It was now time for Joe’s disappearing trick, and while he was taking his place on the prepared chair over the trap-door in the stage, and while the professor was putting the black sheet over him, he managed to whisper to Joe:
“Look at the two men in the seventh row in the two end seats on your right.”
“I see them,” said Joe in a low voice.
“They are the ones I heard talking at the hotel. Do you know them?”
The professor asked this in between his “patter” which went with the disappearing trick.
“Their faces seem familiar,” Joe said, as the veil went over his head. “But I’m not sure I know them. I’ll see them after the show.”
There were a few more illusions, and the performance came to a close. Joe, not stopping to change his clothes, started down the aisle.
“I’ll follow those men,” he said to the professor, who nodded a permission.
But as Joe reached the lobby of the theatre, intending to question the men, if he could stop them, he fell back in astonishment at the sight of his foster-father and Hen Sylvester, one of the Bedford constables.
“Ha! There he is!” cried the deacon. “I’ve got you now!” and he made a grab for Joe.