The Prestige

Alfred Borden

I write in the year 1901.

My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the story of the secrets by which I have lived my life. They are described in this narrative for the first and last time; this is the only extant copy.

I was born in 1856 on the eighth day of the month of May, in the coastal town of Hastings. I was a healthy, vigorous child. My father was a tradesman of that borough, a master wheelwright and cooper. Our house at number 105 Manor Road was in a long, curving terrace built along the side of one of the several hills which Hastings comprises. Behind the house was a steep and secluded valley where sheep and cattle grazed during the summer months, but at the front the hill rose up, lined with many more houses, standing between us and the sea. It was from those houses, and from the farms and businesses around, that my father took his trade.

Our house was larger and taller than others in the road, because it was built over the gateway that led to the yard and sheds behind. My room was on the street side of the house, directly above the gateway, and because only the wooden floorboards and some thin lath-and-plaster lay between me and the open air the room was noisy through every day of the year, and viciously cold in the winter months. It was in that room that I slowly grew up and became the man that I am.

That man is Le Professeur de la Magie, and I am a master of illusions.

It is time to pause, even so early, for this account is not intended to be about my life in the usual habit of autobiographers, but is, as I have said, about my life's secrets. Secrecy is intrinsic to my work.

Let me then first consider and describe the method of writing this account. The very act of describing my secrets might indeed be construed as a betrayal of myself, except of course that as I am an illusionist I can make sure you only see what I wish you to see. A puzzle is implicitly involved.

It is therefore only fair that I should from the beginning try to elucidate those closely connected subjects — Secrecy and the Appreciation Of Secrecy.

Here is an example.

There almost invariably comes a moment during the exercise of my profession when the prestidigitator will seem to pause. He will step forward to the footlights, and in the full glare of their light will face the audience directly. He will say, or if his act is silent he will seem to say, "Look at my hands. There is nothing concealed within them." He will then hold up his hands for the audience to see, raising his palms to expose them, splaying his fingers so as to prove nothing is gripped secretly between them. With his hands held thus he will rotate them, so that the backs are shown to the audience, and it is established that his hands are, indeed, as empty as it is possible to be. To take the matter beyond any remaining suspicion, the magician will probably then tweak lightly at the cuffs of his jacket, pulling them back an inch or two to expose his wrists, showing that nothing is there concealed either. He then performs his trick, and during it, moments after this incontrovertible evidence of empty-handedness he produces something from his hands: a fan, a live dove or rabbit, a bunch of paper flowers, sometimes even a burning wick. It is a paradox, an impossibility! The audience marvels at the mystery, and applause rings out.

How could any of this be?

The prestidigitator and the audience have entered into what I term the Pact of Acquiescent Sorcery. They do not articulate it as such, and indeed the audience is barely aware that such a Pact might exist, but that is what it is.

The performer is of course not a sorcerer at all, but an actor who plays the part of a sorcerer and who wishes the audience to believe, if only temporarily, that he is in contact with darker powers. The audience, meantime, knows that what they are seeing is not true sorcery, but they suppress the knowledge and acquiesce to the selfsame wish as the performer’s. The greater the performer's skill at maintaining the illusion, the better at this deceptive sorcery he is judged to be.

The act of showing the hands to be empty, before revealing that despite appearances they could not have been, is itself a constituent of the Pact. The Pact implies special conditions are in force. In normal social intercourse, for instance, how often does it arise that someone has to prove that his hands are empty? And consider this: if the magician were suddenly to produce a vase of flowers without first suggesting to the audience that such a production was impossible, it would seem to be no trick at all. No one would applaud.

This then illustrates my method.

Let me set out the Pact of Acquiescence under which I write these words, so that those who read them will realize that what follows is not sorcery, but the appearance of it.

First let me in a manner of speaking show you my hands, palms forward, fingers splayed, and I will say to you (and mark this well): "Every word in this notebook that describes my life and work is true, honestly meant and accurate in detail."

Now I rotate my hands so that you may see their backs, and I say to you: "Much of what is here may be checked against objective records. My career is noted in newspaper files, my name appears in books of biographical reference."

Finally, I tweak at the cuffs of my jacket to reveal my wrists, and I say to you: "After all, what would I have to gain by writing a false account, when it is intended for no one's eyes but my own, perhaps those of my immediate family, and the members of a posterity I shall never meet?"

What gain indeed?

But because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it!

Already, without once writing a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life. The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of everything that follows, yet nowhere will it be apparent.

I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now you are looking in the wrong place.

As every stage magician well knows there will be some who are baffled by this, some who will profess to a dislike of being duped, some who will claim to know the secret, and some, the happy majority, who will simply take the illusion for granted and enjoy the magic for the sake of entertainment.

But there are always one or two who will take the secret away with them and worry at it without ever coming near to solving it.

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Before I resume the story of my life, here is another anecdote that illustrates my method.

When I was younger there was a fashion in the concert halls for Oriental Magic. Most of it was performed by European or American illusionists dressed and made up to look Chinese, but there were one or two genuine Chinese magicians who came to Europe to perform. One of these, and perhaps the greatest of them all, was a man from Shanghai called Chi Linqua, who worked under the stage name Ching Ling Foo.

I saw Ching perform only once, a few years ago at the Adelphi Theatre in Leicester Square. At the end of the show I went to the stage door and sent up my card, and without delay he graciously invited me to his dressing room. He would not speak of his magic, but my eye was taken by the presence there, on a stand beside him, of his most famous prop: the large glass bowl of goldfish, which, when apparently produced from thin air, gave his show its fantastic climax. He invited me to examine the bowl, and it was normal in every way. It contained at least a dozen ornamental fish, all of them alive, and was well filled with water. I tried lifting it, because I knew the secret of its manifestation, and marvelled at its weight.

Ching saw me struggling with it but said nothing. He was obviously unsure whether I knew his secret or not, and was unwilling to say anything that might expose it, even to a fellow professional. I did not know how to reveal that I did know the secret, and so I too kept my silence. I stayed with him for fifteen minutes, during which time he remained seated, nodding politely at the compliments I paid him. He had already changed out of his stage clothes by the time I arrived, and was wearing dark trousers and striped blue shirt, although he still had on his greasepaint. When I stood up to leave he rose from his chair by the mirror and conducted me to the door. He walked with his head bowed, his arms slack at his sides, and shuffling as if his legs gave him great pain.

Now, because years have passed and he is dead, I can reveal his most closely guarded secret, one whose obsessive extent I was privileged to glimpse that night.

His famous goldfish bowl was with him on stage throughout his act, ready for its sudden and mysterious appearance. Its presence was deftly concealed from the audience. He carried it beneath the flowing mandarin gown he affected , clutching it between his knees, kept ready for the sensational and apparently miraculous production at the end. No one in the audience could ever guess at how the trick was done, even though a moment's logical thought would have solved the mystery.

But logic was magically in conflict with itself! The only possible place where the heavy bowl could be concealed was beneath his gown, yet that was logically impossible. It was obvious to everyone that Ching Ling Foo was physically frail, shuffling painfully through his routine. When he took his bow at the end, he leaned for support on his assistant, and was led hobbling from the stage.

The reality was completely different. Ching was a fit man of great physical strength, and carrying the bowl in this way was well within his power. Be that as it may, the size and shape of the bowl caused him to shuffle like a mandarin as he walked. This threatened the secret, because it drew attention to the way he moved, so to protect the secret he shuffled for the whole of his life. Never, at any time, at home or in the street, day or night, did he walk with a normal gait lest his secret be exposed.

Such is the nature of a man who acts the role of sorcerer.

Audiences know well that a magician will practise his illusions for years, and will rehearse each performance carefully, but few people realize the extent of the prestidigitator's wish to deceive, the way in which the apparent defiance of normal laws becomes an obsession which governs every moment of his life.

Ching Ling Foo had his obsessive deception, and now that you have read my anecdote about him you may correctly assume that I have mine. My deception rules my life, informs every decision I make, regulates my every movement. Even now, as I embark on the writing of this memoir, it controls what I may write and what I may not. I have compared my method with the display of seemingly bared hands, but in reality everything in this account represents the shuffling walk of a fit man.

Because the yard was prospering my parents could afford to send me to the Pelham Scholastic Academy, a dame school run by the Misses Pelham in East Bourne Street, next to the remains of the mediaeval Town Wall and close to the harbour. There, amid the persistent stench from the rotten fish which littered the beach and all the environs of the harbour, and against the constant but eloquent braying of the herring gulls, I learnt the three Rs, as well as a modicum of History, Geography and the fearsome French language. All of these were to stand me in good stead in later life, but my fruitless struggles to learn French have an ironic outcome, because in adult life my stage persona is that of a French professor.

My way to and from school was across the ridge of West Hill, which was built up only in the immediate neighbourhood of our house. Most of the way led along steep narrow paths through the scented tamarisk bushes that had colonized so many of Hastings’ open spaces. Hastings at the time was experiencing a period of development, as numerous new houses and hotels were being built to accommodate the summer visitors. I saw little of this, because the school was in the Old Town, while the resort area was being built beyond the White Rock, a former rocky spur that one day in my childhood was enthrallingly dynamited out of existence to make way for an extended seafront promenade. Despite all this, life in the ancient centre of Hastings continued much as it had done for hundreds of years.

I could say much about my father, good and bad, but for the sake of concentrating on my own story I shall confine myself to the best. I loved him, and learnt from him many of the cabinet-making techniques which, inadvertently by him, have made my name and fortune. I can attest that my father was hard-working, honest, sober, intelligent and, in his own way, generous. He was fair to his employees. Because he was not a God-fearing man, and no churchgoer, he brought up his family to act within a benign secularism, in which neither action nor inaction would occur to cause hurt or harm to others. He was a brilliant cabinet-maker and a good wheelwright. I realized, eventually, that whatever emotional outbursts our family had to endure (because there were several) his anger must have been caused by inner frustrations, although at what and of what sort I was never entirely sure. Although I was never myself a target for his worst moments, I grew up a little scared of my father but loved him profoundly.

My mother's name was Betsy May Borden (nйe Robertson), my father's name was Joseph Andrew Borden. I had a total of seven brothers and sisters, although because of infant deaths I knew only five of them. I was neither the oldest nor the youngest child, and was not particularly favoured by either parent. I grew up in reasonable harmony with most, if not all, of my siblings.

When I was twelve I was taken away from the school and placed to work as a wheelwright's apprentice in my father's yard. Here my adult life began, both in the sense that from this time I spent more time with adults than with other children, and that my own real future started to become clear to me. Two factors were pivotal.

The first was, simply enough, the handling of wood. I had grown up with the sight and smell of it, so that both were familiar to me. I had little idea how wood felt when you picked it up, or cleaved it, or sawed it. From the first moment I handled wood with purposeful intent I began to respect it, and realize what could be done with it. Wood, when properly seasoned, and hewed to take advantage of the natural grain, is beautiful, strong, light and supple. It can be cut to almost any shape; it can be worked or adhered to almost any other material. You can paint it, stain it, bleach it, flex it. It is at once outstanding and commonplace, so that when something manufactured of wood is present it lends a quiet feeling of solid normality, and so is hardly ever noticed.

In short it is the ideal medium for the illusionist.

At the yard I was given no preferential treatment as the proprietor's son. On my first day, I was sent to begin learning the business by taking on the roughest, hardest job in the yard — I and another apprentice were put to work in a saw-pit. The twelve-hour days of that (we started at 6.00 a.m. and finished at 8.00 p.m. every day, with only three short breaks for meals) hardened my body like no other work I can conceive of, and taught me to fear as well as respect the heavy cords of timber. After that initiation, which continued for several months, I was moved to the less physically demanding but more exacting work of learning to cut, turn and smooth the wood for the spokes and felloes of the wheels. Here I came into regular contact with the wheelwrights and other men who worked for my father, and saw less of my fellow apprentices.

One morning, about a year after I had left school, a contract worker named Robert Noonan came to the yard to carry out some long-needed repair and redecoration work to the rear wall of the yard, which had been damaged in a storm some years before. With Noonan's arrival came the second great influence on the direction of my future life.

I, busy about my labours, barely even noticed him, but at 1.00 p.m. when we broke for lunch, Noonan came and sat with me and the other men at the trestle table where we ate our food. He produced a pack of playing cards, and asked if any of us would care to "find the lady". Some of the older men chaffed him and tried to warn off the others, but a few of us stayed to watch. Tiny sums of money began to change hands; not mine, for I had none to spare, but one or two of the workmen were willing to gamble a few pence.

What fascinated me was the smooth, natural way that Noonan manipulated the cards. He was so fast! So dexterous! He spoke softly and persuasively, showing us the faces of the three playing cards, placing them down on the small box in front of him with a quick but flowing motion, then moving them about with his long fingers before pausing to challenge us to indicate which of the cards was the Queen. The workmen had slower eyes than mine; they spotted the card rather less often than I did (although I was wrong more often than I was right).

Afterwards, I said to Noonan, "How do you do that? Will you show me?"

At first he tried to fob me off with talk of idle hands, but I persisted. "I want to know how you do it!" I cried. "The Queen is placed in the middle of the three, but you move the cards only twice and she is not where I think she is! What's the secret?"

So one lunchtime, instead of trying to fleece the other men, he took me to a quiet corner of the shed and showed me how to manipulate the three cards so that the hand deceived the eye. The Queen and another card were gripped lightly between the thumb and middle finger of the left hand, one above the other; the third card was held in the right hand. When the cards were placed he moved his hands crosswise, brushing his fingertips on the surface and pausing briefly, so suggesting the Queen was being put down first. In fact, it was almost invariably one of the other cards that slipped quietly down before her. This is the classic trick whose correct name is Three Card Monte.

When I had grasped the idea of that, Noonan showed me several other techniques. He taught me how to palm a card in the hand, how to shuffle the deck deceptively so that the order remained undisturbed, how to cut the pack to bring a certain chosen card to the top or bottom of the hand, how to offer a fan of cards to someone and force him to choose one particular card. He went through all this in a casual way, showing off rather than showing, probably not realizing the rapt attention with which I was taking it in. When he had finished his demonstration I tried the false dealing technique with the Queen, but the cards scattered all about. I tried again. Then again. And on and on, long after Noonan himself had lost interest and wandered away. By the evening of the first day, alone in my bedroom, I had mastered Three Card Monte, and was setting to work on the other techniques I had briefly seen.

One day, his painting work completed, Noonan left the yard and went out of my life. I never saw him again. He left behind him an impressionable adolescent boy with a compulsion. I intended to rest at nothing until I had mastered the art that I now knew (from a book I urgently borrowed from the lending library) was called Legerdemain.

Legerdemain, sleight of hand, prestidigitation, became the dominant interest of my life.

The next three years saw parallel developments in my life. For one thing I was an adolescent growing rapidly into a man. For another, my father was quick to realize that I had an appreciable skill as a woodworker, and that the comparatively coarse demands of the wheelwright's work were not making the best use of me. Finally, I was learning how to make magic with my hands.

These three parts of my life wove around each other like strands in a rope. Both my father and I needed to make a living, so much of the work I did in the yard continued to be with the barrels, axles and wheels that made up the main part of the business, but when he was able to, either he or one of his foremen would instruct me in the finer craft of cabinet-making. My father planned a future for me in his business. If I proved as adept as he thought, he would at the end of my apprenticeship set me up with a furniture workshop of my own, allowing me to develop it as I saw fit. He would eventually join me there when he retired from the yard. In this, some of his frustrations in life were laid plain before me. My carpentry skill reawakened memories of his own youthful ambitions.

