Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Phyllis and Clement together.

  Daisy poked her head out of the bag on Phyllis’s shoulder and gave a spluttering yelp.

  ‘And farewell to you, sweet vanishing pup,’ Shakespeare added. ‘Now I must to my duty!’

  With a small bow, he hastened back into the auditorium.

  In the backstage area of the fast-blackening and collapsing Globe, Wallace Wong reached down through the smoke to Vesta Colley’s almost-burnt coat. Amazingly, a small part of one side of the coat had not yet been touched by the flames. He shoved his hand into the outer pocket and felt about for a moment. Then his eyes lit up, the greenness throbbing brighter. ‘Ah, back at last,’ he muttered, taking his Date Determinator from the garment. ‘Rotten little thief,’ he said, shaking his head. He pocketed the device and quickly made his way out.

  Phyllis was peering up at the stairs leading to the top floor of the tower. The roof at the very top of this place had now caught well and truly alight, and a brilliant, crackling yellow filled the stairway.

  She squinted, trying to find the outline of the Pocket on the stairs. Everything was hazy; the smoke was thickening and becoming blindingly smothering.

  Then, through the dense haze, she saw a shimmer of green—a big almond-shaped outline, about two-thirds of the way up the stairs. ‘It’s there!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is where W.W. came from!’

  ‘W.W.?’ said Barry, confused.

  ‘Come on,’ she shouted over the noise of the fire. ‘We’ve got to run, as fast as we can. Are you able, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Try and stop me,’ he coughed.

  She reached into her coat pocket, her fingers scrabbling around frantically. It was empty!

  ‘Phyll!’ gasped Clement. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Her face drained as her hand crashed about in there. Her red glittery ball—the ball she used as her passport to get back to the basement—wasn’t there!

  Then she realised. She put her other hand in her other pocket and fished about. She almost cried with relief when she found the red ball in there.

  Squeezing it in a nothing will prise this out of my hand grasp, she said, ‘Okay, here we go. Clem, hold my coat; Chief Inspector, grab onto Clem’s backpack.’

  They did so.

  ‘One, two, three!’ Phyllis yelled.

  Taking the steps two at a time, they raced upwards, through the smoke and the billowing, crashing destruction of the Globe Theatre, towards the mysterious pathway home.

  No black and white

  Wallace Wong didn’t return with Phyllis, Daisy, Clem and Barry. Not that Time. In fact, it would be some Time before Phyllis would encounter her great-grandfather again in the flesh.

  The Transit home was fast. At first the wind through the Andruseon Pocket had been hot and airless, carrying with it the intense, choking heat from the Globe Theatre. But the further they Transited, the cooler the wind became. By the time the four of them came stumbling-tumbling down the steps in the basement of the Wallace Wong Building, the temperature had levelled and settled. The fierceness of the final day of the Globe was nothing but a memory.

  Barry Inglis made a quick exit, up to his apartment to get some ointment and fresh bandages for his hand. Before he went, he stopped in front of the basement elevator and looked down at Phyllis at the bottom of the stairs.

  He stood there for several long moments, deep in thought.

  Finally, Phyllis asked, ‘Are you all right, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I am all right,’ he said, his eyes glowing green as he looked at her. ‘And you are brilliant. Brilliant and astonishing.’

  She smiled up at him.

  He did a small wriggle. ‘Goodbye for now, Miss Wong. These pantaloons are chafing me something horrible. I . . . I need to rest . . .’

  She kept smiling as she watched him entering the elevator. ‘I’ve left the key in there,’ she called.

  ‘When you get out, just turn it and send the elevator back down here.’

  ‘Will do,’ Barry called back.

  ‘See you, Baz!’ Clement called when the doors to the contraption had closed and it was going judderingly up and the Chief Inspector was safely out of earshot.

  Phyllis put her bag on one of the sofas and Daisy bounded out of it, a little groggy from the Transit. ‘Here, Miss Daisy, have a munchie.’ Phyllis gave her a treat, and the terrier sat there, sphinx-like, chewing away at it between her front paws.

  Clement was busting to tell of his adventure to his mother, and especially to Evangeline Hipwinkle back at Thundermallow’s. But, as Phyllis reminded him in no uncertain terms, he had given her the absolute promise that he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about what had happened.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘I did do the crossing the aorta nineteen times promise, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did. And you know you can’t break that.’

  He sighed. ‘Yep. Still, you and I can talk about what happened whenever we want, can’t we?’

  ‘It’s our secret,’ Phyllis smiled.

  Clem hitched his backpack over his shoulder. ‘I’m starving. Ha, I feel like I haven’t eaten in four hundred years! What’s today?’

  ‘Tuesday,’ Phyllis answered.

  ‘Yay! Mum does duck on Tuesdays!’ He started up the stairs, then stopped, inspecting the top of the staircase warily. ‘Hey, it’s safe for me to go up here, right? I’m not gonna end up in Timbuktu or anything, running away from Genghis Khan?’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘You’ve got to have the gift to be a Transiter.’

  ‘Yeah. Whatever.’ He shrugged. ‘And you’ve gotta have the gift to be an M.o.D.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Master of Disguise. Y’know, on second thoughts, I think I’ll go my own way.’ He flashed her his wide grin, and his beaver teeth almost popped out. ‘See ya, Phyllis Wong!’

  ‘Ciao, Clem!’

  She watched him come back down the stairs, then hurry round to the door he’d earlier discovered underneath them. In an instant, he was gone.

  Phyllis went and sat heavily on the sofa next to Daisy. All at once she felt exhausted.

  ‘I think I’ll go see the Inspector,’ she said to Daisy as she patted her gently. ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Rr-gg-rr-gg-rr,’ said Daisy, making her gargling-with-marbles sound and giving Phyllis’s hand a playful lick.

  The next morning, when Phyllis asked Constable Karin Olofsson at the front desk of Police Headquarters if she could see Barry, the Constable said sternly, ‘Eggs can be dangerous, Phyllis Wong.’

  Phyllis gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘He should be more careful when he’s frying his eggs. He should get a skillet with a heatproof handle. Have you seen the burn on his hand? I made him take the bandage off to show me.’ She sighed. ‘For a Chief Inspector, he sure needs a training course in home safety.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Phyllis. ‘His burn. Yep, the world can be a dangerous place.’

  Constable Olofsson gave Phyllis a yes, that’s why they invented heatproof handles sort of look. She picked up the phone and got through to Barry Inglis straightaway.

  After a few words with him, she said to Phyllis, ‘Go straight up. He said he was sort of expecting you.’

  ‘Thanks, Constable.’ Phyllis beamed at her and shot up the stairs.

  ‘Ah,’ Barry greeted her, getting out of his chair. ‘Come on in. I was sort of—’

  ‘Expecting me?’

  ‘That I was. Have a seat.’

  She sat in the chair across from his desk, and he went back to his chair by the window.

  ‘How’s the hand?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah. It’ll be fine in no time. I can still use my fingers. Thank you for asking.’

  Then they both spoke over the top of each other—Barry saying, ‘Now, about what happened yesterday, if it was yesterday,’ and Phyllis saying, ‘I need you to promise me something.’

  Barry leant back. His eyes were gleaming. �
�You go ahead,’ he told her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I need you to promise me that no matter what happens to you, you’ll never tell a living soul what happened.’

  He clasped his hands across his shirt and studied her. ‘Tell me, Miss Wong: what did happen?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What did happen? Did I dream that I went back with you and young Clement to a theatre built hundreds of years ago? Or did it really occur, that we actually did visit that place?’

  ‘Oh, it occurred, all right,’ Phyllis said, a little indignant. ‘Of course it did! How d’you think you got your hand burnt?’

  ‘Of course it occurred,’ said Barry Inglis. ‘I know that; you know that. I have a very strange set of clothes hanging in my wardrobe that confirms it all. Pantaloons, for goodness sake! But if anyone ever, for some strange reason, got into my thoughts and discovered what really happened, why—I’d say it was a dream.’

  ‘A dream,’ Phyllis repeated, narrowing her eyes at him.

  ‘People accept dreams, Miss Wong, as a way of explaining things. People are far less likely to accept amazing things that actually, really did happen. But dreams . . . ah, they’re a different kettle of fish . . . Our friend Will himself said that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .’

  ‘Who’s Horatio?’ asked Phyllis.

  ‘A character in Hamlet.’ Barry twiddled his thumbs. ‘What I’m trying to say is this: you and I know what happened, but if ever the world finds out about it, then I will maintain that it was all a dream. Otherwise it will do people’s heads in.’

  A slow grin emerged on Phyllis’s face. ‘I came here to ask you to keep it all a secret,’ she said. ‘But you’ve already decided to, haven’t you?’

  ‘A dream is best kept as a secret,’ he answered. ‘And this will be ours.’

  Then Phyllis gasped loudly, and her mouth dropped open.

  Chief Inspector Barry Inglis was smiling! A genuine, wide-across-his-face, dimple-in-the-cheek-making smile!

  ‘Hey! You’re—’

  ‘Aherm.’ He cleared his throat, and the smile disappeared. ‘Before you go,’ he said, putting on his Chief Inspector voice again, ‘I want you to have this.’

  He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a long envelope. This he slid across the desk to Phyllis.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it when you get home,’ he said. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of paperwork to do. The House of Wendlebury’s are up in arms that they’re not going to be able to auction a certain “lost” play by the great William Shakespeare, and I have to examine all the correspondence between them and a certain woman who claimed she could produce it for them . . . seems they want to sue the britches off her. Not that I think they’ll have much luck . . . they’d have to find her first!’

  Phyllis took the envelope and stood. ‘Thanks, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘No, thank you, Miss Wong. Once again, because of you and your unique way of moving through your life, we have averted what could have been another major crime. At least in this century.’

  ‘All in the line of duty,’ Phyllis said. ‘See you round some time.’

  ‘I’m as certain of that as I am of the nose upon my face,’ said Barry Inglis.

  ‘Oh, one more thing.’

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘There’s a bit of paper under your desk. It looks old.’

  And, giving him her inscrutable smile, Phyllis Wong left the office.

  Chief Inspector Barry Inglis leant down in his chair and picked up the scrap of light cream-coloured paper that had become dislodged from the page in the last First Folio he had seen. ‘Hmm,’ he hmmed, inspecting it thoughtfully. ‘I was wondering where that’d got to . . .’

  When she arrived home, Phyllis went straight down to her basement.

  She sat in a chair at the bottom of the stairs and took from her pocket the envelope Barry had given her. Carefully she tore open the end flap and pulled out what was inside.

  They were pages, not thick but not thin either, and the paper was a high quality rag paper. On each page, written in ink in a scrolling, neat handwriting, were words from a speech.

  Phyllis’s heart beat quickly, and her hands began to quiver as she realised what she was holding: the only surviving samples from Cardenio. The part played by Barry Inglis at the premiere of the play in 1613.

  Written in the Bard’s own handwriting.

  She read the words, and read them again. She held the pages close to her chest and rested her head against the high-backed chair. She stared at the ceiling of her basement for what seemed ages.

  Then, realising it was time to go upstairs and take Daisy for her walk, she put the foul papers into a cupboard, safe alongside her magic tricks and her props and her Transiting journal and her little block of old type with the letter P on it and all the other secrets that belonged to Phyllis Wong—conjuror, Transiter and keeper of the mysteries of Time.

  Endword

  If you have read all that has come before this page, you will, like Phyllis herself, have made many new discoveries. Just as I did when I was writing this story.

  Much of the information in Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror is based on historical facts and bits of information that have become ‘lost’ in time. We know, for example, that Mr Shakespeare wrote a play, The History of Cardenio, but it has sadly become lost. (People are still searching for it, and we can be hopeful that one day it may turn up—and that will be an exciting event!) We also know that none of Shakespeare’s foul papers have survived, or, if they have, no one knows of their whereabouts.

  Women were not allowed to perform on stage during Shakespeare’s time, and would not be allowed to until after 1660, which is when the Puritans lost their power. Thankfully, the theatre has never reverted to such straitlaced traditions, and we can hope that it never will.

  We also know that the neighbourhood around the Globe Theatre was a smelly one, because of the many tanneries in the district. Tanneries in those days used human excrement to help soften the leather, which accounts for Clement’s reaction when he encounters the awful stench. He is a sensitive boy, and I am not at all surprised by how he took it.

  What I love about history is that sometimes fact is far stranger than fiction. It is true, as Phyllis reads in the newspaper, that of all the hundreds of thousands of words that Shakespeare penned only six words written in his own handwriting still survive! That to me is a superb irony—the greatest writer we have ever seen is only represented in his own hand by six . . . count them! . . . six words.

  Here and there I have taken some historical facts and changed them around a little, to make Phyllis’s story more rich. The Globe Theatre was destroyed by fire. Historians believe that a different play by Shakespeare was being performed at the Globe when the tragic events took place there on June 29th, 1613. In Phyllis’s story, it is the lost play premiering on that date.

  Shakespeare was a prolific inventor of new words and phrases, and I have peppered the story with many of these words, phrases and sayings he wrote. Some of the chapter headings are phrases coined by Shakespeare, as are some of the things that the characters say. Ardent fans of the Bard may have fun finding these . . .

  All the tricks performed by Phyllis have been performed for me by my favourite magician, to whom I’ve dedicated the story. Those card tricks that Phyllis does for Selena really are breathtaking.

  Albert Einstein did indeed propose the theory that so influences, and alters, the world of Phyllis Wong. And ‘Antigonish’ was written by William Hughes Mearns. And stairs have been around for thousands of years. As will be stories of magic, and the magic of stories.

  And sometimes, if you look quickly, fleetingly, out of the corner of your eye, you might find something that will one day change your life . . .

  G. McS.

  Sydney and Cawdor

  The author

  Find ou
t more about Phyllis Wong at

  phylliswong.com

  Have you read Phyllis Wong’s first mystery?

  Find out how this junior sleuth with sleight

  of hand tackles a series of seemingly

  incomprehensible robberies.