It was in a thronging market square below on their second day that they were surprised to see a wagon decorated with rajas and angels-and who should be beside it but Professor Umberto, the traveling medicine showman and magician who had passed through Zanesville. The spruiker was now calling himself Lemuel Z. Bricklin, “Master of Teratology, Clairvoyance, and Prestidigitation.”

Lloyd wanted to say hello, his parents believing that the sight of the colorful wagon had brought back a fond memory of Zanesville. The truth was that their old town held but one happy recollection for the boy, and that had to do with his ghost sister’s memorial. The reason he was interested in the professor was that he wanted to catch sight of the man’s fine-figured assistant, Anastasia. His experience with Miss Viola had opened up a new kind of precocious craving within him. And the earlier magic had intrigued him.

Rapture, still miffed about the downturn in business she had experienced owing to the professor’s arrival in Ohio, found herself “haa’dly ’kin” to say howdy to him in St. Louis and went off to round up ingredients to conjure a little “tas’e ’e mout” for the family’s supper, reminding Hephaestus to keep an eye on the boy and for them both to stay out of trouble. Of course, Lloyd gave his father the slip.

The square was jammed with people buying fresh pig snouts or honeycomb tripe, and Hephaestus became so absorbed that he did not feel a passing thief’s practiced hand snake into his pocket and dexterously extract the money that was intended for their boat fare.

Lloyd, meanwhile, made a beeline for the medicine-show wagon, which had a tent set up behind it. The professor, a springy man with a waxed mustache and a receding hairline hidden under a leghorn hat, had just produced a fat Red Eagle cigar from a pocket in his coat when Lloyd strode up.