Meanwhile, my other skill, the one I saw as my real one, was developing apace. Every possible moment of my spare time was devoted to practising the conjurer's art. In particular, I learnt and tried to master all the known tricks of playing-card manipulation. I saw sleight of hand as the foundation of all magic, just as the tonic scale lies at the foundation of the most complex symphony. It was difficult obtaining reference works on the subject, but books on magic do exist and the diligent researcher can find them. Night after night, in my chilly room above the arch, I stood before a full-length mirror and practised palming and forcing, shuffling cards and spreading them, passing and fanning them, discovering different ways of cutting and feinting. I learnt the art of misdirection, in which the magician trades on the audience's everyday experience to confound their senses — the metal birdcage that looks too rigid to collapse, the ball that seems too large to be concealed in a sleeve, the sword whose tempered steel blade could never, surely?, be pliant. I quickly amassed a repertoire of such legerdemain skills, applying myself to each one of them until I had it right, then re-applying myself until I had mastered it, then re-applying myself once again until I was perfect at it. I never ceased practising.

The strength and dexterity of my hands was the key to this.

Now, briefly, I break off from the writing of this to consider my hands. I lay down my pen to hold them before me again, turning them in the light from the mantle, trying to see them not in the so familiar way that I see them every day, but as I imagine a stranger might. Eight long and slender fingers, two sturdy thumbs, nails trimmed to an exact length, not an artist's hands, nor a labourer’s, nor those of a surgeon, but the hands of a carpenter turned prestidigitator. When I turn them so that the palms face me, I see pale, almost transparent skin, with darker roughened patches between the joints of the fingers. The balls of the thumbs are rounded, but when I tense my muscles hard ridges form across the palms. Now I reverse them and see the fine skin again, with a dusting of blond hairs. Women are intrigued by my hands, and a few say they love them.

Every day, even now in my maturity, I exercise my hands. They are strong enough to burst a sealed rubber tennis ball. I can bend steel nails between my fingers, and if I slam the heel of my hand against hardwood, the hardwood splinters. Yet the same hand can lightly suspend a farthing by its edge between my third and fourth fingertips, while the rest of the hand manipulates apparatus, or writes on a blackboard, or holds the arm of a volunteer from the audience, and it can retain the coin there through all this before sliding it dexterously to where it might seem magically to appear.

My left hand bears a small scar, a reminder of the time in my youth when I learnt the true value of my hands. I already knew, from every time that I practised with a pack of cards, or a coin, or a fine silk scarf, or with any one of the conjurer's props I was slowly amassing, that the human hand was a delicate instrument, fine and strong and sensitive. But carpentry was hard on my hands, an unpleasant fact I discovered one morning in the yard. A moment's lost attention while shaping a felloe, a careless movement with a chisel, and I cut a deep slash in my left hand. I remember standing there in disbelief, my fingers tensed like the talons of a claw, while dark-red blood welled out of the gash and ran thickly down my wrist and arm. The older men I was working with that day were used to dealing with such injuries, and knew what to do; a tourniquet was rapidly applied, and a cart readied for the dash to hospital. For two weeks afterwards my hand was bandaged. It was not the blood, not the pain, not the inconvenience; it was the dread that when the cut itself healed my hand would be found to have been cut through in some final, devastating way, immobilizing it forever. As events turned out no permanent damage was done. After a discouraging period when the hand was stiff and awkward to use, the tendons and muscles gradually eased up, the gash healed and knitted properly, and within two months I was back to normal.

I took it as a warning, though. My legerdemain was then only a hobby. I had never performed for anyone, not even, like Robert Noonan, for the entertainment of the men I worked with. All my magic was practice magic, executed in dumb show before the tall mirror. But it was a consuming hobby, a passion, even, yes, the beginning of an obsession. I could not allow an injury to put it in jeopardy!

That gashed hand was therefore another turning point, because it established the paramountcy of my life. Before it happened I was a trainee wheelwright with an engrossing pastime, but afterwards I was a young magician who would allow nothing to stand in his way. It was more important to me that I should be able to palm a hidden card, or deftly reach for a concealed billiard ball inside a felt-lined bag, or secretly slip a borrowed five-pound note into a prepared orange, trivial though these matters might seem, than that I might one day again hurt one of my hands while making a wheel for the cart of a publican.

I said nothing of this to me! What is it? How far is it to be taken? I must write no more until I know!

So, now we have spoken, it is agreed I may continue? Here it is again, on that understanding. I may write what I see fit, while I may add to it as I see fit. I planned nothing to which I would not agree, only to write a great deal more of it before I read it. I apologize if I think I was deceiving me, and meant no harm.

I have read it through several times, & I think I understand what I am driving at. It was only the surprise that made me react the way I did. Now I am calmer I find it acceptable so far.

But much is missing! I think I must write about the meeting with John Henry Anderson next, because it was through him I gained my introduction to the Maskelynes.

I assume there is no particular reason why I can't go straight to this?

Either I must do this now, or leave a note for me to find. Exchange me this more often!

I must not leave out on any account:

1. The way I discovered what Angier was doing, & what I did about him.

2. Olive Wenscombe (not my fault, NB).

3. What about Sarah? The children?

The Pact extends even to this, does it? That's how I interpret it. If so, either I have to leave a lot out, or I have to put in a great deal more.

I am surprised to discover how much I have already written.

When I was sixteen, in 1872, John Henry Anderson brought his Touring Magical Show to Hastings, and took up a week's residence at the Gaiety Theatre in Queens Road. I attended his show every night, taking seats as close to the front of the auditorium as I could afford. It would have been inconceivable to have missed a single performance of his. At that time not only was he the leading stage illusionist with a touring show, not only was he credited with the invention of numerous baffling new effects, but he had a reputation for helping and encouraging young magicians.

Every night Mr Anderson performed one particular trick known in the world of magic as the Modern Cabinet Illusion. During this he would invite on stage a small committee of volunteers from the audience. These men (they were always men) would assist in pulling on to the stage a tall wooden cabinet mounted on wheels, sufficiently raised from the floor to show that no one could enter it via a trap in the base. The committee would then be invited to inspect the cabinet inside and out to satisfy themselves it was empty, turn it around for the audience to see it from all sides, even choose one of their number to step inside for a moment to prove that no other person could be concealed within it. They would then collaborate in locking the door and securing it with heavy padlocks. While the committee remained on the stage Mr Anderson once again rotated the cabinet for the audience to satisfy themselves that it was securely sealed, then with quick motions he dashed away the restraining padlocks, threw open the door . and out would step a beautiful young assistant, wearing a voluminous dress and large hat.

Every night when Mr Anderson made his call for volunteers I would stand up eagerly to be selected, and every night he would pass me by. I badly wanted to be chosen! I wanted to find out what it was like to be on the stage under the lights, in front of an audience. I wanted to be near to Mr Anderson when he was performing the illusion. And I positively craved a good close look at the way the cabinet had been built. Of course I knew the secret of the Modern Cabinet, because by this time I had learnt or worked out for myself the mechanism of every illusion then current, but to see a top magician's cabinet at close quarters would have been a golden opportunity to examine it. The secret of that particular illusion is all in the making of the cabinet. Alas, such a chance was not to be.

After the last show of his short season I plucked up my courage and went to the stage door, intending to waylay Mr Anderson when he left the theatre. Instead, I had been standing outside for no more than a minute when the doorman let himself out of his cubbyhole, and walked out to speak to me, his head slightly to one side, and looking at me curiously.

"Pardon me, sir," he said. "But Mr Anderson has left instructions that if you appear at this entrance I am to invite you to join him in his dressing room."

Needless to say, I was astounded!

"Are you sure he meant me?" I said.

"Yes, sir. I'm positive."

Still mystified, but extremely pleased and excited, I followed the doorman's directions along the narrow passages and stairways, and soon found the star's dressing room. Inside—

Inside, there followed a short, thrilling interview with Mr Anderson. I am loath to report it in detail here, partly because it was so long ago and I have inevitably forgotten details, but also partly because it was not so long ago that I have ceased to be embarrassed by my youthful effusions. My week in the front stalls of his performances had convinced me he was a brilliant performer, skilled in patter and presentation, and flawless in the execution of his illusions. I was rendered almost speechless by meeting him, but when I did unstop my mouth I found a torrent of praise and enthusiasm gushing out of me.

However, in spite of all this, two topics came up that are of some interest.

The first was his explanation of why he had never chosen me from the audience. He said he had almost picked me out at the opening performance because I had been the first to leap to my feet, but something had made him change his mind. Then he said that when he saw me at subsequent performances he realized that I must be a fellow magician (how my heart leapt with joy at such recognition!), and was therefore wary of inviting me to take part. He did not know, could have had no means of knowing, if I might have ulterior motives. Many magicians, particularly rising young ones, are not above trying to steal ideas from their more established colleagues, and therefore I understood Mr Anderson's caution. Even so, he apologized for distrusting me.

The second matter followed on from this; he had realized I must be starting out in my career. With this in mind he penned me a short letter of introduction, to be presented at St George's Hall in London, where I would be able to meet Mr Nevil Maskelyne himself.

It was around this time that excitement took over and my youthful effusions become too painful to recall.

Some six months after the exciting meeting with Mr Anderson I did indeed approach Mr Maskelyne in London, and it was after this that my professional career as a magician properly began. That, in its barest outline, is the story of how I met Mr Anderson and, through him, Mr Maskelyne. I do not intend to dwell on all these or other steps I followed as I perfected my craft and developed a successful stage show, except where they have a bearing on the main point of this narrative. There was a long period when I was learning my trade by performing it, and to a large extent not performing it as well as I had planned. This time of my life is not of much interest to me.

There is though a relevant point in the particular matter of my meeting Mr Anderson. He and Mr Maskelyne were the only two major magicians I met before my Pact took its present shape, and therefore they are the only two fellow illusionists who know the secret of my act. Mr Anderson, I am sorry to say, is now dead, but the Maskelyne family, including Mr Nevil Maskelyne, is still active in the world of magic. I know I can trust them to remain silent; indeed, I have to trust them. That my secrets have sometimes been in jeopardy is not a charge I am prepared to lay at Mr Maskelyne's door. No, indeed, for the culprit is well known to me.

I shall now return to address the main thrust of this narrative, which is what I intended to do before I interrupted.

Some years ago, a magician (I believe it was Mr David Devant) was reported as saying: "Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done."

There, in a nutshell, is the paradox of the stage magician.

The fact that a trick is ‘spoiled" if its secret is revealed is widely understood, not only by magicians but by the audiences they entertain. Most people enjoy the sense of mystery created by the performance, and do not want to ruin it, no matter how curious they feel about what they seem to have witnessed.

The magician naturally wishes to preserve his secrets, so that he may go on earning his living from them, and this is widely recognized. He becomes, though, a victim of his own secrecy. The longer a trick is part of his repertoire, and the more often it is successfully performed, and by definition the larger the number of people he has deceived with it, then the more it seems to him essential to preserve its secret.

The effect grows larger. It is seen by many audiences, other magicians copy or adapt it, the magician himself will let it evolve, so that his presentation changes over the years, making the trick seem more elaborate or more impossible to explain. Through all this the secret remains. It also remains small and trivial, and as the effect grows so the triviality seems more threatening to his reputation. Secrecy becomes obsessive.

So to the real subject of this.

I have spent my lifetime guarding my secret by appearing to hobble (I am alluding to Ching Ling Foo, not, of course, writing literally). I am now of an age, and, frankly, of an earned wealth, where performing on stage has lost its golden allure. Am I therefore to limp figuratively for the rest of my natural life so as to preserve a secret few know exists, and even fewer care about? I think not, and so I have set out at last to change the habit of a lifetime and write about The New Transported Man. This is the name of the illusion that has made me famous, said by many to be the greatest piece of magic ever performed on the international stage.

I intend to write, firstly: a short description of what the audience sees.

And then, secondly: A Revelation of the Secret behind It!

Such is the purpose of this account. Now I set aside my pen, as agreed.

I have refrained from writing in this book for three weeks. I do not need to say why; I do not need to be told why. The secret of The New Transported Man is not mine alone to reveal, & there's an end to it. What madness infects me?

The secret has served me well for many years, & has resisted numerous prying assaults. I have spent most of my lifetime protecting it. Is this not reason enough for the Pact?

Yet now I write that all such secrets are trivial. Trivial! Have I devoted my life to a trivial secret?

The first two of my three silent weeks slipped by while I reflected on this galling insight into my life's work.

This book, journal, narrative — what should I call it? — is itself a product of my Pact, as I have already recorded. Have I thought through all the ramifications of that?

Under the Pact, if I once make a statement, even something ill-advised or uttered in an unguarded moment, I always assume responsibility for it as if I had spoken the words myself. As do I when roles are reversed, or so I have always assumed. This oneness of purpose, of action, of words, is essential to the Pact.

For this reason I do not insist that I go back & delete those lines above, where I promise a revelation of my secret. (For the same reason I may not later delete the very lines I am writing now.)

However, no revelation of my secret may be made, & is not even to be considered again. I must hobble a while longer.

I am ignoring the fact that Rupert Angier yet lives! I do indeed sometimes put him from my mind, wilfully drawing veils of forgetfulness across him & his deeds, but the wretch continues to draw breath. So long as he remains alive my secret is at peril.

I hear he still performs his version of The New Transported Man, & during his execution of it continues to make that offensive remark across the footlights that what the audience is about to see "has often been copied, but has never been improved upon". I rankle at these reports, & more at other reports from insiders. Angier has hit on a new method of transportation, & it is said to look good when performed. His fatal flaw, though, is that his effect is slow. Whatever he might claim, he still cannot do the trick as quickly as me! How he must burn to know my truth!

The Pact must remain in place. No revelations!

Since Angier has been brought into the story I shall describe the problem he first presented to me, and give a detailed account of how our dispute began. It will soon become apparent that I started the feud, and I make no bones about this responsibility.

However, I was led astray by adhering to what I thought were the highest principles, and when I realized what I had done I did try to make amends. Here is how it started.

On the fringes of professional magic there are a few individuals who see prestidigitation as an easy way of gulling the credulous and the rich. They use the same magical devices and apparatus as legitimate magicians, but they pretend their effects are "real".

It can be seen that this is only a shade away from the artifice of the stage magician, who acts the role of sorcerer. That shade of difference is crucial.

For example, I sometimes open my act with an illusion called Chinese Linking Rings. I begin by taking up a position in the centre of a lighted stage, holding the rings casually. I make no claim for what I am about to do with them. The audience sees (or thinks it sees, or allows itself to think it sees) ten large separate rings made of shining metal. The rings are shown to a few members of the audience who are permitted to handle and inspect them, and discover on behalf of everyone present that the rings are solid, without joints, without openings. I then take the rings back and to everyone's amazement I immediately join them into one continuous chain, holding it up for all to see. I link and unlink rings at the touch of a spectator's hand on the exact spot where the joining or unjoining takes place. I link some of the rings into figures and shapes, then unlink them just as quickly, looping them casually over one of my arms or around my neck. At the end of the trick I am seen (or thought to be seen, et cetera) to be holding, once again, ten separate solid rings.

How is it done? The actual answer is that such a trick can only be performed after years of practice. There is a secret, of course, and because Chinese Linking Rings is still a popular trick that is widely performed, I cannot lightly reveal what it is. It is a trick, an illusion, one that is judged not for the apparently miraculous secret, but for the skill, the flair, the showmanship with which it is performed.

Now, take another magician. He performs the same illusion, using the identical secret, but he claims aloud that he is linking and unlinking the rings by sorcerous means. Would not his performance be judged differently? He would appear not skilled but mystical and powerful. He would be not a mere entertainer but a miracle worker who defied natural laws.

