"Do you do anything else with that thing?" the mayor asked, childlike interest already waning. "Just one more thing. The Astounding Disappearing Ears Trick. But I need a volunteer from the audience."

"Let's go, sir," an assistant urged. His inability to focus on Remo's face was making him nauseous.

"Not you," Remo admonished. The whirring pot stopped.

There was a metallic gong. All at once the mayor's aide was sleeping on the city-hall steps. "What happened?" the mayor demanded. Another gong. A second man joined the first. "Will a volunteer please step forward?" Remo announced, seemingly oblivious to the gathering pile of unconscious civil servants.

"Stop doing that," the mayor complained to his staff. He nudged one of the men with his toe. Gong. Another man dropped onto the inert pile. "I just gave you an order," the mayor whined as another gong heralded the collapse of a fourth man. The final city-hall worker was pointing at Remo. "I think he's doing it," he announced, concerned, just before the last gong sounded, this one inside his own head.

The mayor stood, dumbstruck, within the slumbering rubble of his personal staff. When he turned to Remo, there was just the first flickering hint of understanding in the backs of his dull politician's eyes.

Remo held the gleaming pot aloft. A smile wrapped his face. "I see we have a volunteer," he announced.

To the mayor the kettle seemed to move with the slowness of a hypnotist's watch. Only when he was engulfed by a darkness more complete than the night in which he stood did he realize that this was an illusion.

It felt as if someone had clamped his head in a vise.

"You will notice, Mr. Mayor," said the street performer, his voice muffled by the pot's interior, "that your ears have completely disappeared. That's the 'astounding' part of the Astounding Disappearing Ears Trick."