The Shadow in the North Read Free Page A

said the magician. "Leave us, please."

    With a casual glance at the other two men, Jim nodded and went out.
    What do I do now? he thought.
    In the wings a number of stagehands stood silently, waiting for the act onstage to finish so that they could change the scenery. Above them in the flies the gasmen waited for their cue; it was their job to change the colored gelatin in front of the flaring gas jets or to turn the jets up and down according to how much light was wanted onstage. Some of the other artists on the bill were waiting too, for Mackinnon was a phenomenal performer and they wanted to watch his act. Jim picked his way through the darkness and the half-light as the soprano onstage came to the final chorus of her song, and took his place by a great iron wheel beside the curtain.
    He stood there, light and tense, his fair hair slicked back from his forehead and an anxious look in his green eyes, and tapped his fingers on the wheel; then he heard a whisper beside him.
    "Jim," came Mackinnons whisper out of the darkness. "Can you help me?"
    Jim turned around and saw the magician hanging back in the shadows, his dark tyts the only features visible in the pale blur of his face.
    "Those men ..." Mackinnon went on, and pointed up through the proscenium to a box, where Jim saw two figures settling themselves and caught the gleam of

    the little mans spectacles. "They're trying to kill me. For God s sake, help me get away as soon as the curtains down. I don't know what to do. ..."
    "Shhh!" said Jim. "And keep back. They're looking."
    The song came to an end, the flute in the band trilled in sympathy, and the audience clapped and whis-ded. Jim's hands tightened on the wheel.
    "All right," he said. "I'll get you out. Watch out the way—
    He started to swing the great wheel over, and the curtain descended.
    "Come off this side," he said over the noise of applause and the rumbling of the pulleys, "not the other. Anything you want out of the dressing room?"
    Mackinnon shook his head.
    The instant the curtain touched the stage, off came the colored gelatins above, flooding the stage with white light; up rolled the painted backdrop of a fashionable drawing room; and the crew in the wings leaped into activity, unfolding a large velvet screen and bracing it behind, lifting onstage a slender table that seemed oddly heavy for its size, and unrolling a wide Turkish carpet. Jim darted forward to straighten the edge of the carpet and held the screen while another hand adjusted the weight behind it. The whole process took no longer than fifteen seconds.
    The stage manager gave a signal to the gasmen, and they slotted new gelatins into the metal frames, lowering the pressure in the jets simultaneously to dim the

    light to a mysterious rose. Jim sprang back to his wheel; Mackinnon took his place in the wings as the master of ceremonies came to the end of his introduction, and the conductor raised his baton in the orchestra pit.
    A chord, a burst of clapping from the audience, and Jim hauled on the wheel to raise the curtain. Mackinnon entered, transformed. The audience fell silent as he began his act.
    Jim watched for a moment or two, amazed as always by the way this figure, so fiirtive and unhealthy in real life, could become so powerful onstage. His voice, his eyes, his every movement embodied authority and mystery; it was easy to believe that he commanded hosts of invisible spirits, that the tricks and transformations he performed were the work of demons. . . . Jim had seen him a dozen times and had never been less than awestruck. He tore himself away reluctantly and slipped under the stage.
    This was the quickest way from one side to the other. Jim moved between beams, ropes, a demon-trap, and all kinds of pipe work without a sound and emerged on the other side as a burst of clapping rose from the audience.
    He dusted himself off and went through a little door into the auditorium, and then through another to the stairs. He reached the