If I, or any other professional magician, were there, I should have to say to the audience: "That is just a trick! The rings are not what they seem. You have not seen what you think you have seen."

To which the miracle-worker would reply (falsely): "What I have just shown the audience is a product of the supernatural. If you claim it is merely a conjuring trick, then pray explain to everyone how it is done."

And here I would have no reply. I would not be able to reveal the workings of a trick, bound as I am by professional honour.

So the miracle would seem to remain a miracle.

When I first began performing there was a vogue for spirit effects, or "spiritism". Some of these manifestations were performed openly on the theatrical stage; others took place more covertly in studios or private homes. All had features in common. They allegedly gave hope to the recently bereaved or the elderly by making it seem that there was a life after death. Much money changed hands in pursuit of this reassurance.

From the viewpoint of the professional magician, spiritism had two significant features. First, standard magical techniques were being used. Second, the perpetrators invariably claimed that the effects were supernaturally produced. In other words, false claims were being made about miraculous "powers’.

This was what aggravated me. Because the tricks were all easily reproducible by any stage illusionist worthy of the name, it was irritating, to say the least, to hear them claimed as paranormal phenomena, whose manifestation therefore 'proved" that there was an afterlife, that spirits could walk, that the dead could speak, and so on. It was a lie, but it was one that was difficult to prove.

I arrived in London in 1874. Under John Henry Anderson's tutelage, and Nevil Maskelyne's patronage, I began trying to obtain work in the theatres and music halls found all over the great capital. There was in those days a demand for stage magic, but London was full of clever magicians and an entry into the circuit was not easy. I managed to take a modest place in that world, finding what work I could, and although my magic was always well received my rise to prominence was a slow one. The New Transported Man was then a long way from fruition, although to be entirely frank I had started to plan this great illusion even while I still hammered and fretted in my father's yard in Hastings.

At this time the spirit magicians were often seen advertising their services in newspapers and periodicals, and some of their doings were much discussed. Spiritism was presented to the populace as a more exciting, powerful and effective kind of magic than what they could see on the stage. If one is skilled enough to put a young woman into a trance and make her hover in mid-air, the argument seemed to go, why not direct that skill more usefully and communicate with the recently departed? Why not indeed?

Rupert Angier's name was already familiar to me. Writing from an address in North London he was an opinionated and long-winded correspondent to the letter columns of two or three of the private-circulation magic journals. His purpose was invariably to pour scorn on the people he described as the "establishment" of older magicians, who with their secretive ways and courteous traditions were held up as tiresome relics of a former age. Although I worked within those traditions I did not allow myself to be drawn into Angier's various controversies, but some of the magicians I knew were greatly provoked by him.

One of his theories, to take a fairly typical example, was that if magicians were as skilful as they claimed to be, then they should be prepared to perform magic "in the round". That is to say, the magician would be surrounded on all sides by the audience, and would therefore have to create illusions that did not depend on the framing, audience-excluding effect of the proscenium arch. One of my distinguished colleagues, by way of reply, gently pointed out the self-evident fact that no matter how well the magician prepared his act, there would always be a segment of the audience who could see the trick being worked. Angier's response was to deride the other correspondent. First, he said, the magical effect would be increased if the illusion could be viewed from all angles. Secondly, if it could not, and a small segment of the audience had to glimpse the secret, it did not matter ! If five hundred people are baffled, he said, it was of no importance that five others should see the secret.

Such theories were almost heretical to the majority of professionals, not because they held secrets to be inviolable (which Angier seemed to imply), but because Angier's attitude to magic was radical and careless of the traditions which had held good for so long.

Rupert Angier was therefore making a name for himself, but perhaps not the one he had planned. One observation I often heard was the mock surprise that Angier rarely if ever performed on the public stage. His colleagues were therefore unable to admire his no doubt brilliant and innovative magic.

As I say, I did not involve myself, and he was of not great interest to me. However, destiny was soon to take a hand.

It happened that one of my father's sisters, living in London, had recently been bereaved and in her grief was intending to consult a spiritist. She had accordingly arranged a sйance at her house. I heard about it in one of my mother's regular letters, passed to me as family chitchat, but at once my professional curiosity was aroused. I promptly made contact with my aunt, offered her belated condolences on the loss of her husband, and volunteered to be with her in her search for solace.

When the day came I was lucky that my aunt had invited me to lunch beforehand, because the spiritist arrived at the house at least an hour before he was expected. This threw the household into some confusion. I imagine it was part of his design, and enabled him to take certain preparations in the room where the sйance was to be conducted. He and his two young assistants, one male and one female, darkened the room with black blinds, moved unwanted furniture to the side while importing some of their own which they had brought with them, rolled back the carpet to bare the floorboards, and erected a certain wooden cabinet whose size and appearance was enough to convince me that conventional stage magic was about to be performed. I stayed discreetly but attentively in the background while these preparations were put in place. I did not wish to make myself at all interesting to the spiritist, because if he was alert he might have recognized me. The previous week my stage act had drawn a favourable press notice or two.

The spiritist himself was a young man of about my own age, slight of build, dark of hair and narrow of forehead. He had a wary look to him, almost like that of a foraging animal going about its business. He made quick precise movements with his hands, a sure sign of a long-practising prestidigitator. The young woman who worked with him had a slender, agile body (because of her physique I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that she would be employed in his illusions), and a strong, attractive face. She wore dark and modest clothes, and rarely spoke. The other assistant, a burly young man not long in his majority, had a broad thatch of fair hair and a churlish face, and he jibed and complained as he hauled in the heavy pieces of furniture.

By the time my aunt's other guests arrived (she had invited some eight or nine of her friends to be present, presumably to help amortize the cost a little), the spiritist's preparations were complete and he and his assistants were sitting patiently in the prepared room, waiting for the time appointed. It was therefore impossible for me to examine their apparatus.

The presentation, which with all the preamble and atmospheric pauses lasted for well over an hour, broke down into three main illusions, carefully arranged so as to create feelings of apprehension, excitement and suggestibility.

First the spiritist performed a table-tipping illusion with a dramatic physical manifestation; the table spun around of its own accord, then reared up terrifyingly into the air, causing most of us to sprawl uncomfortably on the bare floor. After this the attendees were shaking with excited agitations and ready for anything that might follow. What did follow was that with the aid of his female accomplice the spiritist appeared to fall into a Mesmeric trance. He was then blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot by his assistants, and placed helpless within his cabinet, whence emanated, soon enough, numerous noisy, startling and inexplicable paranormal effects: strange lights flashed brilliantly, trumpets, cymbals and castanets sounded, and eerie "ectoplasmic matter" rose of its own accord from the heart of the cabinet, and floated into the room illuminated by a mysterious light.

Released from the cabinet and his bonds (when the cabinet was opened he was found as efficiently tied up as when he went inside), and miraculously restored from his Mesmerized state, the spiritist then got down to his main business. After a short but colourful warning about the dangers of "crossing over" to the spirit world, and a hint that the results justified the risk, the spiritist fell into another trance and soon was in touch with the other side. Before too long he was able to identify the spirit presence of certain departed relatives and close friends of the people gathered in the room, and comforting messages were conveyed from one group to the other.

How did the young spiritist achieve all this?

As I have already said, professional ethics constrain me. I could not then, and cannot now, reveal more than the barest outline of the secrets of what were without question straightforward magical effects.

The tipping table is actually not a conjuring trick at all (although it can be presented as one, as on this occasion). It is a little-known physical phenomenon that if ten or a dozen people cluster around a circular wooden table, press the palms of their hands on the surface, and are then told that soon the table will start to rotate, it is only a matter of a minute or two before that starts to happen! Once the motion is felt, the table almost invariably begins to tip to one side or the other. An adroitly placed foot suddenly lifting the appropriate table leg will dramatically unbalance the table, causing it to rear up and crash excitingly to the floor. With luck, it will take with it many of the participants, causing surprise and excitement but not physical harm.

I need not emphasize that the table being used at my aunt's was one of the spiritist's own props. It was constructed so that the four wooden legs connected to the central pillar in such a way that there was room for a foot to be slipped underneath.

The cabinet manifestations can only be adumbrated here; a skilled magician may easily escape from what appear to be irresistible bonds, especially if the ropes and knots have been tied by two assistants. Once inside the cabinet it would be the work of a few seconds to release himself sufficiently to make happen the otherwise perplexing display of paranormal effects.

As for the "psychic" contacts which were the main purpose of the meeting, here too there are standard techniques of forcing and substitution which any good magician can readily perform.

I had gone to my aunt's house to satisfy professional curiosity, but instead, to my eventual shame and regret, I came away with a case of righteous indignation. Standard stage illusions had been used to gull a group of suggestible and vulnerable people. My aunt, believing that she had heard words of comfort from her beloved husband, was so overcome by grief that she retired immediately to her chamber. Several of the others were almost as deeply moved by messages they had heard. Yet I knew, I alone knew, that it was all a sham.

I felt an exhilarating sense that I could and should expose him as a charlatan, before he did any more harm. I was tempted to confront him then and there, but I was a little intimidated by the assured way he had performed his illusions. While he and his female assistant were putting away their apparatus I spoke briefly to the thatch-haired young man and was given the spiritist's business card.

Thus it was that I learned the name and style of the man who was to dog my professional career:

Rupert Angier

Clairvoyant, Spirit Medium, Sйantist

Strictest Confidence Observed

45 Idmiston Villas, London N

I was young, inexperienced, heady with what I saw as high principles, and these, to my later chagrin, blinded me to the hypocrisy of my position. I set out to hound Mr Angier, intent on exposing his swindles. Soon enough, by methods I need not record here, I was able to establish where and when his next sйance was to take place.

Once again it was a meeting in a private house in a suburb of London, although this time my connection with the family (bereaved by the sudden death of the mother) was contrived. I was able to attend only by presenting myself at the house the day before and claiming to be an associate of Angier's whose presence had been requested by the "medium" himself. In their all-too-evident grief the remaining family seemed hardly to care.

The next day I made sure I was in the street outside the house well before the appointment, and thus was able to confirm that Angier's own early arrival at my aunt's house had been no accident, and indeed was a necessary part of the preparations. I watched covertly as he and his assistants unpacked their paraphernalia from a cart and carried it into the house. When I finally presented myself at the house an hour later, close to the appointed time, the room had been arranged and was in semi-darkness.

The sйance began, as before, with the table-tipping trick, and as luck would have it I found myself standing unavoidably close beside Angier as he readied himself to begin.

"Don't I know you, sir?" he said softly and accusingly.

"I think not," I replied, trying to make light of it.

"Make a habit of these occasions, do you?"

"No more than you, sir," I said, as cuttingly as I could.

He responded with a disconcerting stare, but as everyone was waiting for him he had no alternative but to begin. I think he knew from that moment that I was there to expose him, but to do him credit he carried out his performance with the same flair I had seen before.

I was biding my time. It would have been pointless to uncover the secret of the table, but when he began the manifestations from within the cabinet it was tempting to dash across and throw open the door to reveal him inside. Without doubt we would then have seen that his hands were free of the ropes that were supposed to be restraining him, and the trumpet would be found held to his lips or the castanets clicking in his fingers. But I stayed my hand. I judged it best to wait until the emotional tension was at its greatest, when the supposed spirit messages were being sent to and fro. Angier performed this by using small scraps of paper, rolled up into little pellets. The family had earlier written names, objects, family secrets and the like on these scraps, and Angier pretended to read their "spirit" messages by pressing the tiny pellets to his forehead.

When he had but barely begun I seized my chance. I stepped away from the table, breaking the chain of hands that was supposed to set up a psychic field, and snatched the blind down from the nearest window. Daylight flooded in.

Angier said, "What the devil—?"

"Ladies and gentlemen!" I cried. "This man is an impostor!"

"Sit down, sir!" The male assistant was moving quickly towards me.

"He is using legerdemain upon you!" I said emphatically. "Look in the hand that hides beneath the table's surface! There is the secret of the messages he brings you!"

As the young man threw his arms around my shoulders I saw Angier moving quickly and guiltily to conceal the slip of paper he held, by which the trick was effected. The father of the family, his face contorted by rage and grief, rose from his seat and began to berate me loudly. First one of the children then the others began to wail with unhappiness.

As I struggled, the oldest boy said plaintively, "Where is Mama? She was here! She was here!"

"This man is a charlatan, a liar and a cheat!" I shouted.

I was by this time almost at the door, being forced backwards out of the room. I saw the young woman assistant hastening to the window to replace the blind. With a tremendous thrashing of elbows I managed to break free temporarily from my assailant, and lunged across the room at her. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly to one side. She sprawled across the floorboards.

"He cannot talk to the dead!" I cried. "Your mother is not here at all!"

The room was in an uproar.

"Hold him there!" Angier's voice was audible above the racket. The male assistant grabbed me a second time, and spun me around so that I was facing into the room. The young woman was still on the floor where she had fallen, and was staring up at me, her face contorted with spite. Angier, standing by the table, was erect and apparently calm. He was staring straight towards me.

"I know you, sir," he said. "I even know your damned name. I shall henceforward be following your career with the greatest attention." Then to his assistant: "Get him out of here!"

Moments later I was sprawling in the street. Mustering as much dignity as I could, and ignoring the gawping passers-by, I straightened my clothes and walked quickly away down the street.

For a few days afterwards I was sustained by the righteousness of my cause, the knowledge that the family were being robbed of their money, that the skills of the stage magician were being put to warped uses. Then, inevitably, I began to be assailed by doubts.

The comfort that Angier's clients gained from the sйances seemed genuine enough, no matter how derived. I remembered the faces of those children, who for a few minutes had been led to believe that their lost mother was sending consoling messages from the other side. I had seen their innocent expressions, their smiles, their happy glances at each other.

Was any of this so different from the pleasurable mystification a magician gives to his music hall audience? Indeed, was it not rather more? Was expecting payment for this any more reprehensible than expecting payment for a performance at a music hall?

Full of regrets I brooded unhappily for nearly a month, until my conscience reached such depths of guilty feelings that I had to act. I penned an abject note to Angier, begging forgiveness, apologizing unconditionally.

His response was immediate. He returned my note in shreds, with a note of his own challenging me sarcastically to restore the paper with my own superior form of magic.

Two nights later, while I was performing at the Lewisham Empire, he stood up from the front row of the circle and shouted for all to hear, "His female assistant is concealed behind the curtain at the left-hand side of the cabinet!"

It was of course true. Other than bringing down the main curtain and abandoning my act I had no alternative but to continue with the trick, produce my assistant with as much theatrical brio as possible, then wilt before the trickle of embarrassed applause. In the centre of the circle's front row an empty seat gaped like a missing tooth.

So was begun the feud that has continued over the years.

I can plead only youth and inexperience for starting the feud, a misguided professional zeal, an unfamiliarity with the ways of the world. Angier should shoulder some of the blame; my apology, although not swift enough, was sincerely meant and its rejection was mean-spirited. But then, Angier too was young. It is difficult to think back to that time, because the dispute between us has gone on so long, and has taken so many different forms.

If I committed both wrong and right at the outset, Angier must accept the blame for keeping the feud alive. Many times, sick of the whole thing, I have tried to get on with my life and career, only to find that some new attack was being mounted against me. Angier would often find a way of sabotaging my magical equipment, so that a production I was attempting on stage went subtly wrong; one night the water I was turning into red wine remained water; another time the string of flags I pulled flamboyantly from an opera hat appeared as string alone; at another performance the lady assistant who was supposed to levitate remained unmovably and mortifyingly on her bed.

