“Every positive character in the world has this power of hypnotism over every negative character,” the professor proclaimed. “It is the simple power of mind over mind by suggestion—all of which I shall prove to you to-night at the opera-house for a few nickels admission—price, fifteen and twenty-five cents!”
At this point one of the professor’s assistants walked toward the box, his feet dragging and moving as if some one had him by the shoulders, leading him forward. His thin arms dangled at his sides, and his bony fingers twitched and writhed like the tail of a snake.
He climbed upon the box with awkward movements as if the joints of his shoulders and hips were stiff and the hinges rusty, and they hurt him.
He walked slowly, reluctantly toward Zodono, and the professor threw up his hand, snapped his fingers, and cried “Stop!”
The assistant flinched, dodged like a dog, and the crowd snickered.
“My Gawd!” Conko Mukes mumbled in a low tone. “Look at dat!”
For a moment the professor glared in the eyes of his assistant; then his hands began making slow, stroking motions downward before the subject’s face. Red spots came and went in the bleached cheeks of the hypnotic; his breath was short and quick; his nostrils and lips were pinched.
The crowd looked on breathlessly as the hand of the professor, fingers outstretched, clawed the air before that weak, chalky face, with its twitching lips and feeble, trembling chin.
“Ah!” the professor exclaimed theatrically, grinning his triumph in the face of the crowd.
“Ah!” the crowd echoed with an expulsive sound of breath released after a moment of breathless attention.