It didn't help that the redcoats were on before him. Their song and dance routine made a suitably rousing finale to the evening's entertainment. Afterwards people would be ready to leave. Even Barry himself knew a few conjuring tricks would be an anti-climax after that. He considered faking diarrhoea again, but by now it was too late. The redcoats were getting their standing ovation.

It was ironic, he thought as he strode out into his spotlight a few moments later, he was a magician wishing magic was real, wishing he could just cast an invisibility spell and flee. Yet as soon as the audience had reluctantly returned to their seats, he had ceased to be worrysome Barry Carter in a purple tie-dye bedsheet, and had become the Great Magnifico in his magical cloak.

Barry had performed the same illusions every Saturday and Sunday this summer. He didn't even have to think about it as he swept across the stage, pulling streamers from the ears of the front row and showering the row behind with glitter that appeared from nowhere. Then it came to the finale, and his two nubile assistants wheeled a cabinet onto the stage. This was to be a new trick he would try out on this audience. If they responded well, it might become a regular part of his show.

"In ancient Carthage," he boomed - it was not his normal voice. "There was once a powerful sorcerer known in legend only as Uswald Eo. He had many enemies, and was known to frequently invite them to banquets at his castle in the mountains. There, he would lure them into a cabinet and seal them within, never to be seen again. The cabinet, he claimed, was his own personal gateway to Hell.

"Ladies, gents, children and fellow magicfolk, I present... Uswald's Cabinet."

The audience applauded. It was just a normal wardrobe painted a glossy black with white gilding that looked like bone in the right light. With the dry ice rolling about his feet and a subdued spotlight shining over his painted face, he had the people under his spell - no magic required.

"All I need," he said, "is a volunteer."

Several were forthcoming. Barry prolonged the choosing, walking up and down the aisle twice before picking one man out of the third row. His ladyfriend had volunteered him on his behalf.

"I am legally required to offer you the chance to reconsider now," Barry announced when he got back to the stage. This was enough to create a little tension, which just made it more exciting for the spectators. When the volunteer shook his head, they applauded again.

The man was grinning as he stooped to step into the cabinet. Then Barry whipped it shut with a flourish. He hoped the guy would read the instructions written in inch high letters and luminous paint on the inside of the wardrobe. Now came his part in the illusion - to create enough noise to conceal the man's escape.

"I need you all to generate a little magical charge with me," Barry declared. "Clap in time with me. One, two, one two three. One, two, one two three."

The audience wilfully obliged. Once they'd got a hang of the rhythm he stopped clapping and lifted his hands toward the ceiling. He closed his eyes, chanted under his breath. The audience was transfixed. It was a rush when that happened.

The clapping reached a crescendo as they got carried away. Barry let them, but then he swept his arms akimbo to silence them. He let the hush prevail for a moment, glaring at the audience. Then he returned to the cabinet door, flipped the latch, pulled the door open and stepped aside.

There was only one scream, but it took Barry entirely by surprise. The façade of the Great Magnifico slipped for only a second, though, then he was back in character again.

He peered into the cabinet. At first he thought it was a malicious prank. Then he realised the man inside the cabinet wasn't the one he'd shut in. This one was shorter, thinner - emaciated, even - and shaven-headed.

He was also naked.

The audience was horrified. Some had begun to walk out in disgust. There were, after all, many families present. Someone somewhere near the back, however, gave Barry the standing ovation he'd always desired. But Barry barely noticed. He was just about to grab the fellow when he jabbered something Barry didn't understand and then charged down the aisle and out of the hall.

Barry stood stunned for almost a minute.

"We've received more complaints about this little stunt of yours than we ever did over that whole strip-o-gram scandal," spat Mr Plum the next morning. Barry was squirming in the seat opposite his desk, his mind blank of excuses.

"I-I don't know what I can say," Barry stammered. "I don't know what happened. The guy was supposed to sneak behind the curtain. I don't even know who that flasher was."

Mr Plum cleared his throat. "The maniac was terrorising guests all evening," he said. "Ranting in some nonsense-talk language."

"Oh, have they caught him, then?"

"No. Not yet. But they will. The police think he's hiding in the sports park somewhere. They're closing in right now. And if you are in cahoots with the guy, we'll find out then."

"I'm not," said Barry. "Honestly."

"Hmm, we'll see," growled Mr Plum. "As for tonight, no funny business. Do some card tricks. Pull a rabbit out of a hat. Anymore risque material and you can go back to McDonalds for the rest of the season."

Funnily enough, however, that night's performance was the first sell-out in a month. Barry watched from his dressing room window as disgruntled guests were told that there were no tickets left. There were less children tonight, Barry noted, but a lot of twentysomethings that rarely came to these kinds of variety shows anymore.

