The magician who had no fingers

This feels like an odd, transitional time. A deck takes us - we've discovered on the basis of two - a whole year of what feels at times like quite considerable sacrifice. We work seven days a week from around 10.00 in the morning until around 10.00 at night (literally) and for the ten or eleven months it takes to complete a deck at this pace, we focus hugely. Once it's finished, all sorts of things begin to flood in. I've had the most remarkable dreams (my mind emptying out the unused pictures?) and I begin to have time to think about experiences that I have put aside for a year. So - the magician with no fingers. This is what I saw on an ordinary tube train on an ordinary evening (early evening) in London a few years ago. It was so strange, and at the time had such an odd atmosphere of unreality about it, that this is the first time I've thought to ask - does anyone else know of this guy? Has anyone else seen him? He was a scrawny magician who got on the tube train and started to perform cliched tricks. He had a handkerchief from which he pulled objects (I cannot for the life of me remember what, and you'll understand why in a moment). He had long hair, wore a tail-coat (I told you, all very cliched) and had - here comes yet another stereotype - incredible piercing blue eyes. He did the tricks with a remarkable elegance, almost graceful. But, as he pulled the handkerchief away with a flourish, he showed his hands, and he had no fingers. Just stumps. It looked not at all like a congenital defect but as though someone had actually amputated the fingers. It was so horrific and so unexpected that I just sat there. I remember that I could almost feel and see the air thickening. Then he left the carriage. That's the end of the story. Does anyone else know who this man was. Is he still in London? I'll be honest and say that at the time the phrase that went through my head was "by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes". I found him fundamentally terrifying, but I'm not sure why (I am certainly not afraid of disability, one old friend of mine is quite severely disabled and I find his company both charming and relaxing). So what was going on? You tell me. I didn't dream it, it happened. I'd just like to know more.