This was luck in truth, for this, too, was more than he had hoped for. He would have been glad to work with the professor to earn merely his expenses for a while, until he learned something of the inside workings of magic.
“Now,” said Professor Rosello, “we’ll have to do some quick work, Joe. I’ll call you that, for I feel as if I had known you a long time. I’ll never forget how you saved my life, and you will never want a friend as long as I am alive. Where are you stopping?”
“No place, just at present,” replied Joe. “I came in on a freight train, after I ran away from home, and I looked you up as soon as I could after I had breakfast.”
Then Joe told the story of how he had left the home of his foster-parents.
“You had better put up at my hotel,” said the professor. “I’m stopping at a boarding house. It’s better for me than a regular hotel. I can get you a room there. I had planned to give a three nights’ show here, but when my assistant left I thought I’d have to cut it down to one. Now I’ll go ahead as originally planned, thanks to you.
“Now suppose we just run over what I do in the evening’s performance, so you’ll know what is expected of you.”
Professor Rosello hastily described to Joe the program—how he came out on the stage, rolling in his hands a red handkerchief, which he caused suddenly to vanish. Of course this was done by “palming.” While palming the handkerchief, which thus seemed to vanish into air, the professor would keep up a “patter,” or running line of talk, concerning the tricks he was to show that night.
“Of course you know,” said the professor to Joe, “that we have to depend on outside aid in doing what the public calls ‘tricks.’ That is, we have as our three main helpers, the table, the wand and the clothes we wear. I need not tell the son of Professor Morretti that the evening dress of a modern magician has in it many hiding places—pochettes, the French call them. They are secret pockets, placed where the performer finds he has best use for them. Into these pockets a borrowed watch, ring, handkerchief—anything not too large, in fact—may be concealed.
“Of course we bring the hidden things out at the proper time. But, as I say, the dress of a magician is important. I haven’t time to get you one, and my assistant took his away with him, so you won’t be able to do much for me in that line.
“Another great aid to us is our wand. From time immemorial a wand has been the symbol of magic. Ordinarily it is but a stick, a bit of ebony or ivory, and of course with that it is not possible to do any tricks. But the wand is valuable in that you can wave it in the air, or before a person’s face. Naturally their eyes follow the motion of the wand, their attention is taken from your other hand, in which you may have palmed, or concealed, something. And while their eyes are thus off that hand you can get rid of the palmed article, or put it in the place where you wish it next to appear.”