"They've all come to see you, y'know," said Irvine the Drag Queen, who shared Barry's dressing room, and was taking tissues out of his bra. "Your little performance has caused quite the stir, hon. Oh, yes, quite the stir."

Barry frowned. "Well, they're going to be disappointed, then."

"Oh, don't listen to Herr Plum," cried Irvine, goosestepping to the bin with his tissues. "You'll never make your name as a magician doing the same old sleight of hand as my Uncle George, Barry dear."

"It's not just Plum," said Barry. "I don't know what happened last time. I didn't plan that at all. Somebody must have interfered. Nothing to do with me. I can't do it again, simply because it wasn't me who did it the first time."

"Are you sure about that?" said Irvine with a wink. "Blow em away, baby."

Irvine finished changing back into his normal clothes and then left Barry to sit in the dressing room thinking over what he had said. If indeed all these people had turned up to see him repeat last night's magic trick, then he could hardly go on stage with the intent to disappoint them.

Someone knocked on his door when the redcoats were just starting their act. This was the cue to check his costume and touch up his stage make-up. As he was about to leave the room, however, there was another knock on the door. Barry opened it and felt a chill at the back of his neck.

"The police? How can I be of help?" He hoped the flasher hadn't been caught and implicated him in last night's shenanigans.

The two officers accepted his invitation into the dressing room and removed their caps. The first one introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Neptugne.

"Do you know a Mr Thomas Scruton, sir?" asked D.S. Neptugne.

Barry stuck out his bottom lip and slowly shook his head.

"He was the man who volunteered to participate in your magic show last night, Mr Carter," said the constable beside Neptugne.

"Oh. Him. I never met him before last night," said Barry.

"Do you know where he is?"

"No. I only met him last night." He paused. "Why?"

The two men exchanged glances. "Mr Thomas' girlfriend contacted us a couple of hours ago to say he had gone missing," D.S. Neptugne explained.

Barry blinked. In all the confusion he'd forgotten all about making the volunteer reappear. "Wasn't... H-he should have been behind the curtain the whole time. That's how the thing works."

D.S. Neptugne nodded, but dismissively. "Yet he still hasn't contacted his girlfriend, even now, some twenty four hours later."

Barry felt hot. He eased the stress from around his collar. "Well, I don't know. Maybe he ran off."

"Mr Thomas had recently proposed to his girlfriend, sir," the constable added.

"Maybe he changed his mind, then."

"Could we see the apparatus please, Mr Carter?" asked D.S. Neptugne.

"You mean Uswald's Cabinet?"

"Uh, yes."

Barry took them to the wings of the stage, where the cabinet had stayed since last night. They opened it up and poked around whilst Barry stood back indignantly. The redcoats were midsong on the stage. They were only three songs from the end of their set, he realised.

"Have you finished yet?" he asked. "I have to be on in a few minutes."

D.S. Neptugne didn't look like he was finished. "Can you show me how you would get out of this thing, Mr Carter?"

"You want me to get in the box," he said slowly.

"Please."

Barry sighed. "Sure."

He opened the door of the wardrobe. It had no back wall. This had been taken out and replaced by a black curtain. The curtain was tacked down when the volunteer entered so that the audience would think it solid. The luminous instructions daubed on the side wall told the volunteer to untack it to get out, and then tack it back up from the other side. As Barry got in, he didn't think it looked like the curtain had been untacked at all.

"Do you mind if I shut the door?" asked D.S. Neptugne. "You can show us how it all works."

"Sure, go ahead."

Once the door was closed, Barry just stood there until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. It was darker than he'd imagined. Not a spot of light got in. The instructions written on the wall in luminous paint weren't showing up, so that volunteer couldn't have got out after all, thought Barry. And the singing of the redcoats wasn't so much muffled now, as gone completely.

Barry felt disorientated and unbalanced. He reached for the door. His hand went straight past where he had thought it would be. He staggered forward, groped again. What his fingers touched this time wasn't wood, but human skin. A small cry. Barry flinched. But when he lurched back, there were others in the way. Though he couldn't see where he was, he knew he wasn't in the cabinet any more. He cried out.

Then he heard the whisper of gas.

NOTES:
I have decidedly mixed feelings about this story these days. Nobody in Andrew Garvin's writing class at UEA in autumn 2002 understood it at all. I always assumed that an image of someone being trapped in a dark room crammed full of naked people and then hearing gas would have obvious connotations. I'm tempted to rewrite the ending to make it clearer, but then, several people I respect have got it spot on. I submitted this as coursework anyway and it got 63% which is ludicrous, if only because I think it the weaker story to "The Cupboard Under The Stairs".