the box was a box _et praeterea nilil_. The
English assistant pointed to Henry, and Henry, to save argument,
reluctantly entered the box. Toscato shut the door. Henry was in the
dark, and quite mechanically he extended his hands and felt the sides of
the box. His fingers touched a projection in a corner, and he heard a
clicking sound. Then he was aware of Toscato shaking the door of the
box, frantically and more frantically, and of the noise of distant
multitudinous laughter.

'Don't hold the door,' whispered a voice.

'I'm not doing so,' Henry whispered in reply.

The box trembled.

'I say, old chap, don't hold the door. They want to get on with the
trick.' This time it was Mr. Doxey who addressed him in persuasive
tones.

'Don't I tell you I'm not holding the door, you silly fool!' retorted
Henry, nettled.

The box trembled anew and more dangerously. The distant laughter grew
immense and formidable.

'Carry it off,' said a third voice, 'and get him out in the wings.'

The box underwent an earthquake; it rocked; Henry was thrown with
excessive violence from side to side; the sound of the laughter receded.

Happily, the box had no roof; it was laid with all tenderness on its
flank, and the tenant crawled out of it into the midst of an interested
crowd consisting of Toscato, some stage-managers, several
scene-shifters, and many ballerinas. His natural good-temper reasserted
itself at once, and he received apologies in the spirit in which they
were offered, while Toscato set the box to rights. Henry was returning
to the stage in order to escape from the ballerinas, whose proximity
disturbed and frightened him, but he had scarcely shown his face to the
house before he was, as it were, beaten back by a terrific wave of
jubilant cheers. The great vanishing trick was brilliantly accomplished
without his presence on the