r.

Then abruptly my attention was caught by one of the odd-looking
assistants. He was some way off and evidently unaware of my presence--I
saw a sort of three-quarter length of him over a pile of toys and through
an arch--and, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of
way doing the most horrid things with his features! The particular horrid
thing he did was with his nose. He did it just as though he was idle and
wanted to amuse himself. First of all it was a short, blobby nose, and
then suddenly he shot it out like a telescope, and then out it flew and
became thinner and thinner until it was like a long, red flexible whip.
Like a thing in a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it
forth as a fly-fisher flings his line.

My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about, and there
was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking no evil. They
were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was standing on a little
stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of big drum in his hand.

"Hide and seek, dadda!" cried Gip. "You're He!"

And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped the
big drum over him.

I saw what was up directly. "Take that off," I cried, "this instant!
You'll frighten the boy. Take it off!"

The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big
cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little stool was
vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared!...

You know, perhaps, that sinister something that conies like a hand out of
the unseen and grips your heart about. You know it takes your common self
away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty, neither
angry nor afraid. So it was with me.

I came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside.

"Stop this folly!" I said. "Where is my boy?"

"You see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is no
deception----"

I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement. I
snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to escape.
"Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after him--into utter
darkness.

_Thud!_

"Lor' bless my 'eart! I didn't see you coming, sir!"

I was in Regent Street, and I had collided with a decent-looking working
man; and a yard away, perhaps, and looking a little perplexed with
himself, was Gip. There was some sort of apology, a