On yet another occasion the placards announcing my act outside the theatre were defaced with "The sword he uses is a fake", "The card you will choose is the Queen of Spades’, "Watch his left hand during the mirror trick", and so on. All these graffiti were clearly visible to the audience as they trooped in.

I suppose these attacks might be dismissed as practical jokes, but they could damage my reputation as a magician, as Angier well knew.

How did I know he was behind them? Well, in some cases he clearly declared his involvement; if one of my productions had been sabotaged, he would be there in the auditorium to heckle me, leaping to his feet at the very moment things started going wrong. But more significantly the perpetrator of these attacks revealed an approach to magic that I had learned was symptomatic of Angier. He was almost exclusively concerned with the magical secret, what magicians call the "gimac" or "gimmick". If a trick depended on a concealed shelf behind the magician's table, that alone would be the focus of Angier's interest, not the imaginative use to which it might be put. No matter what else might cause strife between us, it was Angier's fundamentally flawed and limited understanding of magical technique that was at the heart of our dispute. The wonder of magic lies not in the technical secret, but in the skill with which it is performed.

And it was for this reason that The New Transported Man was the one illusion of mine he never publicly attacked. It was beyond him. He simply could not work out how it was done, partly because I have kept the secret secure, but mostly because of the way in which I perform it.

An illusion has three stages.

First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. Volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in the preparation. As the trick is being set up, the magician will make every possible use of misdirection.

The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, conjoin to produce the magical display.

The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.

The New Transported Man is fairly unusual among illusions in that the setup and performance are what most intrigue audiences, critics and my magical colleagues, while for me, the performer, the prestige is the main preoccupation.

Illusions fall into different categories or types, of which there are only six (setting aside the specialist field of mentalist illusion). Every trick that has ever been performed falls into one or more of the following categories.

1. Production : the magical creation of somebody or something out of nothing,

2. Disappearance : the magical vanishing of somebody or something into nothing,

3. Transformation : the apparent changing of one thing into another,

4. Transposition : the apparent changing of place of two or more objects,

5. Defiance of Natural Laws : for example, seeming to defeat gravity, making one solid object appear to pass through another, produce a large number of objects or people from a source apparently too small to have held them, and

6. Secret Motive Power : causing objects to appear to move of their own will, such as making a chosen playing card rise mysteriously out of the pack.

Again, The New Transported Man is not entirely typical, because it uses at least four of the above categories. Most stage illusions depend on only one or two. I once saw an elaborate effect on the Continent where five of the categories were employed.

Finally, there are the techniques of magic.

The methods available to magicians cannot be so neatly categorized as the other elements, because when it comes to technique a good magician will not disdain anything. Magical technique can be as simple as the placing of one object behind another so that it may no longer be seen by the audience, and it can be so complex that it requires advance setting up in the theatre and the collusion of a team of assistants and stooges.

The magician can choose from an inventory of traditional techniques. The playing cards that have been "gimmicked" so that one or more cards will be forced into use, the eye-dazzling backcloth that allows much necessary magical business to go on unnoticed, the black-painted table or prop that the audience cannot see properly, dummies and doubles and stooges and substitutes and blinds. And an inventive magician will embrace novelty. Any new device or toy or invention that comes into world should provoke the thought: "How could I make a new trick with that?" Thus, in the recent past we have seen new tricks that employ the reciprocating engine, the telephone, electricity, and one remarkable effect memorably created with Dr Warble's smoke-bomb toy.

Magic has no mystery to magicians. We work variations of standard methods. What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals. If an innovative new illusion is developed, it is only a matter of time before the effect is reproduced by others.

Every illusion can be explained, be it by the use of a concealed compartment, by an adroitly placed mirror, by an assistant planted in the audience to act as "volunteer", or by simple misdirection of the audience's attention.

Now I hold my hands before you, fingers spread so that you can see nothing is concealed within them, and say: The New Transported Man is an illusion like every other, and it can be explained. But by a combination of a simple secret that has been kept securely, many years of practice, a certain amount of audience misdirection, and the use of conventional magic techniques it has become the keystone of my act and my career. It has also defied Angier's best efforts to penetrate its mystery, as I shall soon record.

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Sarah and I have been with the children on a short holiday along the south coast, & I took my notebook with me.

We went first to Hastings, because it is years since I was there, but we did not stay long. The place has started a decline that I fear will prove irreversible. Father's yard, which was sold on his death, has been sold again. Now it is a bakery. A lot of houses have been built in the valley behind the house, & a railway line to Ashford is soon to run through.

After Hastings we went to Bexhill. Then to Eastbourne. Then to Brighton. Then to Bognor.

My first comment on the notebook is that it was I who tried to humiliate Angier, & I, in turn, who was humiliated by him. Other than this detail, which is after all not too important, I think my account of what happened is accurate, even in its other details.

I am putting in a lot of comments about the secret, & therefore making much of it. This strikes me as ironic, after I went to such pains to emphasize how trivial most magical secrets really are.

I do not think my secret is trivial. It is easily guessed, as Angier has apparently done, in spite of what I have written. Others have probably guessed too.

Anyone who reads this narrative will probably work it out for themselves.

What cannot be guessed is the effect the secret has had on my life. This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole mystery, unless I myself give him the answer. He would never credit the extent to which my life has been shaped towards holding the secret intact. That is what matters.

[I am still unclear for whom this account is intended. What is this "posterity" for which I write so knowingly? Is the account for publication & circulation within the magical fraternity? If so, I must remove many of the personal details. One or two of my colleagues (including, of course, David Devant & Nevil Maskelyne) have published technical explanations of their illusions, & my great mentor, Anderson, paid his bills by regularly selling small trade secrets. There is a precedent. Circulation of this sort would be acceptable, although I think it should only be released after Angier's demise (his certain demise, that is). I presume it is not intended for general publication.

So long as I can continue to monitor how it is being written, then I may proceed with my account of how the illusion looks to the audience.]

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The New Transported Man is an illusion whose appearance has changed over the years, but whose method has always remained the same.

It has progressively involved two cabinets, or two boxes, or two tables, or two benches. One is situated in the downstage area, the other is upstage. The exact positioning is not crucial, and will vary from one theatre to the next, depending on the size and shape of the stage area. The only important feature of their positioning is that both pieces should be clearly and widely separated from each other. The apparatus is brightly lit and in full view of the audience from beginning to end.

I shall describe the oldest, and therefore the simplest, version of the trick, when I was using closed cabinets. At that time I called the illusion The Transported Man.

Then, as now, my act was brought to its climax with this illusion, and only details have changed since. I shall therefore describe it as if the early version were still in my current act.

Both cabinets are brought on to the stage, either by scene-shifters, assistants or in some cases volunteer members of the audience and both are shown to be empty. Volunteers are allowed to step through them, open not only the doors but the hinged rear walls, and peer into the wheeled space below. The cabinets are rolled to their respective positions and closed.

After a short, humorous preamble (delivered in my French accent) about the desirability of being in two places at once, I go to the nearer of the two cabinets, the first, and open the door.

It is, of course, still empty. I take a large, brightly coloured inflatable ball from my props table, and bounce it a couple of times to show how vigorously it moves. I step into the first cabinet, leaving the door open for the time being.

I bounce the ball in the direction of the second cabinet.

From within, I slam closed the door of the first cabinet.

From within, I push open the door of the second cabinet, and step out. I catch the ball as it bounces towards me.

As the ball enters my hands the first cabinet collapses, the door and three walls folding out dramatically to show that it is completely empty.

Holding the ball I step forward to the footlights, and acknowledge my applause.

Let me briefly rehearse my life and career up to the last years of the century.

By the time I was 18 I had left home and was working the music halls as a full-time magician. However, even with help from Mr Maskelyne, jobs were hard to find, and I became neither famous nor rich and did not earn my own place on the bill for several years. Much of the stage work I did was assisting other magicians with their performances, but for a long time I paid the rent by designing and building cabinets and other magical apparatus. My father's cabinet-making training stood me in good stead. I built a reputation as a reliable inventor and ingйnieur of stage illusions.

In 1879 my mother died, followed a year later by my father.

By the end of the 1880s, when I was in my early thirties, I had developed my own solo act and adopted the stage name Le Professeur de la Magie. I regularly performed The Transported Man in its various early forms.

Although the working of the illusion was never a problem, I was for a long time dissatisfied with the stage effects. It always seemed to me that closed cabinets were not sufficiently mysterious to raise audience expectations of peril and impossibility. In the context of stage magic such cabinets are commonplace. I gradually found ways of elaborating the illusion; first to boxes that looked barely large enough to hold me, later to tables with concealing flaps, then finally, in a bravura move to "open" magic, much applauded in magic circles at the time, I used flat benches on which my body could be seen by everyone in the audience up to the moment of transformation.

In 1892, though, came the idea I had been seeking. It happened indirectly, and the seed it sowed took a long time to germinate.

A Balkan inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla came to London in the February of that year to promote certain new effects he was then pioneering in the field of electricity. A Croatian of Serbian descent, with an allegedly impenetrable foreign accent, Tesla was to deliver several lectures about his speciality to the scientific community. Such events occur fairly frequently in London, and normally I would take little notice of them. However, in this case it turned out that Mr Tesla was a controversial figure in the USA, involved in scientific disputes about the nature and application of electricity, and it ensured him widespread reporting in the newspapers. It was from these articles that I was to glean my ideas.

What I had always needed was a spectacular stage effect, partly to highlight the effect of The Transported Man, and partly to mask its working. I gathered from the news reports that Mr Tesla was able to generate high voltages which could be made to flash and spark about, harmlessly and without incurring burns.

After Mr Tesla had left to return to the United States his influence remained behind him. It was not too long before London and other cities began supplying small amounts of electricity to those who could afford to buy it. Because of its revolutionary nature, electricity was often in the news, being applied to this task or solving that problem, and so on. Some time later, when I heard that Angier was mounting an imitation of The Transported Man, I began to think I should develop the illusion once again. I realized that without much difficulty I could probably apply electricity to my requirements and began a search through the obscure stocks of London scientific dealers. With the assistance of Tommy Elbourne, my ingйnieur , I eventually managed to build stage equipment for The New Transported Man. I was to go on adding to and improving it for years afterwards, but by 1896 the new effect had permanently entered my stage show. It caused a commotion of acclaim, ringing cash tills and fruitless speculation as to my secret. My illusion worked in a blinding flash of electrical light.

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I will backtrack a little. In October 1891 I had married Sarah Henderson, whom I had met while I was taking part in a charity show performed in a Salvation Army hostel in Aldgate. She was one of the volunteer helpers, and during the interval in our performance she had sat informally with me while we both drank tea. My card tricks had amused her, and she teasingly challenged me to perform some more for her alone, so that she might see how I did them. Because she was young and pretty I did so, and greatly enjoyed the bafflement I saw in her eyes.

However, this was not only the first time I performed magic for her, it was also the last. My skill as a prestidigitator simply became irrelevant to our feelings about each other. We became walking-out companions soon after our meeting, and it was not long before we admitted to each other that we were in love. Sarah has no background in the theatre or the music halls, and in fact was a young woman of not inconsiderable birth. It is a testament to her devotion to me that even after her father threatened to disinherit her, which of course he eventually did, she remained true to me.

After our marriage we moved to rented rooms in the Bayswater area of London, but we did not have long to wait before success smiled on me. In 1893 we bought the large house in St Johns Wood where we have lived ever since. In the same year our twin children, Graham and Helena, were born.

I have always kept my professional life separate from my family life. During the period I am describing I practised my profession from my office and workshop in Elgin Avenue, and when touring shows took me abroad or to remoter parts of Britain I did not take Sarah with me. When based in London, or when between shows, I lived quietly and contentedly at home with her.

I stress my contented domestic life because of what was soon to happen.

Shall I continue?

I think I must; yes. I suspect I know to what I am referring here.

I had been advertising in theatrical journals for a replacement lady assistant, because my existing young woman, Georgina Harris, was planning to marry. I always dreaded the upheaval caused by the arrival of a new member of staff, especially one so important as the stage assistant. When Olive Wenscombe wrote and applied for an interview she did not seem immediately suitable, and her letter went unanswered for some time.

She was, she said in her letter, twenty-six. This was a little older than I would have liked, and she went on to describe herself as a trained danseuse who had moved over to the work of magical assistant. Many illusionists do employ dance artistes because of their fit and supple bodies, but I have always preferred to employ young women with specific magical experience, rather than those who took it up simply because a job had been offered to them at some time in the past. Nevertheless, Olive Wenscombe's letter came during one of those times when good assistants were hard to find, and so I finally made an appointment with her.

The work of magician's assistant is not one to which many people are suited. A young woman has to possess certain physical characteristics. She has to be young, of course, and if not naturally pretty then she has to have pleasing features that are capable of being made up to look pretty. In addition she has to have a slim, lithe and strong body. She has to be willing to stand, crouch, kneel or lie in confined places, often for several minutes at a time, and on release appear perfectly relaxed and unmarked by her period of enclosure. Above all, she has to be willing to endure the unusual demands and strange requests made to her by her employer, in pursuit of his illusions.

Olive Wenscombe's interview took place, as did all such, at my workshop in Elgin Avenue. Here, in opened cabinets and mirrored cubes and curtained alcoves, were laid bare many of the incidental secrets of my business. Although I never made a point of showing any of my staff exactly how a trick was worked, unless of course that knowledge was crucial to their part in it, I wanted them to understand that each trick had a rational explanation behind it and that I knew what I was doing. Some stage illusions, and some of those that I performed, used knives or swords or even firearms, and from the auditorium looked dangerous. The New Transported Man, in particular, with its explosive electrical reactions and clouds of carbon discharge, regularly scares the wits out of the front six rows at any performance! But I wanted no one who worked for me to feel at risk. The only illusion whose secret I guarded fastidiously was The New Transported Man itself, and its working was concealed even from the young woman who shared the stage with me until the moment before the illusion began.

It should be clear from this that I do not work entirely alone, nor does any modern illusionist. In addition to my stage assistants, I had working for me Thomas Elbourne, my irreplaceable ingйnieur , and two of his own young artisans, who helped him build and maintain the apparatus. Thomas had been in my employ almost from the start. Before he worked for me he had been at the Egyptian Hall, under Maskelyne.

(Thomas Elbourne knew my most guarded secret; he had to. But I trusted him; I had to. I say this as simply as possible, to convey the simplicity of my belief in him. Thomas had worked with magicians all his life, and nothing any more surprised him. There is little I know about magic today that I did not learn from him one way or the other. Yet never once, in all the years I worked with him — he retired several years ago — did he ever explicitly reveal the secret of another magician to me or to anyone else. To call his trust into question would be to question my very sanity. Thomas was a Londoner from Tottenham, a married man without children. He was many years older than me, but I never discovered exactly how many. At the time Olive Wenscombe began working for me I assume he must have been in his middle or late sixties.)

I decided to employ Olive Wenscombe almost as soon as she arrived. She was neither tall nor broad, but had an attractive and slim body. She held her head erect as she walked or stood, and her face had well-defined features. She was American-born, and had an accent she identified as East Coast, but had lived and worked in London for several years. I introduced her as informally as possible to Thomas Elbourne and Georgina Harris, then asked to see whatever references she might have brought with her. I generally gave references a great deal of weight when assessing an applicant, because a recommendation from a magician whose work I knew would almost certainly gain the applicant the job. Olive had brought two such references with her, one was from a magician working the resort towns of Sussex and Hampshire, whose name I did not recognize, but the other was from Joseph Buatier de Kolta, one of the greatest living performers. I was, I admit, impressed. I quietly passed de Kolta's letter to Thomas Elbourne, and watched his expression.

