Most of the tip was turned into the blow-off. A few wandered around, then started to leave as most of the lights in the main tent were turned off. The freaks and other carnies started packing their props and slum preparatory to tear-down. There was a train jump coming in the morning and living tops would remain up for a few hours sleep, but canvas boys were already loosening stakes on the sideshow top.

Shortly the talker-owner-manager of the ten-in-one came back into the semi-darkened tent, having rushed the blow-off and spilled the last marks out the rear exit. “Smitty, don’t go ’way. Got something for you.” He handed the magician an envelope, which Dr. Apollo tucked away without looking at it. The manager added, “Kid, I hate to tell you this—but you and your wife ain’t going with us to Paducah.”

“I know.”

“Well . . . look, don’t take it hard, there’s nothing personal about it—but I got to think of the show. We’re replacing you with a mentalist team. They do a top reading act, then she runs a phrenology and mitt camp while he makes with the mad ball. We need ’em . . . and you know as well as I do you didn’t have no season’s guarantee. You were just on trial.”

“I know,” agreed the magician. “I knew it was time to leave. No hard feelings, Tim.”

“Well, I’m glad you feel that way about it.” The talker hesitated. “Smitty, do you want some advice? Just say no if you don’t.”

“I would like very much to have your advice,” the magician said simply.

“Okay, you asked for it. Smitty, your tricks are good. Hell, some of ’em even got me baffled. But clever tricks don’t make a magician. The trouble is you’re not really with it. You behave like a carney—you mind your own business and you never crab anybody else’s act and you’re helpful if anybody needs it. But you’re not a carney. You know why? You don’t have any feeling for what makes a chump a chump; you don’t get inside his mind. A real magician can make the marks open their mouths and catch flies just by picking a quarter out of the air. That Thurston’s levitation you do—I’ve never seen it done any more perfectly but the marks don’t warm to it. No psychology. Now take me, for example. I can’t even pick a quarter out of the air—hell, I can barely use a knife and fork without cutting my mouth. I got no act . . . except I got the one act that counts. I know marks. I know where that streak of larceny is in his heart, I know just how wide it is. I know what he hungers for, whether he knows it or not. That’s showmanship, son, whether you’re a politician running for office, a preacher pounding a pulpit . . . or a magician. You find out what the chumps want and you can leave half your props in your trunk.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“I know I am. He wants sex and blood and money. We don’t give him any real blood—unless a fire eater or a knife thrower makes a terrible mistake. We don’t give him money, either; we just encourage him to hope for it while we take away a little. We don’t give him any real sex. But why do seven out of ten of a tip buy the blow-off? To see a nekkid broad, that’s why—and a chance to be paid a double sawbuck for lookin’—when maybe they got one just as good or better at home, nekkid anytime they like. So he don’t see one and he don’t get paid—and still we send him out happy.

“What else does a chump want? Mystery! He wants to think that the world is a romantic place when he knows damn well it ain’t. That’s your job . . . only you ain’t learned how. Shucks, son, even the marks know that your tricks are fake . . . only they’d like to believe they’re real, and it’s up to you to help ’em believe, as long as they’re inside the show. That’s what you lack.”

“How do I get it, Tim? How do I learn what makes a chump tick?”

“Hell, I can’t tell you that; that’s the piece you have to learn for yourself. Get out and stir around and be a chump yourself a while, maybe. But—Well, take this notion you had of billing yourself as ‘The Man from Mars.’ You mustn’t offer the chump what he won’t swallow. They’ve all seen the Man from Mars, in pictures and on stereo-vision. Hell, I’ve seen him myself. Sure, you look a bit like him, same general type, a casual resemblance—but even if you were his twin brother, the marks know they won’t find the Man from Mars in a ten-in-one in the sticks. It’s as silly as it would be to bill a sword swallower as ‘the President of the United States.’ Get me? A chump wants to believe—but he won’t thank you to insult what trace of intelligence he has. And even a chump has brains of a sort. You have to remember that.”