The Mystery of the Blinking Eye

same cola bottle!
    “Something must have gone wrong,” he said, an exaggeratedly worried look on his face. “I must have said the wrong word. Who wants lemon soda?”
    “I do,” Brian said and appeared at Mart’s other side. “You’ll have it, sir,” Mart said. “Abracadabra!” He snapped his fingers, reached into the bag, and brought out the very same bottle of cola.
    “Well, so much for that trick,” he said and put the bottle of cola back in the same bag, slapped the paper flat, rolled it up, and threw it over his shoulder.
    “Heavens, Mart, where did the bottle go?” Barbara called in amazement.
    “That’s the trick!” Mart said gleefully. “I made it disappear!”
    “Now, friends,” he went on, “whenever I do this trick—and I learned it from a famous Oriental magician—bands play, people shout, and ushers walk up the aisle with bouquets of flowers for me. Watch carefully. It puzzles me more than it will puzzle you. I have here a five-dollar bill. I borrowed it from Miss Trask. I’ll tear a corner from it, see? I’ll give the corner to Honey. Anyone knows that a torn corner can only be matched to a bill from which it has been torn. Do you see that envelope Bob is holding way across the room? You will agree that I haven’t touched it?” The members of the audience nodded.
    “Well, then, if Miss Trask will please take the envelope from Bob’s hand and open it, she will find a five-dollar bill with the corner torn. Right, Miss Trask?”
    “Yes, I have it here.” Miss Trask held up the bill. “Now, if Honey will hand the corner I tore to Miss Trask, she will see if it fits. Does it, Miss Trask?”
    “Perfectly! How did you do it? I was watching you all the time!”
    “I held that corner all the time, too,” Honey said.
    “It’s nothing. I even amaze myself.” Mart swelled out his chest.
    The show went on. Mart made a bowl of water disappear, but not till he’d tried twice and spilled some. He knotted scarves, shook the knots out, then struck metal hoops together into a chain, and shook them apart. As his show went on, he told funny stories and kept up a continuous patter that left all his watchers baffled.
    After he bowed to great applause and left the stage with his faithful helpers, Ned, Bob, and Brian, Miss Trask slipped away to the kitchen and returned with a tray of soft drinks and a huge bowl of cheese popcorn. “We couldn’t pop it in an artificial fireplace, but it is good. Try it!”
    “Now, Mart Belden,” she said, after she had passed around the popcorn, “I want to know how you did those tricks. I could see what you were doing, but I don’t know how.”
    “Sorcery, occultism, necromancy, wizardry, black magic... you couldn’t possibly understand or perform the feats I have performed,” Mart said airily. “You just aren’t one of the gifted ones. Say, Trixie, that reminds me. What about that prophecy that woman gave you at Kennedy? Weren’t you supposed to come up with some kind of good fortune? You couldn’t call those two who have been following us good fortune, could you?”
    “No, but lots of other things come before the fortune in the prophecy,” Trixie reminded him.
    “There’s so much junk in it I can’t remember a tenth of it. There wasn’t anything about that thief today.”
    “There is, Mart,” insisted Trixie. “I know the prophecy by heart. ‘Watch out for thieves; they’re everywhere,’ it said.”
    “Heavens, I’m shivering,” Barbara said. “All this magic, thieves following, and prophecies! It’s wonderful! It’s fabulous the way it’s turning out! Say, Mart, why don’t you answer Miss Trask’s question? How did you do those tricks? I’m baffled!”
    “It was simple; I might just as well tell you. Here’s the cola bottle, for instance.” He produced the paper bag, opened it, and took out a flattened imitation cola bottle. “I bought it at the magic store.”
    “I could tell it was some kind of a fake bottle,” Trixie said, “but that trick with the five-dollar bill really threw me.”
    “That was easier than the other,” Ned said. “You see, before we came here, Mart took a five-dollar bill and tore off the corner. Then he palmed it—vanished it.”
    “Palmed? Vanished?” Diana asked.
    “Yeah. He rolled up the corner he had torn from the five-dollar bill he put in the envelope. Then, when he tore off the corner of another bill on the stage, he palmed that corner and gave to Honey the one he had