"How long did you work for Monsieur de Kolta?" I asked her.

"Only for five months," she said. "I was hired for a tour of Europe, and he let me go at the end of it."

"So I see."

After that, employing her was something of a formality, but even so I felt I had to subject her to the usual tests. It was for these that Georgina had come along, as it would not be right to ask any applicant, even one as experienced as Olive Wenscombe, to demonstrate her abilities without the presence of a chaperone.

"Did you bring a rehearsal costume with you?" I said.

"Yes, sir, I did."

"Then if you would be so kind—"

A few minutes later, wearing a body-hugging costume, Olive Wenscombe was led by Thomas to a few of our cabinets, and asked to take up position inside one. The production of a living, healthy young woman from what appears to be an empty cabinet is one of the traditional stand-bys of magic. To bring off the effect, the assistant has to insinuate herself into a concealed compartment, and the smaller this compartment can be the more surprising the effect of the illusion. Careful choice of a voluminous costume, and one that is made of bright colours and has glittery ribbons sewn into the fabric, to catch and reflect the limelight, will enhance the mystery. It was obvious to us all that Olive was well versed in secret compartments and panels. Thomas took her first to our Palanquin (which even by that time we rarely used in the act, since the trick had become so well known), and she knew exactly where the hidden compartment was and promptly climbed into it.

Thomas and I next asked her to essay the illusion known as Vanity Fair, in which a young woman is apparently made to pass through a solid mirror. This is not a difficult illusion to perform, but it does require agility and quickness of movement on the part of the girl. Although Olive said she had not taken part in it before, after we had shown her the mechanism she showed she could wriggle through with commendable speed.

There remained only the need to test her for physical size, although by this time I think both Thomas and I would have rebuilt some of the apparatus for her had she proved too large. We need not have worried. Thomas placed her inside the cabinet used in the illusion called the Decapitated Princess (a notoriously tight fit for most assistants, and requiring several minutes of uncomfortable immobility), but she was able to climb in and out smoothly, and said she would not find it distressing to be kept inside for as long as required.

Sufficient to say that Olive Wenscombe proved herself most suitable by all the usual tests, and as soon as these preliminaries were concluded I retained her at the customary wage. Within a week I had trained her to perform in all the illusions in my repertoire where she would be needed. In due course, Georgina left to marry her beau, and Olive took her place as my full-time assistant.

#############

How neat it all seems when I write it down, how calm & professional! Now I have written the "official" version of Olive, let me under our Pact add the ineradicable truth, the truth I have so far concealed from all those who matter most. Olive nearly made a fool of me, & the true account must be appended.

Georgina wasn't present at the interview, of course. Nor was I. Tommy Elbourne was there, but as always he kept out of the way. She & I were effectively alone in my workshop.

I asked Olive about a costume, & she said she hadn't brought one. She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, & there was a long silence while I thought about what that meant & what she must think about what it meant. No young woman applying for the job would expect to be hired without being measured or fitted or tried out in some way. Applicants always brought a rehearsal costume.

Well, Olive apparently had not. Then she said, "I don't need a costume, honey."

"There is no chaperone present, my dear," I said.

"I guess you can put up with that!" she said.

She promptly took off her outer clothes, & what she was wearing beneath was of the boudoir; she was left in garments that were immodest, loose-fitting & prone to accidents. I took her to the Palanquin, where although she obviously knew what it was & where she had to conceal herself, she asked me to help her climb inside. This required much intimate handling of her semi-clad body! The same happened when I showed her the mechanism of Vanity Fair. Here she pretended to stumble as she came through the trap, & fell into my arms. The rest of the interview was conducted on the couch at the back of the workshop. Tommy Elbourne left quietly, without either of us noticing. He was not there afterwards, anyway.

The rest is substantially correct. I took her on, & she learned how to operate all the illusions in which I needed her.

My performance always opens with the Chinese Linking Rings. It is a routine which is a pleasure to work, and audiences love to watch it, no matter if they have seen it before. The rings gleam brightly in the limelight, they jingle metallically against each other, the rhythmic movements of the prestidigitator's hands and arms and the gentle linking and unlinking of the rings seem almost to Mesmerize the audience. It is a trick impossible to see through, unless you are standing a few inches away from the performer and are able to snatch the rings away from him. It always charms, always creates that electrifying sense of mystery and miracle.

With this accomplished I roll forward the Modern Cabinet, which has been standing upstage. A yard or so from the footlights I rotate the cabinet to show both sides and the back. I make sure that I am seen to pass behind it, so that the audience may glimpse my feet through the gap between the stage and the floor of the cabinet. They have seen that no one was clinging to the back of the cabinet, and now they can satisfy themselves that no one may be secreted beneath it. When I fling open the door to reveal the interior, then step inside to release the catch that holds the rear panel in place, the audience can see right through from front to back. They see me pass through, likewise from front to back, and close the back wall once more. The door hangs open, and while I am apparently busy behind the cabinet they take their chance to peer more intently at the interior. There is nothing for them to see, though: the cabinet is, must be, completely empty. Quickly, then, I slam the front door closed, rotate the cabinet on its castors, and throw open the door. Inside, large, beautiful, bulkily dressed, smiling and waving her arms, entirely filling the cramped interior of the cabinet, is a young woman. She steps down, takes her bow to thunderous applause and leaves the stage.

I roll the cabinet to the side of the stage, whence it is quietly retrieved by Thomas Elbourne.

So to the next. This is less spectacular, but involves two or three members of the audience. Every magic act includes a few moments with a pack of cards. The magician must show his skill with sleight of hand, otherwise he runs the risk of being thought by his professional colleagues merely to be an operator of self-working machinery. I walk to the footlights, and the curtains close behind me. This is partly to create a closed, intimate atmosphere for the card tricks, but mainly so that behind them Thomas may set up the apparatus for The New Transported Man.

With the cards finished, I need to break the feeling of quiet concentration, so I move swiftly into a series of colourful productions. Flags, streamers, fans, balloons and silk scarves stream out unstoppably from my hands, sleeves and pockets, creating a bright and chaotic display all around me. My female assistant walks on stage behind me, apparently to clear away some of the streamers, but in reality to slip me more of the compressed materials for release. By the end, the brightly coloured papers and silks are inches deep around my feet. I acknowledge the applause.

While the audience is still clapping the curtains open behind me, and in semi-darkness my apparatus for The New Transported Man may be seen. My assistants move quickly on to the stage and deftly clear away the coloured streamers.

I return to the footlights, face the audience and address them directly, in my fractured, French-accented English. I explain that what I am about to perform has become possible only since the discovery of electricity. The performance draws power from the bowels of the Earth. Unimaginable forces are at work, that even I do not fully comprehend. I explain that they are about to witness a veritable miracle, one in which life and death are chanced with, as in the game of dice my ancestors played to avoid the tumbril.

While I speak the stage lights brighten, and catch the polished metal supports, the golden coils of wire, the glistening globes of glass. The apparatus is a thing of beauty, but it is a menacing beauty because everyone by now has heard for themselves of some of the deadly power of the electrical current. Newspapers have carried accounts of horrible deaths and burns caused by the new force already available in many cities.

The apparatus of The New Transported Man is designed to remind them of these appalling accounts. It carries numerous incandescent electric lamps, some of which come alight even as I speak. At one side is a large glass globe, inside which a brilliant arc of electricity fizzes and crackles excitingly. The main part of the apparatus appears, to the audience, to be a long wooden bench, three feet above the floor of the stage. They can see past it, around it, underneath it. At one end, by the arc-lit glass chamber, a small raised platform is bestrewn with dangling wires, their bare ends dangerously exposed. Above the platform is a canopy where many of the incandescent lamps are placed. At the further end is a metal cone, decorated with a spiral of smaller glowing lamps. This is mounted on a gimbals device that allows it to be swivelled in several directions. All around the main part are small concavities and shelves, where bare terminals lie in wait. The whole thing is emitting a loud humming noise, as of immense hidden energies within.

I explain to the audience that I would invite some of its members on to the stage to examine the device for themselves, but for the immense danger to them. I hint at earlier accidents. Instead, I say, I have devised a few simple demonstrations of the power inherent within the machine. I allow some magnesium powder to fall across two bared contacts, and a brilliant white flash momentarily blinds the members of the audience closest to the stage! While the smoke from it balloons upwards I take a sheet of paper and drop it across another semi-concealed part of the apparatus; this immediately bursts into flame, and its smoke also rises dramatically to the rigging loft above. The humming sound increases in volume. The apparatus seems to be alive, only barely constraining the frightful energies that lie within.

At stage left my female assistant appears with a wheeled cabinet. This is strongly made of wood, but because it is built on wheels she is able to turn the thing around so it might be seen from all sides. Then she lets down the front and sides to show that it is empty.

I grimace sadly at the audience then signal to the girl, who brings to me two immense dark-brown gauntlets, made to seem as if they are of leathern material. When these are covering my hands she leads me to the apparatus, until I stand behind it. The audience can see most of my body still, and satisfy themselves that there are no concealed mirrors or shields. I lower my two gauntleted hands to the surface of the platform, and as I do so the sound of electrical tension increases, and there is another brilliant discharge of electrical energy. I reel back, as if in shock.

The girl moves away from the apparatus, cowering a little. I break off from my introduction to plead with her to leave the stage for her own safety. At first she resists, then gladly hurries into the wings.

I reach up to the directional cone, grip it gingerly with my heavily gauntleted hands, and move it with great care until its apex is pointed directly at the cabinet.

The illusion is approaching its climax. From the orchestra pit there comes a roll of drums. I place both hands on the platform once more, and magically all the remaining lamps shine out brightly. The sinister hum increases. I first sit on the platform, and swivel around so that I can stretch my legs out, then lower myself until I am lying full length, surrounded by the evidence of the terrible electrical forces.

I raise my arms, and pull off first one, then the other gauntlet. As I lower my arms I allow my hands to droop below the level of the platform. One of them, the one the audience can see, falls casually into the receptacle where, a few seconds earlier, a piece of paper had been ignited.

There is a brilliant, blinding flash of light, and all the lights on the apparatus fuse into darkness.

In the same instant… I vanish from the platform.

The cabinet bursts open, and I am seen hunched up inside.

I roll slowly out of the cabinet, and collapse on to the floor. I am bathed in stage lights. Gradually I come to my senses. I stand. I blink in the brightness of the lights. I face the audience. I turn towards the platform, indicate where I had been, turn back to the cabinet immediately behind me, and indicate where I had arrived.

I take my bow.

The audience has seen me transmogrified. Before their eyes I was catapulted by the power of electricity from one part of the stage to another. Ten feet of empty space. Twenty feet, thirty feet, depending on the size of the stage.

A human body transmitted in an instant. A miracle, an impossibility, an illusion.

My assistant returns to the stage. Clasping her hand I am smiling and bowing as the applause rings out and the curtains close before me.

If I say no more of this, it will be acceptable. I shall not intervene again. I may continue to the conclusion.

Life in my flat in Hornsey, an area of north London several miles from my house in St Johns Wood, left much to be desired. I had chosen the flat, one of ten in an apartment house in a quiet side street, simply because its anonymity seemed to fulfil my needs. It was on the second floor at the rear of a modest, mid-century building, occupying one of the corners, so that although it had several windows looking out into the surrounding small garden, entry to it was by a single plain door leading off the stairwell.

Not long after I had taken up occupancy, I began to regret the choice. Most of the other tenants were lower-middle-class families, running modest households; all the other flats on my floor had children living in them, for instance, and there was much coming and going of domestic servants of one kind or another. My single state, especially in a flat of such a size, obviously aroused the curiosity of my neighbours. Although I gave out every sign of wishing not to be drawn into conversations, some were nevertheless inevitable, and soon I felt exposed to their speculations about me. I knew I should move to another address, but at the time I first took the flat I craved to have a steady place in which I could stay between performances, and even if I were to move I knew there would be no guarantee I would not attract curiosity elsewhere. I decided to adopt a pretence of polite neutrality, and came and went discreetly, neither mixing too much with my neighbours nor appearing secretive in my movements. Eventually I believe I became dull to them. The English have a traditional tolerance of eccentrics, and my late-night arrivals, my solitary presence without servants, my unexplained method of making my living, came eventually to seem harmless and familiar.

All this aside, I found life in the flat disagreeable for a long time after I first moved in. I had rented it unfurnished, and because I was necessarily sinking most of my earnings into the family house in St Johns Wood, I could at first only afford cheap and uncomfortable furniture. The main source of heating was a stove, for which logs had to be brought up from the yard below, and which provided fierce heat in the immediate vicinity and none at all discernible in any other part of the flat. There were no carpets to speak of.

Because the flat was a refuge for me, it was essential that I should make it a comfortable place to live in and convenient for living quietly, sometimes for long periods at a time.

The physical discomforts aside, which of course began to ease little by little, as I was able to acquire the various practical things I wanted, the worst of it was the loneliness and the feeling of being cut off from my family. There has never been any cure for this, then or now. At first, when it was just Sarah from whom I was separated, it was intolerable enough, but during her difficult confinement with the twins I was often in agonies of worry about her. It became even more difficult, after Graham and Helena were born, especially when one of them fell ill. I knew my family was being cared for and looked after with love, and that our servants were dedicated and trustworthy, and that should the worst illnesses occur we had sufficient funds to be able to afford the best treatment, but none of this was ever quite enough, even though such thoughts did provide a measure of consolation and reassurance.

In the years when I had been planning The Transported Man and its modern sequel, and my overall magical career, it had never occurred to me that having a family might one day threaten to make it unworkable.

Many times I have been tempted to give up the stage, never perform the illusion again, abandon, in effect, the performance of magic altogether, and always because I have felt calls of affection and duty to my lovely wife, and of fervent love for my children.

In those long days in the Hornsey flat, and sometimes in the weeks when the theatrical season gave no openings for my act, I had more than abundant time to reflect.

The significant point is, of course, that I did not give up.

I kept going through the difficult early years. I kept going when my reputation and earnings began to soar. And I keep going now when, to all intents and purposes, most of what remains of my famous illusion is the mystery that surrounds it.

However, things have been a lot easier recently. During the first two weeks that Olive Wenscombe was working for me I happened to discover that she was staying in a commercial hotel near Euston Station, a most dubious address. Explaining why, she told me that the Hampshire magician had provided lodgings with his job, but she had of course given these up when she left his employ. By this time, Olive and I were making regular use of the couch at the rear of my workshop, and it did not take me long to realize that my employ too might be able to offer her permanent lodgings.

The Pact controlled all decisions of such a nature, but in this case it was just a formality. A few days later, Olive moved into my flat in Hornsey. There she stayed, and has stayed, ever since.

Her revelation, that was to change everything, came a few weeks later.

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Towards the end of 1898 a theatre cancellation meant that there was more than a week between performances of The New Transported Man. I spent the time in the Hornsey flat, and although I went across to the workshop once, for most of the week I was ensconced in a domestically happy and physically stimulating routine with Olive. We began redecorating the flat, and with some of the recent proceeds of a successful run at the Illyria Theatre in the West End we bought several attractive items of furniture.

The night before the idyll was to end — I was due to take my show to the Hippodrome in Brighton — she sprung her surprise. It was late at night, and we were resting companionably together before falling asleep.

"Listen, hon," she said. "I've been thinking you might want to start looking around for a new assistant."

I was so thunderstruck that at first I did not know how to answer. Until that moment it had seemed to me I had reached the kind of stability I had been seeking all my working life. I had my family, I had my mistress. I lived in my house with my wife, and I stayed in my flat with my lover. I worshipped my children, adored my wife, loved my mistress. My life was in two distinct halves, kept emphatically apart, neither side suspecting the other even existed. In addition, my lover worked as my beautiful and bewitching stage assistant. She was not only brilliant at her job but her lovely appearance, I was certain, had doubtless helped me obtain the much larger audiences I had been playing to since she joined me. In popular parlance, I had my cake and was greedily eating it. Now, with those words, Olive seemed to be unbalancing everything, and I was thrown into dismay.

Seeing my reaction, Olive said, "I got a lot I want to get off my chest. It isn't so bad as maybe you think."

"I can't imagine how it could be much worse."

"Well, if you hear half of what I say, it'll be worse than you ever imagined, but if you stick around to hear it all, I guess you'll end up feeling good."

I took a careful look at her and noticed, as I should have done from the start, that she seemed tense and keyed up. Clearly, something was afoot.

The story came out in a flood of words, quickly confirming her warning. What she said filled me with horror.

She began by saying that she wanted to stop working for me for two reasons. The first was that she had been treading the boards for several years, and simply wanted a change. She said she wished to live at home, be my lover, follow my career from that standpoint. She said she would continue to work as my assistant as long as I asked her to, or until I could find a replacement. So far so good. But, she said, I hadn't yet heard the second reason. This was that she had been sent to work for me by someone who wanted to know my professional secrets. This man—

"It's Angier!" I exclaimed. "You were sent to spy on me by Rupert Angier?"

To this she readily confessed, and on seeing my anger she moved back and away from me, then began to weep. My mind was racing as I tried to remember everything I had said to her in the preceding weeks, and to recall what apparatus she had seen or used, what secrets she might have learned or discovered for herself, and what she might have been able to communicate back to my enemy.

For a time I became unable to listen to her, unable to think calmly or logically. For much of the same time she was weeping, imploring me to listen to her.

Two or three hours passed in this distressing and unproductive way, then at last we reached a point of emotional numbness. Our impasse had lasted into the small hours of the morning, and the need for sleep loomed heavily over us both. We turned out the light, and lay down together, our habits not yet broken by the terrible revelation.

I lay awake in the darkness, trying to think how to deal with this, but my mind was still circling distractedly. Then out of the dark beside me I heard her say quietly, insistently, "Don't you realize that if I was still Rupert Angier's spy I would not have told you? Yes, I was with him but I was bored with him. And he'd been messing around with some other lady, and it kind of annoyed me. All the time he was obsessed with attacking you, and I needed a change and so I cooked up this idea myself. But when I met you… well, I felt differently. You're so unlike Rupert in everything. You know what happened, and all that was real between us, right? Rupert thinks I'm spying for him, but I guess by now he's realized he isn't going to hear anything back from me. I want to stop being your assistant because so long as I'm up there doing the act with you, Rupert's waiting for me to do what he wants. I just want to get out of it all, live here in this apartment, be with you, Alfred. You know, I think I love you—"

And so on, long into the night.

In the morning, in the grey and dispiriting light of a rainy dawn, I said to her, "I have decided what to do. Why don't you take a message back to Angier? I will tell you what to say, and you will deliver it, telling him it's the secret for which he has been searching. You may say whatever you wish to make him believe that you stole the secret from me, and that it is the prime information he has been seeking. After that, if you return, and if you then swear that you will never again have anything to do with Angier, and if, and only if , you can make me believe you, then we will start our lives together again. Do you agree?"

"I will do it today," she swore. "I want to put Angier out of my life forever!"

"First I have to go to my workshop. I have to decide what I can safely tell Angier."

Without further explanation I left her in the flat and took the omnibus to Elgin Avenue. Sitting quietly on the top deck, smoking my pipe, I wondered if I was indeed a fool in love, and that I was just about to throw away everything.

The problem was discussed in full when I arrived at the workshop. Although potentially serious, it was just one of several crises the Pact has had to confront over the years, and I felt no great or novel problem was being presented this time. It was not easy, but at the end of it the Pact emerged as strong as ever. Indeed, as a recordable testament of my continued faith in the Pact, I can say that it was I who remained in the workshop while I returned to the flat.

Here I dictated to Olive what she should inscribe on the sheet of paper, in her own handwriting. She wrote it down, tense but determined to do what she saw as necessary. The message was intended to send Angier searching in the wrong direction, so it needed to be not only plausible but something he would not have thought of on his own.

She left Hornsey with the message at 2.25 p.m., and did not return to the flat until after 11.00 p.m.

"It is done!" she cried. "He has the information I gave him. I shall likely never see him again, and I certainly shall never again, in this lifetime, speak a friendly word of, about or to him."

I never enquired what had taken place during those eight and a half hours she was absent, and why it had taken her so long to deliver a written message. The explanation she gave is probably the true one for being the simplest, that with the time taken to travel about London on public transport, and with not finding Angier immediately, and with discovering that he was in performance in another part of the city, the time was innocently used up. But as that long evening went by I harboured many grim fantasies that the double agent I had turned against her first master might have doubled back once more, and either I should never see her again or that she would return with a renewed subversive mission on his behalf.

However, all this occurred at the end of 1898, and I write these words at the end of the momentous month of January 1901. (The events in the outside world resound in my ears. The day before I penned these words Her Majesty the Queen was finally laid to rest, and the country is at last emerging from a period of mourning.) Olive returned to me more than two years ago, true as her word, and she remains with me, true to my wishes. My career continues smoothly, my position in the world of illusions is unassailable, my family is growing, my wealth is assured. Once again I run two peaceful households. Rupert Angier has not attacked me since Olive passed him the false information. All is quiet around me, and after the turbulent years I am at last settled in my life.

I write, unwillingly, in the year 1903. I had planned to leave my notebook closed forever, but events have conspired against me.

Rupert Angier has died suddenly. He was forty-six, only a year younger than myself. His death, according to a notice in The Times , was caused by complications following injuries incurred while performing a stage illusion at a theatre in Suffolk.

I scoured this notice, and a shorter one that appeared in the Morning Post , for what information I might at last discover about him, but there was little that was new to me.

I had already suspected he was ill. The last time I saw him in the flesh he had a frail look about him, and I guessed he was the victim of some debilitating chronic ailment.

I can summarize the published obituaries, which I have before me as I write. He was born in Derbyshire in 1857, but had moved to London at a young age, where he had subsequently worked for many years as an illusionist and prestidigitator, achieving a considerable measure of success. He had performed his act throughout the British Isles and Europe, and had toured the New World three times, the last occasion being earlier this year. He was credited with inventing several notable stage illusions, in particular one called Bright Morning (it involved releasing an assistant from what appeared to be a sealed flask held in full view of the audience), and this had been widely imitated. More recently, he had successfully devised an illusion called In a Flash, which he was performing at the time of the fatal accident. A master of legerdemain, Angier had been a popular performer at small or private gatherings. He was married, had fathered a son and two daughters, and until the end had lived with his family in the Highgate area of London. He had been performing regularly until the accident which led to his death.

It gives me no pleasure to write of Angier's death. It has come as a tragic climax to a sequence of events which had been building up for more than two years. I disdained to record any of them because, I regret to say, they had threatened to renew the unpleasantness that existed between us.

As I noted in the earlier part of this journal, I had reached a state of pleasant equilibrium and stability in my life and career, and had no wish for anything more than what I had at that time. I felt and sincerely believed that should Angier make any kind of attack or reprisal against me I could merely shrug it off. Indeed, I had every reason to believe that the trail of false clues offered in Olive's note to him was a concluding action between us. It was intended to put him off course, to send him searching for a secret that did not exist. The fact that he vanished from my awareness for more than two years suggested my ruse had worked.

However, soon after I had completed the first part of this narrative I happened to notice a magazine review of a show taking place at the Finsbury Park Empire. Rupert Angier was one of the acts, and by all accounts was low on the bill. The notice mentioned him only in passing, observing "it is good to acknowledge that his talent remains undimmed". This in itself suggested that his career had been going through a hiatus.

Two or three months later, all had changed. One of the magic journals featured an interview with him, even publishing a photographic picture of him alongside. One of the daily newspapers referred in an editorial to the "revival of the prestidigitator's art", pointing out that numerous magical acts were once again topping the bill in our music halls. Rupert Angier was mentioned by name, although so were several others.

Later still, because of the necessary delays in producing such things, one of the subscription magic journals published a detailed article about Angier. It described his present act as a triumphant departure in the art of open magic. His new illusion, called In a Flash, was singled out for special mention, and for expert critical acclaim. It was said to set new standards of technical brilliance, being such that unless Mr Angier himself chose to reveal the secrets of its workings, it was unlikely that any other illusionist would be able to reproduce its effect, at least in the foreseeable future. The same article mentioned that In a Flash was a significant development from "previous efforts’ in the field of transference illusions, and there was a slighting reference not only to The New Transported Man but also to myself.

I tried, I honestly tried, to disregard such aggravation, but these mentions in the press were only the first of many to come. Unquestionably, Rupert Angier was at the top of our profession.

Naturally, I felt I should do something about it. Much of my work in recent months had involved touring, concentrating on smaller clubs and theatres in the provinces. I decided that to re-establish myself I needed a season at a prominent London theatre as a showcase for my skills. Such was the interest in stage illusions at this time that my booking agent had little difficulty arranging what promised to be a major show. The venue was the Lyric Theatre in the Strand, and I was placed top of the bill at a variety show scheduled to run for a week in September 1902.

We opened to a house that was half empty, and the next day our press notices were few and far between. Only three newspapers even mentioned me by name, and the least unfavourable comment referred to me as "a proponent of a style of magic remarkable more for its nostalgic value than its innovative flair". The houses for the next two nights were almost empty, and the show closed halfway through the week.

I decided I had to see Angier's new illusion for myself, and when I heard at the end of October that he was starting a two-week residence at the Hackney Empire I quietly bought myself a ticket for the stalls. The Empire is a deep, narrow theatre, with long constricted aisles and an auditorium kept fairly well in the dark throughout the performance, so it exactly suited my purposes. My seat had a good view of the stage, but I was not so close that Angier was likely to spot me there.

I took no exception to the main part of his performance, in which he competently performed illusions from the standard magical repertoire. His style was good, his patter amusing, his assistant beautiful, and his showmanship above average. He was dressed in a well-made evening suit, and his hair was smartly brilliantined to a high gloss. It was during this part of his act, though, that I first observed the wasting that was affecting his face, and saw other clues that suggested an unwell state. He moved stiffly, and several times favoured his left arm as if it were weaker than the other.

Finally, after an admittedly amusing routine that involved a message written by a member of the audience appearing inside a sealed envelope, Angier came to the closing illusion. He began with a serious speech, which I scribbled down quickly into a notebook. Here is what he said:

Ladies and Gentlemen! As the new century moves apace we see around us on every side the miracles of science. These wonders multiply almost every day. By the end of the new century, which few here tonight shall live to see, what marvels will prevail? Men might fly, men might speak across oceans, men might travel across the firmament. Yet no miracle which science may produce can compare with the greatest wonders of all… the human mind and the human body.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I will attempt a magical feat that brings together the wonders of science and the wonders of the human mind. No other stage performer in the world can reproduce what you are about to witness for yourself!

With this he raised his good arm theatrically, and the curtains were swept apart. There, waiting in the limelight, was the apparatus I had come to see.

It was substantially larger than I had expected. Magicians normally prefer to work with compactly built apparatus so as to heighten the mystery of the uses to which they are put. Angier's equipment practically filled the stage area.

In the centre of the stage was an arrangement of three long metal legs, joined tripodally at the apex and supporting a shining metal globe about a foot and a half in diameter. There was just room beneath the apex of the tripod for a man to stand. Immediately above the apex, and below the globe, was a cylindrical wooden and metal contraption firmly attached to the joint. This cylinder was made of wooden slats with distinct gaps between them, and wound around hundreds of times with thin filaments of wires. From where I was sitting, I judged the cylinder to be at least four feet in height, and perhaps as many in diameter. It was slowly rotating, and catching and reflecting the stage lights into our eyes. Shards of light prowled the walls of the auditorium.

Surrounding the contraption, at a radial distance of about ten feet was a second circle of eight metal slats, again much wound around with wires. These were standing on the surface of the stage and concentric to the tripod. The slats were widely and evenly spaced, with a large gap between each one. The audience could see clearly into the main part of the apparatus.

I was totally unprepared for this, as I had been expecting some kind of magical cabinet of the same general size as the ones I used. Angier's apparatus was so immense that there was no room anywhere on the stage for a second concealing cabinet.

My magician's brain started racing, trying to anticipate what the illusion was to be, how it might differ from my own, and where the secret might lie. First impression — surprise at the sheer size of it. Second impression — the remarkable workaday quality of the apparatus. With the exception of the rotating cylinder just above the apex, there was no use of bright colours, distracting lights or areas of deliberate black. Most of the contraption appeared to be made of unvarnished wood or unbrightened metal. There were cords and wires running off in several directions. Third impression — no hint of what was to come. I have no idea what the apparatus was intended to look like. Magical apparatus often assumes commonplace shapes, to misdirect the audience. It will look like an ordinary table, for example, or a flight of steps, or a cabin trunk, but Angier's equipment made no concessions to familiarity.

Angier began his performance of the trick.

There appeared to be no mirrors on stage. Every part of the apparatus could be seen directly, and as Angier went through his preparations he roamed about the stage, walking through each of the gaps, passing momentarily behind the slats, always visible, always moving. I watched his legs, often a part of an illusionist's anatomy to observe closely when he moves around and particularly behind his apparatus (an inexplicable movement can indicate the presence of a mirror or some other device) but Angier's walk was relaxed and normal. There appeared to be no trapdoors that he could use. The stage was covered in a single large rubber sheet, making access to the mezzanine floor beneath the stage difficult.

Most curious of all, there was no apparent rationale to the illusion. Magical apparatus normally serves to set up or misdirect audience expectations. It consists of the box that is obviously too small to contain a human being (yet will turn out to do so), or the sheet of steel that apparently cannot be penetrated, or the locked trunk from which it would be impossible to escape. In every case, the illusionist confounds the exact assumptions that his audience has made from their own assessment of what they see before them. Angier's equipment looked like nothing ever seen before, and it was impossible to guess what it might be intended to do from simply looking at it.

Meanwhile, Angier strode around his stage set, still invoking the mysteries of science and life.

He resumed centre stage, and faced his audience.

"Good sirs, mesdames, I request of one of you, a volunteer. You need not fear for what might happen. I require you for a simple act of verification only."

He stood in the glare of the footlights, leaning invitingly towards the members of the audience in the first rows of the fauteuils . I suppressed a sudden mad urge to rush forward and volunteer myself, so that I might have a closer look at his machinery, but I knew that if I should do so Angier would instantly recognize me, and probably bring his performance to a premature close.

After the usual nervous hesitation a man stepped forward and mounted the stage by the side ramp. As he did so, one of Angier's assistants walked on to the stage, carrying a tray laden with several articles, the purpose of which soon became apparent, as each one offered a means of marking or identifying. There were two or three wells filled with different coloured inks; there was a bowl of flour; there were some chalks; there were sticks of charcoal. Angier invited the volunteer to choose one, and when the man selected the bowl of flour, Angier turned his back on him and invited him to tip it across the back of his jacket. This the man did, with a cloud of white that drifted spectacularly in the stage lights.

