“Well, I have never seen them, Doctor, except those fellows who come around to the veranda, and I have seen conjurers at home do ever so much better tricks than they.”
“What do you think of them, Mr. Bathurst?” Isobel asked. “I suppose you have seen some of the better sort?”
“I do not know what to think of them, Miss Hannay. I used to be rather of Wilson's opinion, but I have seen things since that I could not account for at all. There was a man here two or three months back who astounded me.”
“Mrs. Hunter said that the girls had had no opportunity of seeing a good conjurer since they came out, Mr. Bathurst. I suppose they did know this man you are speaking of being here?”
“He was only here for a few hours, Miss Hannay. I had happened to meet him before, and he gave me a private performance, which was quite different to anything I have ever seen, though I had often heard of the feats he had performed. I was so impressed with them that I can assure you that for a few days I had great difficulty in keeping my mind upon my work.”
“What did he do, Mr. Bathurst?”
Bathurst related the feat of the disappearing girl.
“She must have jumped down when you were not looking,” Richards said, with an air or conviction.
“Possibly,” Bathurst replied quietly; “but as I was within three or four yards of the pole, and it was perfectly distinct in the light of my lamp, and as I certainly saw her till she was some thirty or forty feet up in the air I don't see how she can have managed it. For, even supposing she could have sprung down that distance without being hurt, she would not have come down so noiselessly that I should not have heard her.”
“Still, if she did not come down that way, how could she have come?” Wilson said.