Taking care to make sure it was on right, the cat plopped the head back in place, and it sat on the neck as if it had never left. And, most im-

Block Magic and Its Exposé 1 05

portant, not even a scar was left on the neck. The cat swept his paws over Bengalsky's shirtfront and tailcoat, and the bloodstains vanished. Fagot lifted the seated Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of ten-ruble bills into his coat pocket and directed him off stage with the words, " Get lost! It's more fun without you."

Swaying and looking around in a daze, the emcee made it only as far as the fire extinguisher, and there he got sick. He cried in woe, " My head, my head! ''

Rimsky was among those who rushed over to him. The emcee cried, grabbed at the air with his hands, and mumbled, " Give me back my head) Give me back my head! Take my apartment, take my pictures, only give me back my head! "

A messenger ran for a doctor. People urged Bengalsky to lie down on a couch in the dressing room, but he fought them off and got rowdy. An ambulance had to be called. When the unfortunate emcee had been carted off, Rimsky ran back to the stage, only to find new miracles in progress. And, by the way, it was either then, or a short time before that, that the magician and his faded armchair disappeared from the stage—something which the audience failed to notice, totally absorbed as it was in the extraordinary things Fagot was doing on stage.

After dispatching the ailing emcee, Fagot made the following announcement, " Now that we've gotten rid ofthat bore, let's open a store for the ladies! "

Suddenly the stage floor was covered with Persian rugs, huge mirrors appeared, illuminated along the sides by elongated green bulbs, and between the mirrors were glass display cases where the audience, in a state of happy bedazzlement, beheld Parisian frocks in various colors and styles. These were in some of the cases, and in others were hundreds of hats, with feathers and without, and hundreds of shoes, with buckles and without—black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, shoes with straps and shoes with gems. Containers of perfume appeared among the shoes, as well as mountains of chamois, satin, and silk handbags with piles of elongated, embossed gold lipstick cases scattered in between them.

The devil only knows where the red-haired girl in the black evening dress came from, who was standing by the display cases with a proprietary smile, her beauty marred only by a strange scar on her neck.

With a saccharine smile, Fagot announced to the women in the audience that the store would exchange their old clothes and shoes for Parisian styles and Parisian shoes. He added that the same sort of exchange would apply to handbags and the like.