Angier turned again to face the audience, and asked the volunteer to select one of the inks. The man chose the red. Angier held out his floury hands so that red ink might be poured across them.

Now distinctively marked, Angier requested the man to return to his seat. The stage lights dimmed, but for one brilliant shaft of light from a spot.

There was an unearthly crackling noise, as if the air itself were being split asunder, and to my amazement a bolt of blue-white electrical discharge abruptly curled out and away from the shining globe. The arc moved with a horrid suddenness and arbitrariness, dashing about inside the arena enclosed by the outer slats, into which Angier himself now walked. The crackling and snapping of the bolt seemed blessed with a vicious life of its own.

The electrical discharge abruptly doubled, then tripled, with the extra bolts snaking around, as if searching the enclosed space. One inevitably found Angier, and instantly wrapped itself around him, seeming to illumine him with cyanic light that glowed not only around his body but also from within. He welcomed the shot of electricity, raising his good arm, turning about, allowing the snaking, hissing fire to encircle him and surround him.

More bolts of electricity appeared, fizzing malignantly around him. He disregarded these as he had disregarded the others. Each seemed to attack him in turn; one would snap back away from him like a raised whip, allowing another, or two others, to blaze across him and lash his body with ever-contorting fire.

The smell of this discharge was soon assaulting the audience. I breathed it with the others, mentally reeling from thoughts of what it might contain. It had an unearthly, atomic quality, as if it represented the liberation of a force hitherto forbidden to man, and now, released, exhaled the stench of sheer energy rampant.

As more streaming arcs of electricity swooped about him, Angier moved to the tripod at the heart of the inferno, directly beneath the source. Once here he seemed safe. Apparently unable or unwilling to double back on themselves, the brilliant arcs of light snapped away from him, and with ferocious bangs impacted on the larger, outer slats. In moments, each of these had one arc reaching across to it, fizzing and spitting with restless animation, but contained in its place.

So these eight dazzling streamers formed a kind of canopy above the arena in which Angier stood, alone. The spotlight was suddenly extinguished, and all other stage lights had been dimmed. He was illuminated only by the light that fell on him from the incandescent discharge. He stood immobile, his good arm raised, his head barely an inch or so below the metal cylinder whence all the electricity emanated. He was saying something, a declaration to the audience, but one that was lost to me in the noisy commotion that scorched the air above him.

He lowered his arms, and for two or three seconds stood in silence, submitting to the awful spectacle he had made.

Then he vanished.

One moment Angier was there; the next he was not. His apparatus made a shrieking, tearing sound, and appeared to shake, but with his going the bright shards of energy instantly died. The tendrils fizzed and popped like small fireworks, and then were gone. The stage fell into darkness.

I was standing; without fully realizing it I had been standing for some time. I, and the rest of the audience, stood there aghast. The man had disappeared in front of our eyes, leaving no trace.

I heard a commotion in the aisle behind me, and with everyone else I turned to see what was happening. There were too many heads and bodies, I could not see clearly, some kind of motion in the darkened auditorium! Thankfully, the house lights came on, and one of the manned spotlights turned from its position high above the boxes, and its shaft of light picked out what was going on.

Angier was there!

Members of the theatre's staff were hurrying down the aisle towards him, and some of the audience were trying to get to him, but he was on his feet and pushing them away from him.

He was staggering down the aisle, heading back towards the stage.

I tried to recover from the surprise, and quickly made estimates. No more than a second or two could have elapsed between his disappearance from the stage, and his reappearance in the aisle. I glanced to and fro the stage, trying to work out the distance involved. My seat was at least sixty feet away from the front of the stage, and Angier had appeared well to the back of the aisle, close to one of the audience exits. He was a long way behind me, at least another forty feet.

Could he have dashed one hundred feet in a single second, while the darkness from the stage masked his movement?

It was then, and is now, a rhetorical question. Clearly he could not, without the use of magical techniques.

But which ones?

His progress along the aisle towards the stage briefly brought him level with me, where he stumbled on one of the steps before continuing onwards. I was certain he had not seen me, because self-evidently he had no eyes for anyone at all in the audience. His comportment was entirely that of a man wrapped in his own anguish; his face was tormented, his whole body moved as if racked with pain. He shambled like a drunk or an invalid, or a man finally exhausted with life. I saw the left arm he favoured hanging limply by his side, and the hand was smudged grey with flour, the red ink smeared into a dark mess. On the back of his jacket the burst of flour was still visible, still in the haphazard shape the volunteer had created when he slapped the bag against him, just a few seconds ago, and a hundred feet away.

We were all applauding, with many people cheering and whistling their approval, and as he neared the stage a second spotlight picked him out and tracked him up the ramp to the stage. He walked wearily to the centre of the stage, where at last he seemed to recover. Once more in the full glare of the stage lights he took his ovation, bowing to the audience, acknowledging them, blowing kisses, smiling and triumphant. I stood with the rest, marvelling at what I had seen.

Behind him, unobtrusively, the curtains were closing to conceal the apparatus.

#############

I did not know how the trick was done! I had seen it with my own eyes, and I had watched in the knowledge of how to watch a magician at work, and I had looked in all the places from which a magician traditionally misdirects his audience. I left the Hackney Empire in a boiling rage. I was angry that my best illusion had been copied; I was even angrier that it had been bettered. Worst of all, though, was the fact that I could not work out how it was done.

He was one man. He was in one place. He appeared in another. He could not have a double, or a stooge; equally he could not have travelled so quickly from one position to the other.

Jealousy made my rage worse. In a Flash, Angier's catchpenny title for his version of, his damnable improvement on, The New Transported Man, was unmistakably a major illusion, one which introduced a new standard into our often derided and usually misunderstood performing art. For this I had to admire him, no matter what my other feelings about him might be. Along with, I suspect, most of my fellow members of the audience, I felt that I had been privileged to witness the illusion for myself. As I walked away from the front of the theatre I passed the narrow alley that led down to the stage door, and I even momentarily wished it were possible for me to send up my card to Angier's dressing room, so that I might visit him there and congratulate him in person.

I suppressed these instincts. After so many years of bitter rivalry I could not allow one polished presentation of a stage illusion to make me humiliate myself before him.

I returned to my flat in Hornsey, where at that time I happened to be staying, and underwent a sleepless night, tossing restlessly beside Olive.

The next day I settled down to some hard and practical thinking about his version of my trick, to see what I could make of it.

I confess yet again: I do not know how he did it. I could not work out the secret when I saw the performance, and afterwards, no matter what principles of magic I applied, I could not think of the solution.

At the heart of the mystery were three, possibly four, of the six fundamental categories of illusion: he had made himself Disappear , he had then Produced himself elsewhere, somehow there seemed to be an element of Transposition , and all had been achieved in apparent Defiance of Natural Laws .

A disappearance on stage is relatively easy to arrange, placement of mirrors or half-mirrors, use of lighting, use of magician's "black art" or blinds, use of distraction, use of stage trapdoors, and so on. Production elsewhere is usually a question of planting in advance the object, or a close copy of it… or if it is a person, planting a convincing double of the person. Working these two effects together then produces a third; in their bafflement the audience believes it has seen natural laws defied.

Laws that I felt I had seen defied that evening in Hackney.

All my attempts to solve the mystery on conventional magical principles were unsuccessful, and although I thought and worked obsessively I did not come even close to a solution that satisfied me.

I was constantly distracted by the knowledge that this magnificent illusion would have at its heart a secret of infuriating simplicity. The central rule of magic always holds good — what is seen is not what is actually being done .

This secret continued to elude me. I had only two minor compensations.

The first was that no matter how brilliant his effect, my own secret was still intact from Angier. He did not carry out the illusion my way, as indeed he could never have done.

The second was that of speed. No matter what his secret, Angier's performance effect was still not as quick as mine. My body is made to transport from one cabinet to the other in an instant. Not, I emphasize, that it happens quickly; the illusion is worked in an instant . There is no delay of any kind. Angier's effect was measurably slower. On the evening I witnessed the illusion I estimated one or at most two seconds had elapsed, which meant to me that he was one or at most two seconds slower than me.

In one approach towards a solution I tried checking the times and distances involved. On the night, because I had had no idea what was about to happen, and I had no scientific means of measurement, all my estimates were subjective.

This is part of the illusionist's method; by not preparing his audience, the performer can use surprise to cover his tracks. Most people, having seen a trick performed, and asked how quickly it was carried out, will be unable to give an accurate estimate. Many tricks are based on the principle that the illusionist will do something so quickly that an unprepared audience will afterwards swear that it could not have happened, because there was insufficient time .

Knowing this, I made myself think back carefully over what I had seen, re-running the illusion in my mind, and trying to estimate how much time had actually elapsed between Angier's apparent disappearance and his materialization elsewhere. In the end I came to the conclusion that certainly it had been no less than my first estimate of one or two seconds, and maybe as many as five seconds had passed. In five seconds of complete and unexpected darkness a skilled magician can carry out a great deal of invisible trickery!

This short period of time was the obvious clue to the mystery, but it still did not seem enough for Angier to have dashed almost to the back of the stalls.

Two weeks after the incident, by arrangement with the front-of-house manager, I went round to the Hackney Empire on the pretext of wishing to take measurements in advance of one of my own performances. This is a fairly regular feature of magical acts, as the illusionist will often adapt his performance to suit the physical limitations of the theatre. In the event, my request was treated as a normal one, and the manager's assistant greeted me with civility and assisted me with my researches.

I found the seat where I had been, and established that it was just over fifty feet from the stage. Trying to discover the precise point in the aisle where Angier had rematerialized was more difficult, and really all I had to go on was my own memory of the event. I stood beside the seat I had been using, and tried to triangulate his position by recalling the angle at which I had turned my head to see him. In the end the best I could do was to place him somewhere in a long stretch of the stepped aisle; its closest point to the stage was more than seventy-five feet, and its furthest extremity was greatly in excess of one hundred feet.

I stood for a while in the centre of the stage, approximately in the place where the tripod's apex had been, and stared along the central aisle, wondering how I myself would contrive to get from one position to the other, in a crowded auditorium, in darkness, in under five seconds.

I travelled down to discus: the problem with Tommy Elbourne, who by this time was living in retirement in Woking. After I had described the illusion to him I asked him how he thought it might be explained.

"I should have to see it myself, sir," he said after much thought and cross-questioning of me.

I tried a different approach. I put it to him that it might be an illusion I wished to design for myself. He and I had often worked like this in the past; I would describe an effect I wanted to achieve, and we would, so to speak, design the workings in reverse.

"But that would be no problem for you, would it, Mr Borden?"

"Yes, but I am different! How then would we design it for another illusionist?"

"I would not know how," he said. "The best way would be to use a double, someone already planted in the audience, but you say—"

"That is not how Angier worked it. He was alone."

"Then I have no idea, sir."

I laid new plans. I would attend Angier's next season of performances, visiting his show every night if necessary, until I had solved the mystery. Tommy Elbourne would be with me. I would cling to my pride so long as I could, and if I were able to wrest his secret from him, without arousing his suspicions, then that would be the ideal result. But if, by the end of the season, we had not come to a workable theory we would abandon all the rivalry and jealousies of the past, and I would approach him direct, pleading with him if necessary for an insight into the explanation. Such was the maddening effect on me of his mystery.

I write without shame. Mysteries are the common currency of magicians, and I saw it as my professional duty to find out how the trick was being worked. If it meant that I had to humble myself, had to acknowledge that Angier was the superior magician, then so be it.

None of this was to be, however. After an extended Christmas break Angier departed for a tour of the USA at the end of January, leaving me fretting with frustration in his wake.

A week after his return in April (announced in The Times ) I called at his house, determined to make my peace with him, but he was not there. The house, a large but modest building in a terrace not far from Highgate Fields, was closed and shuttered. I spoke to neighbours, but I was repeatedly told that they knew nothing of the people who lived there. Angier obviously kept his life as secure from the outside world as I did.

I contacted Hesketh Unwin, the man I knew to be his booking agent, but was rebuffed. I left a message with Unwin, pleading with Angier to contact me urgently. Although the agent promised the message would reach Angier in person it was never answered.

I wrote to Angier directly, personally, proposing an end to all the rivalry, all bitterness, offering any apology or amends he would care to name in the cause of conciliation between us.

He did not answer, and at last I felt I had been taken to a point that was beyond reason.

My response to his silence, I fear, was insensible.

During the third week of May I caught a train from London to the seaside town and fishing port of Lowestoft, in Suffolk. Here, Angier was booked for a week of performances. I went with only one intent, and that was to infiltrate myself backstage and discover the secret for myself.

Normally, access to the backstage area of a theatre is controlled by the staff who are employed to ensure just that restriction, but if you are familiar either with theatrical life or with a particular building there are generally ways of getting inside. Angier was playing at the Pavilion, a substantial and well-equipped theatre on the seafront, one in which I myself had performed in the past. I foresaw no difficulties.

I was rebuffed. It was hopeless to try at the stage door, because a prominent handwritten notice outside announced that all intending visitors had to obtain authorization in advance before being allowed even so far as the door manager's stall. As I did not want to draw attention to myself, I retreated without pressing my case.

I found similar difficulties in the scenery bay. Again, there are ways and means of getting inside if you know how to go about it, but Angier was taking many precautions, as I soon discovered.

I came across a young carpenter at the back of the bay, preparing a scenery flat. I showed him my card, and he greeted me in a friendly enough way. After a short conversation with him on general matters, I said, "I wouldn't mind being able to watch the show from behind the scenes."

"Wouldn't we all!"

"Do you think you could get me in one evening?"

"No hope, sir, and no point neither. The main act this week's gone and put a box up. Can't see nothing!"

"How do you feel about that?"

"Not too bad, since he slipped me a wad—"

Again I retreated. Boxing a stage is an extreme measure employed by a minority of magicians nervous of having their secrets discovered by scene-shifters and other backstage workers. It's usually an unpopular move and, unless substantial tips are handed out, brings a noticeable lack of cooperation from the people with whom the artiste has to work during his run. The mere fact that Angier had gone to so much trouble was further evidence that his secret required elaborate defences.

There remained only three possible ways to infiltrate the theatre, all of them fraught with difficulties.

The first was to enter the front of house, and use one of the access doors to reach the back. (Doors to the Pavilion auditorium from the foyer were locked, and staff were watching all visitors vigilantly.)

The second was to try to obtain a temporary backstage job. (No one was being hired that week.)

The third was to go to a show as a member of the audience, and try to get up on the stage from there. As there was no longer any alternative I went to the box office and bought myself a stalls seat for every available performance of Angier's run. (It was additionally galling to discover that Angier's show was such a success that most performances were completely sold out, with waiting lists for cancellations, and those that were left had only the most expensive seats available.)

My seat, at the second of Angier's shows I attended, was in the front row of the stalls. Angier looked briefly at me soon after he walked on the stage, but I had disguised myself expertly and was confident he had seen me without recognizing me. I knew from my own experience that you can sometimes sense in advance which members of the audience will volunteer to assist, and taking an unobtrusive glance at the people in the front two or three rows is something most magicians do.

When Angier began his playing-card routine and called for volunteers I stood up with a show of hesitation, and sure enough was invited on to the stage. As soon as I was close to Angier I realized how nervous he was, and he barely looked at me as we went through the amusing process of choosing and concealing cards. I played all this straight, because wrecking his show was not what I wished to do.

When the routine was complete, his female assistant came swiftly up behind me, took my arm in a polite but firm grip, and led me towards the wings. At the earlier performance, the volunteer had then walked down the ramp on his own while the assistant went quickly back to the centre of the stage, where she was needed for the next illusion.

