The next trick was an easy one, and went off without any slip, and was applauded. Tom and Jonas had the stage to themselves for a while, and I staid out of sight and scrubbed at the egg. But do what I could, my shirt bosom was ruined.
Then came the "Watch Mortar" trick, and to my dying day I shall never forget how that turned out. Neither will Tom.
We had an apparatus made to resemble an old-fashioned druggists' mortar. It was really made of tin, in two compartments, so that any heavy object dropped into it would depress a false bottom and drop through on a shelf back of the magician's table, at the same time letting into the upper part of the mortar the fragments of an old watch previously pounded into bits. Then Tom was to pretend to smash the borrowed watch, and afterwards fire a pistol at me and take the real watch from my vest pocket, where he would place it when he went back of the scenes for his pistol.
He described his intentions and asked for a watch from the audience. Uncle Job Cavendish, the village barber, handed up an old silver-case time-piece that was worth perhaps $3.
Tom took it, and after a good deal of talk, dropped it down into the mortar, picked up the ridiculous club used for a pestle, and began to pound away. There was a great smashing sound, and poor Uncle Job looked serious. But he did not begin to look half so serious as Tom did, and I saw in a minute that something was wrong.
He dropped the pestle, and said hurriedly to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, I find I have left my pistol in the other room. Excuse me while I run after it."
Then Tom came into the wing where I stood, and jerking his own gold watch out of his pocket, thrust it into mine, and whispered to me fiercely, "That mortar stuck in some way, and I smashed Uncle Job's watch into chicken-feed! Here is mine! I'll have to give him something back, or we'll be mobbed out of the village!"
Then he grabbed up the stage pistol and hurried back. He rammed the remains of Uncle Job's poor watch down the big mouth of the pistol, and I stepped forth, baring my egg-stained bosom to the pistol shot. Bang! went the powder from the false chamber of the pistol, and Tom, with a ghastly smile, stepped up to me and pulled his watch out of my pocket, and with the utmost courage leaned out over the edge of the platform and handed the watch to Uncle Job, saying, "Here you are, sir! Not only as good as new, but changed from silver to gold!"
Uncle Job was so taken by surprise that he sat with open mouth. He took the watch and looked at it in dumb astonishment. The audience was taken as much by surprise as he was.
Tom and Jonas held a hurried consultation, and at once announced the next trick. There was a great deal of confusion in the hall. Several voices shouted out, "Show the silver watch!" Tom paid no attention, and the next half-dozen tricks were so well done that the people applauded, and we began to gain fresh courage.