“I—I—you——” began the man, rather red in the face.
“Keep still!” his wife cautioned him. “It’s only a trick, you know.”
The man became silent, but wore a worried look.
“Well, let us see just how bad the damage is,” Joe went on. He took the watch from the bag and held it up. The crystal was cracked in all directions, and a slight pressure from Joe’s thumb sent it into fragments of glass.
“Oh, dear! Worse and worse!” Joe exclaimed. “Well, since I have broken this much of the watch, I might as well finish it. I’ll put it in this mortar,” and he brought forward a small wooden one, shaped as all druggists’ mortars are.
“There’s nothing in it, you see,” he went on holding it so the audience could look into the interior. “Quite empty,” and Joe rattled his wand inside. “So it can’t hurt your watch to go in there.” He shook the fragments of glass on the now smoothed-out paper bag, and carefully lowered the watch, with its back toward the audience, into the mortar.
“Now we’ll see what we can do,” Joe went on, taking up the pestle. This, as you know, is the object with which a druggist grinds up in the mortar any medicine requiring crushing.
“We’ll make a thorough job of this while we’re at it,” Joe went on, as he proceeded to grind away with the pestle on the bottom of the mortar.
“Come! This is too slow. I shall have to use something heavier, I think, to make mince-meat of this watch. It is a very tough one. I’ll use this poker,” and he picked up an iron one, laying aside the pestle on a table. With the poker Joe jabbed away at the bottom of the mortar, wherein, a few moments previous, the audience had seen him place the watch.
A rattling, grinding sound was heard, a clink of metal, and Joe exclaimed: