Part One.
Just then, Quaint felt something slip
through his fingers.
The tightness of the straitjacket meant
that it hadn’t fallen very far, and he snatched it up and rolled it around in
his palm. It was the iron pin from the manacles! Miraculously, he had done it!
And then, without lingering on his success, he was reminded that he still had a
long way to go. He peered through the glass of the tank. Quentin Claremont was
nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had assumed that his victory was a foregone
conclusion. Silly, Quaint thought, very silly. Only a fool underestimated their
opponent, and he was far more than merely an opponent. He was even far more
than merely a conjuror. Magic was only his talent and the circus only his occupation.
What made him a man capable of miracles
was everything else in-between.
One layer of the puzzle was complete, now
onto the next. He needed to get out of the straitjacket before it got much
wetter. He could already feel the water seeping in, chilling him to the bone.
His lungs pleaded with him for a full intake of breath, but he knew that once
he inhaled, the wet material would cling to his skin like tar. He twisted
himself around, looking up the length of the chain. As he did so, he watched
the wooden post budge a little. Claremont was telling the truth. The wood had
been sawed at least halfway through. It wouldn’t take much for it to break,
which made getting out of the straitjacket even harder. It was a feat in itself
getting out of one under normal conditions, let alone ones where the odds of
death were astronomical. In the old days he’d been able to forcibly dislocate
his shoulder and manoeuvre his way free, but in the old days he wasn’t as old
as he was now, and there was no guarantee that he’d be able to get the shoulder
back in. Besides, it was incredibly painful. In some ways, he was better off
dying. Every avenue of escape seemed to be a dead end – quite literally – and
Quaint wondered if this was the way that he would die; murdered by a fellow
conjuror. Not on the orders of a villainous and shadowy organisation, or at the
hands of a psychotic Frenchman, nor even by a deadly plague – but a showman, a
man just like he was…
The Enthusiastic Amateur will continue right here on Wednesday 29th February 2012!!!
In the meantime, please check out the Cornelius Quaint Facebook page and Twitter for more information.
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