“Do you mind if I take off my gloves?” our strange visitor asked.

“Pray do,” said I. The sight of the fellow wandering about a garden bareheaded and gloved in yellow chamois leather had begun to affect my nerves.  He peeled them off.

“Look here, Gwendoline Arabella, my dear,” he cried.  “Catch!”

He made a feint of throwing them.

“Haven’t you caught ’em?”

“No.”

She stared at the man open-mouthed, for behold, his hands were empty.

“Tut, tut!” said he.  “Perhaps you can catch a handkerchief.”  He flicked a red silk handkerchief from his pocket, crumpled it into a ball and threw; but like the gloves it vanished.  “Now where has it gone to?”

Susan, who had shrunk beneath Jaffery’s protecting shadow, crept forward fascinated.  Mr. Fendihook took a sudden step or two towards a flower bed.

“Why, there it is!”

He stretched out a hand and there before our eyes the handkerchief hung limp over the pruned top of a standard rose.

“Jolly good!” exclaimed Jaffery.

“I hope you don’t mind.  I like amusing kiddies.  Have you ever talked to angels, Araminta?  No?  Well, I have.  Look.”

He threw half-crowns up into the air until they disappeared into the central blue, and then held a ventriloquial conversation, not in the best of taste, with the celestial spirits, who having caught the coins announced their intention of sticking to them.  But threats of reporting to headquarters prevailed, and one by one the coins dropped and jingled in his hand.  We applauded.  Susan regarded him as she would a god.

“Can you do it again?” she asked breathlessly.

“Lord bless you, Eustacia, I can keep on doing it all day long.”

He balanced his cigar on the tip of his nose and with a snap caught it in his mouth.  He turned to me with a grin, which showed white strong teeth.  “More than you could do, old pal!”

“You must have practised that a great deal,” said Doria.

“Two hours a day solid year in and year out—­not that trick alone, of course.  Here!” he burst into a laugh.  “I’m blowed if you know who I am—­I’m the One and Only Ras Fendihook—­Illusionist, Ventriloquist, and General Variety Artist.  Haven’t you ever seen my turn?”

We confessed, with regret, that we had missed the privilege.

“Well, well, it’s a queer world,” he said philosophically.  “You’ve never heard of me—­and perhaps you two gentlemen are big bugs in your own line—­and I’ve never heard of you.  But anyhow, I never asked you, Mr. Chayne, to catch my gloves.”

“I haven’t your gloves,” said Jaffery, with his eye on Susan.

“You have.  You’ve got ’em in your pocket.”

And diving into Jaffery’s jacket pocket, he produced the wash-leather gloves.

“There, Petronella,” said he, “that’s the end of the matinee performance.”

Susan looked at him wide-eyed.  “I’m not at all tired.”