We waited anxiously. The coin did not jump at all! The wizard took up
the glass, shook it impatiently, and put it down again. Still the coin
showed no sign of animation. Then the wizard uttered some private
ejaculations in Hittite, but still the coin did not move. Then he
affected an air of jauntiness, and said, 'I remember a circumstance of
a similar kind when I was playing odd man out ([Greek: tritos
anthropos] dear old Sokrates used to call it) with Darius the night
before Marathon. Darius was the Mede. _I_ was the Medium.' Then he
seemed about to work another wonder, when he was interrupted by the
harsh cackling laughter of the Boshman, who advanced with careless
defiance and observed in his own tongue, which we all knew perfectly,
that he 'could see all the tricks the wizard could do and go several
better.' I waited, horror-struck, to see what would follow this
insolence.

Asher made a movement so swift that I could scarcely follow it; but it
seemed to me that he lightly laid his hand upon the poor Boshman's
head. I looked at Ustani, and then staggered back in wonder, for there
upon his snowy hair, right across the wool-white tresses, were five
finger-marks _black as coal_.

'Now go and stand in the corner,' said the magician, in a cold inhuman
voice. The unhappy Boshman tremblingly did his bidding, putting his
hands to his head in a dazed way as he went, and, incredible as it may
seem, thus transferring--as if the curse carried double force--some of
the black mark to his own fingers.

'I will now,' continued the wizard, who had regained his ordinary
polished, if somewhat swaying and overbalanced, manner--'I will now,
with your kind permission, show you a little trick which was a great
favourite with the late Tubal Cain when we were boys together. Observe,
I take this paper-knife--it is an ordinary paper-knife--look at it for
yourselves. I will place it on my down-turned hand. It is an ordinary
hand--look at it for yourselves, but don't touch it; the consequences
might be disastrous.'

I, for my part, having seen the consequences in the case of Ustani's
hair, had no desire to do so.

'You see,' continued the sorcerer, 'I place the paper-knife _there_! It
falls. Why? Because of gravity. What is gravity? Newton, as you know
well, invented the art; but what of that? Did he find that which did
not exist? No, for the non-existent is as though it had never been. But
now, availing myself of the resources of science