Knowing this, I grasped my opportunity. Under the noise of the applause, I said to her in the rustic accent I was using as part of my disguise, "It's all right, m’dear. I can find my seat."

She smiled gratefully, patted me on the arm, then turned away towards Angier. He was pulling forward his props table while the applause died. Neither of them was looking at me. Most of the audience was watching Angier.

I stepped back, and slipped into the wings. I had to push my way through a narrow flap in the heavy canvas screen of the box.

Immediately, a stagehand stepped out to block my way.

"Sorry, sir," he said loudly. "You aren't allowed back stage."

Angier was just a few feet away from us, starting his next routine. If I argued with the man Angier would doubtless hear us and realize something was up. With a flash of inspiration I reached up and pulled off the hat and wig I had been wearing.

"It's part of the act, you damned fool!" I said urgently but quietly, using my normal voice. "Out of the way!"

The stagehand looked disconcerted, but he muttered an apology and stepped back again. I brushed past him. I had spent much time planning where the best place to search for clues would be. With the stage boxed it was more likely that I would find what I was seeking on the mezzanine floor. I went along a short corridor until I reached the steps leading down to the sub-stage area.

With the rigging loft and flies, the mezzanine is one of the main technical areas of the theatre; there were several trap and bridge mechanisms here, as well as the windlasses used for powering the scenery sliders. Several large flats were stored in their cuts, presumably for a forthcoming production. I stepped briskly between the various pieces of machinery. If the show had been a major theatrical production, with numerous scene and scenery changes, the mezzanine floor would be occupied by several technicians operating the machinery, but because a magic show largely depends on the props the illusionist himself provides, technical requirements are mainly confined to curtains and lighting. I was therefore relieved, but not surprised, to find the area deserted.

Towards the back of the mezzanine floor I found what I was seeking, almost without at first realizing what it was. I came across two large and strongly built crates, equipped with many lifting and handling points, and clearly stamped: Private — The Great Danton. Next to them was a bulky voltage converter of a type unfamiliar to me. My own act used such a device for powering the electrical bench, but it was a small affair of no great complication. But this one of Angier's bespoke raw power. It was giving off noticeable heat as I approached it, and a low, powerful humming noise was issuing from somewhere deep within.

I leaned over the converter, trying to fathom its workings. Overhead, I could hear Angier's footsteps on the stage, and the sound of his voice raised to be heard across the auditorium. I could imagine him striding to and fro as he made his speech about the wonders of science.

Suddenly, the converter made a loud knocking noise, and to my alarm a thin but toxic blue smoke began emerging with some intensity from a grille in its upper panel. The humming noise intensified. At first I leapt back, but a growing sense of alarm made me go forward again.

I could hear Angier's measured tread continuing a few feet above my head, clearly unaware of what might be happening down here.

Again, the knocking noise sounded within the device, this time accompanied by a most sinister screeching noise, as of thin metal being sawn. The smoke was pouring out more quickly than before, and when I moved round to the other side of the object I discovered that several thick metal coils were glowing red hot.

All around me was the clutter of a mezzanine floor. There were tons of dry timber, windlasses grimed with lubricant, miles of ropes, numerous scraps and heaps of discarded paper, huge scenery flats painted with oils. The whole place was a tinderbox, and in the centre of it was something that seemed about to explode into flames. I stood there in terrible indecision — could Angier or his assistants know what was happening down here?

The converter made more noises, and once again the smoke belched from the grille. It was getting into my lungs, and I was beginning to choke. In desperation I looked around for some kind of fire extinguisher.

Then I saw that the converter was taking its power from a thick insulated cable that ran from a large electrical junction box attached to the rear wall. I dashed over to it. There was an Emergency On/Off handle built into it, and without another thought I grabbed hold of it and pulled it down.

The infernal activity of the converter instantly died. Only the acrid blue smoke continued to belch out of its grille, but this was thinning by the second.

Overhead there was a heavy thud, followed by silence.

A second or two passed, while I stared contritely up at the stage floor above me.

I heard footsteps dashing around, and Angier's voice shouting angrily. I could hear the audience too, a more indistinct noise, neither cheering nor applauding. The racket of hurrying feet and raised voices from up there was increasing. Whatever I had done had wreaked havoc on Angier's illusion.

I had come to this theatre to solve a mystery, not to interrupt the show, but I had failed in the former and inadvertently succeeded in the latter. For the sake of this, what I had learned was that he used a more powerful voltage converter than mine, and that his was a fire risk.

I realized that I would be discovered if I remained where I was, so I stepped away from the rapidly cooling converter and returned the way I had come. My lungs were starting to ache from the smoke I had inhaled, and my head was spinning. Overhead, on the stage and in the general backstage area, I could hear many people moving quickly and noisily around, a fact that I felt would work in my favour. Somewhere in the building, not too far away, I heard someone screaming. I should be able to slip away in the confusion.

As I ran up the steps, taking them two at a time, and intending to stop for no one, no matter what the challenge, I saw an amazing sight!

My mind was unhinged by the smoke, or by the excitement of what I had just done, or by the fear of being caught. I could not have been thinking clearly. Angier himself was standing at the top of the steps, waiting for me, his arms raised in anger. But it seemed to me he had assumed the form of an apparition! I glimpsed lights beyond him, and by some trick they also seemed to glint through him. Immediately, several thoughts flashed through me — this must be a special garment he wears to help him do that trick! A treated fabric! Something that becomes transparent! Makes him invisible! Is this his secret?

But in the selfsame instant my upward momentum propelled me into him, and we both sprawled on the floor. He tried to grab me, but whatever he had smeared on himself prevented him from getting a good grip on me. I was able to release myself and slither away from him.

"Borden!" His voice was hoarse with anger, no more than a terrible whisper. "Stop!"

"It was an accident!" I shouted. "Keep away from me!"

Having gained my feet I ran from him, leaving him lying there on the hard floor. I sprinted down a short corridor, the noise of my shoes echoing from the shinily painted bare bricks, rounded a corner, ran down a short flight of steps, went along another bare corridor, then came across the doorkeeper's cubicle. He looked up in surprise as I dashed past, but he had no hope of challenging or stopping me.

Moments later I was outside the stage door, and hurrying along the dimly lit alley to the seafront.

Here I paused for a moment, facing out to sea, leaning forward and resting my hands on my knees. I coughed a few times, painfully, trying to clear the remains of the smoke from my lungs. It was a fine dry evening in early summer. The sun had just set, and the coloured lights were coming on along the promenade. The tide was high and the waves were breaking softly against the sea wall.

The audience was straggling out of the Pavilion Theatre, and dispersing into the town. Many of the people wore bemused expressions, presumably because of the sudden way the show had ended. I walked along the promenade with the crowd, then when I reached the main shopping street I turned inland and headed towards the railway station.

Much later, long after midnight, I was back in my London house. My children were asleep in their rooms, Sarah was warm beside me, and I lay there in the darkness wondering what the night had achieved.

Then, seven weeks later, Rupert Angier died.

To say I was consumed by feelings of guilt would be an understatement, especially as both of the newspapers which recorded his passing referred to the "injuries’ he had sustained while performing his illusion. They did not say that the accident had happened on the date I was in Lowestoft, but I knew that must be the one.

I had already established that Angier cancelled the remainder of his season at the Pavilion, and as far as I knew he had not performed elsewhere in public afterwards. I had no idea why.

Now it transpired that he was fatally injured that night. What was inexplicable to me was that I had run into Angier less than a minute after my accidental intervention. He did not seem fatally injured then, or even hurt to a minor extent. On the contrary he was in strenuous health, and determined to confront me. We had scrapped briefly on the floor before I managed to get away from him. The only unusual thing about him had been the greasy compound he had smeared on himself or his costume, presumably to perform the illusion, or to help in some way with making himself vanish. That Was a genuine puzzle, because after I had recovered from the effects of the smoke inhalation, my memory of those few seconds was exact. It had quite definitely been the case that for a split second I had "seen through" him, as if parts of him were transparent, or if all of him were partially so.

Another minor aspect of the mystery was that none of the compound had rubbed off on me during our brawl. His hands had definitely gripped my wrists, and I had distinctly felt the slimy sensation, but no trace was left. I even recall sitting on the train returning to London, holding my arm up to the light to discover if I could "see through" myself!

There was enough doubt, though, for feelings of guilt and contrition to dominate my reaction to the news. In fact, confronted with the awfulness of the event I felt I could not rest until I had been able to make some kind of amends.

Unfortunately, the newspaper obituaries had not been published until several days after Angier had died, when the funeral had already been held. This event would have been an ideal place for me to start the process of belated reconciliation with his family and associates. A wreath, a simple note of condolence, would have paved the way for me, but it was not to be.

After much thought I decided to approach his widow directly, and wrote her a sincere and sympathetic letter.

In it I explained who I was, and how I, when much younger, had to my eternal regret fallen out with her husband. I said that the news of his premature death had shocked and saddened me and that I knew the whole magical community would feel the loss. I paid tribute to his skills as a performer, and as an ingйnieur of marvellous illusions.

I then moved on to what was for me the main thrust of the letter, but which I hoped would seem to the widow to be an afterthought. I said that when a magician died it was customary in the world of magic for his colleagues to offer to purchase whatever pieces of apparatus there were for which the family might no longer have a use. I added that in view of my long and troubled relationship with Rupert during his lifetime I saw it as a duty and a pleasure to make such an offer now that he had died, and that I had considerable means at my disposal.

With the letter sent, and presciently supposing that I could not necessarily count on the widow's cooperation, I made enquiries through my contacts in the business. This was an approach I also had to judge sensitively, because I had no idea how many of my colleagues were as interested in getting their hands on Angier's equipment as I was. I assumed many of them would be; I could not have been the only professional magician to have seen the stunning performance. I therefore let it be known that if any of Angier's pieces were to come on to the market I would not be uninterested.

Two weeks after I wrote to Angier's widow I received a reply, in the form of a letter from a firm of solicitors in Chancery Lane. It said, and I transcribe it exactly:

My Dear Sir,

Estate of Rupert David Angier Esquire, Dec'd

Pursuant to your recent enquiry to our client, I am instructed to advise you that all necessary arrangements for the disposal of the late Rupert David Angier's major chattels and appurtenances have been made, and that you need not embark on further enquiries as to their destination or enjoyment.

We anticipate instruction from our former client's estate as to the disposal of various minor pieces of property, and these shall be made available through public auction, whose date and place shall be announced in the usual gazettes.

In this we remain, Sir, yr. obedient servants, Kendal, Kendal & Owen

(Solicitors & Commissioners for Oaths)

I step forward to the footlights, and in the full glare of their light face you directly.

I say, "Look at my hands. There is nothing concealed within them."

I hold them up, raising my palms for you to see, spreading my fingers so as to prove nothing is gripped secretly between them. I now perform my last trick, and produce a bunch of faded paper flowers from the hands you know to be empty.

It is 1st September 1903, and I say that to all intents and purposes my own career ended with Angier's death. Although I was reasonably wealthy, I was a married man with children and had an expensive and complicated way of life to sustain. I could not walk away from my responsibilities, and so I was obliged to accept bookings so long as they were offered to me. In this way I did not fully retire, but the ambition that had driven me in the early years, the wish to amaze or baffle, the sheer delight of dreaming up the impossible, all these left me. I still had the technical ability to perform magic, my hands remained dexterous, and with Angier absent I was once again the only performer of The New Transported Man, but none of this was enough.

A great loneliness had descended on me, one the Pact yet prevents me from describing in full, except to say that I was the only friend I craved for myself. Yet I, of course, was the only friend I could not meet.

I touch on this as delicately as I can.

My life is full of secrets and contradictions I can never explain.

Whom did Sarah marry? Was it me, or was it me? I have two children, whom I adore. But are they mine to adore, really mine alone… or are they actually mine? How will I ever know, except by the cravings of instinct? Come to that, with which of me did Olive fall in love, and with whom did she move into the flat in Hornsey? It was not I who first made love to her, nor was it I who invited her to the flat, yet I took advantage of her presence, knowing that I too was doing the same.

Which of me was it who tried to expose Angier? Which of me first devised The New Transported Man, and which of me was the first to be transported?

I seem, even to myself, to be rambling, but every word here is coherent and precise. It is the essential dilemma of my existence.

Yesterday I was playing at a theatre in Balham, in south-west London. I performed the matinйe, then had two hours to wait before the evening show. As I often did at such times I went to my dressing room, pulled the curtains to and dimmed the lights, closed and locked the door, and went to sleep on the couch.

I awoke—

Did I wake at all? Was it a vision? A dream?

I awoke to find the spectral figure of Rupert Angier standing in my dressing room, and he was holding a long-bladed knife in both hands. Before I could move or call out he leapt at me, landing on the side of the couch and crawling quickly on top of me so that he was astride my chest and stomach. He raised the knife, and held it with the point of the blade resting above my heart.

"Prepare to die, Borden!" he said in his harsh and horrid whisper.

In this hellish vision it seemed to me that he barely weighed anything at all, that I could easily flip him away from me, but fear was weakening me. I brought my hands up and gripped his forearms, to try to stop him thrusting the knife fatally into me, but to my amazement I found that he was still wearing the greasy compound that prevented my getting a strong hold on him. The harder I tried, the more quickly my fingers slipped around his disgusting flesh. I was breathing his foul stink, the rank smell of the grave, of the boneyard.

I gasped in horror, because I felt the pointed blade pressing painfully against my breast.

"Now! Tell me, Borden! Which one are you? Which one?"

I could scarcely breathe, such was my fear, such was the terror that at any second the blade would thrust through my ribcage and puncture my heart.

"Tell me and I spare you!" The pressure of the knife increased.

"I don't know, Angier! I no longer know myself!"

And somehow that ended it, almost as soon as it had begun. His face was inches away from mine, and I saw him snarl with rage. His rancid breath flowed over me. The knife was starting to pierce my skin! Fear galvanized me into valour. I swung at him once, twice, fists across his face, battering him back from me. The deadly pressure on my heart softened. I sensed an advantage, and swung both my arms at his body, clenching my fists together. He yelled, swaying back from me. The knife lifted away. He was still on me, so I hit him again, then thrust up the side of my body to unseat him. To my immense relief he toppled away, releasing the knife as he fell to the floor. The deadly blade clattered against the wall and landed on the floor, as the spectral figure rolled across the floorboards.

He was quickly on his feet, looking chastened and wary, watching me in case I attacked again. I sat up on the couch, braced against another assault. He was the phantasm of ultimate terror, the spectre in death of my worst enemy in life.

I could see the lamp glinting through his semi-transparent body.

"Leave me alone," I croaked. "You are dead! You have no business with me!"

"Nor I with you, Borden. Killing you is no revenge. It should never have happened. Never!"

The ghost of Rupert Angier turned away from me, walked to the locked door, then passed bodily through it. Nothing of him remained, except a persistent trace of his hideous carrion stench.

The haunting had paralysed me with fear, and I was still sitting immobile on the couch when I heard beginners called. A few minutes later my dresser came to the room and tried to get in, and it was his insistent knocking that at last roused me from the couch.

I found Angier's knife on the floor of the dressing room, and I have it with me now. It is real. It was carried by a ghost.

Nothing makes sense. It hurts to breathe, to move; I still feel that pressing point of the knife against my heart. I am in the Hornsey flat, and I do not know what to do or who I really am.

Every word I have written here is true, and each one describes the reality of my life. My hands are empty, and I fix you with an honest look. This is how I have lived, and yet it reveals nothing.

I will go alone to the end.