The more difficult it is, the more certainly will I reveal it to you." You see, I was working up the interest.

It was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing.

So now I climaxed it: "If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want to know--I will give you two hundred silver pennies." "The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you would know." "Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand." "Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise.

It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away.

The magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it.