The Prestige

Rupert Angier

The Story of My Life

1. My History, my name is ROBBIE (Rupert) DAVID ANGlER and I am 9 nine years old today. I am to write in this book every day until I am old.

2. My Ancestors, I have many but Papa and Mama are the first. I have one brother: HENRY RICHARD ANGUS ST JOHN ANGlER, and he is 15 he goes to school and is a border.

3. I live in Caldlow House Caldlow Derbyshire. I have had something wrong with my throte this week.

4. The Staff, I have a Nan and there is Grierson and a maid who changes with the other maid in the afternoons, but I don't know her name.

5. I have to show this to Papa when I have written it. The end. Signed Rupert David Angier.

22nd September 1866

The Story of My Life

1. Today the doctor came to see me again and I am all right. Got a letter today from Henry my brother who says I must call him Sir from now on because he is a prefect.

2. Papa has gone to London to sit in the House. He said that I am the head of the house until he gets back. This means Henry would call me sir but he is not here.

3. Told this to Henry when I wrote to him.

4. Went for walk, talked to Nan, was read to by Grierson who fell asleep as usual.

I do not have to show this to Papa any more, provided I keep it up.

23rd September 1866

Throte much better. Went for drive today with Grierson, who did not say much but he told me that Henry says that when he takes over the house he will be going. Grierson will be going when Henry takes over the house, I mean. Grierson said he thought it had all been decided but it would not happen for many years god willing.

I am waiting for Mama to come and see me she is late tonight.

22nd December 1867

Yesterday evening there was a party for me and several boys and girls from the village, it being Christmas they are allowed here. Henry was here too but he would not come to the party because of the others. He missed a great treat because we had a conjuror at the party!

This man, who was called Mr A. Presto, did the most wonderful tricks I have ever seen. He started by making all sorts of banners and flags and umbrellas appear from nowhere, with lots of balloons and ribbons. Then he did some tricks with playing cards, making us choose cards which he was able to guess. He was very clever. He made billiard balls come out of one of the boy's nose, and a whole lot of coins fell out of a little girl's ear when he grabbed hold of it. There was a piece of string which he cut in half then joined up again, and at the end of it all he produced a white bird out of a small glass box that we could see was empty before he began!

I pleaded and pleaded to be told how these tricks were done, but Mr Presto would not tell me. Even afterwards when the others had gone, but nothing I could say would make him change his mind.

This morning I had an idea, and I got Grierson to drive into Sheffield for me and buy all the magic tricks he could find, and to see if there were any books that told you how to do it. Grierson was gone nearly all day, but in the end he came back with most of what I wanted. It includes a special glass box for hiding a bird in so I can produce it by magic. (Special floor to the box, which I hadn't thought of.) The other tricks are a bit harder, because I have to practice. But already I have learnt a trick where I can guess which card someone else has chosen and I have tried it out several times on Grierson.

17th February 1871

I managed to see Papa alone this afternoon for the first time in many months, and found that the situation was much as Henry has already described it. There is nothing apparently to be done about it, except to make the best of a bad job.

I could gladly kill Henry.

31st March 1873

Today I removed and destroyed all entries from the last two years. It was the first act I performed on returning from school.

1st April 1873

Home from school. I now have sufficient privacy to write in this book.

My father, the 12th Earl of Colderdale, died three days ago, 29th March 1873. My brother Henry assumes his title, lands and property. The future of myself, my mother, and every other member of the household, be they ever so mighty or humble, is now uncertain. Even the future of the house itself cannot be counted upon, as Henry has openly spoken in the past of making drastic changes. We can only wait, but for the time being the house is preoccupied with funereal preparations.

Papa will be buried tomorrow in the vault.

This morning I am feeling more sanguine about my prospects. I have been here in my room this morning, practising my magic. My progress with this field was one of the victims of my recent purge of this diary's pages, because from the start I kept a detailed record of what it took to become proficient in sleight of hand… but all this had to go when I decided to remove the rest. Suffice to say that I believe I have now attained performance standard, and although I have not yet put this to full test, I have often practised new tricks on the fellows at school. They feign a lack of interest in magic, and indeed some of them declare that they know my secrets, but I have had one or two moments when, gratifyingly, I have seen genuine bafflement in their expressions.

There is no need for haste. All the magic books I have read advise the novitiate not to rush, but instead to prepare thoroughly so that one's performance has surprise as well as skill. If they know not who you are, it adds to the mystique of what you are, and what you are about to do.

So it is said.

I wish, and this is my only wish in this saddest of weeks, that I could use my magic to bring Papa back to his life. A selfish wish, because it would undoubtedly help restore my own life to where it was three days ago, but also a fervently loving wish, because I loved my Papa and already I miss him, and regret his passing. He was forty-nine years old, and I believe that is too young by far to be a victim of failure of the heart.

2nd April 1873

The funeral has taken place, and my father has been laid to rest. After the ceremony in the chapel, his body was taken to the family vault, situated beneath the East Rise. The mourners all walked in a line to the entrance to the vault, and then Henry and I, together with the undertaker and his staff, bore the coffin underground.

Nothing had prepared me for what followed. The vault is apparently a huge natural cavern stretching back into the hill, but it has been widened and enlarged for use as the family tomb. It is in complete darkness, the ground underfoot is uneven and rocky, the air is foetid, we saw several rats, and the numerous jagged shelves and ledges protrude into the passageway causing painful collisions in the dark. We were each carrying a lantern, but once we were at the bottom of the steps and away from the daylight they proved of little use. The undertakers accepted all this in a professional manner, even though carrying the casket must have been extremely difficult under the circumstances, but for my brother and I it was a short but significant ordeal. Once we had found a suitable ledge and deposited the coffin, the senior undertaker intoned a few scriptural words and we returned without delay to the surface. We emerged into the bright spring morning we had left a few minutes earlier, where the East Lawn was festooned with daffodils and the buds were bursting from the trees around us, but for me at least the sojourn in that dark tunnel cast a shadow across the rest of the day. I shuddered as the stout wooden portal closed, and I could not throw off the memory of those ancient broken caskets, the dust, the smell, the lifeless despair of the place.

Evening

An hour or so ago came the ceremony, and I use the word with the sense that it is exactly the one I want, the ceremony around which the day has been built. For this, the reading of my father's will, the interment was a mere preliminary.

We were all there, assembled in the hall beneath the main staircase. Sir Geoffrey Fusel-Hunt, my father's solicitor, called us to silencer and with steady, deliberate hands opened the stout brown envelope that contained the dread document, and slipped out the folded sheets of vellum. I looked around at the others. My father's brothers and sisters were there, with their spouses and, in some cases, their children. The men who managed the estate and who guarded the game, patrolled the moor, protected the farms and the fishery, stood in a small group to one side. Next to them, also clustering, the tenant farmers, eyes wide with hope. In the centre of the semi-circular group, directly facing Sir Geoffrey across his desk, myself and Mama, with the servants behind us. In front of us all, standing, arms folded across his chest, central to the moment, Henry dominated the occasion.

There were no surprises. Henry's main inheritance is of course not subject to my father's will, nor are the hereditary rights of property. But there are freeholds to be disposed of, portfolios of shares, amounts of cash and stocks of valuables, and, most important of all, rights of possession, of occupation.

Mama is given the choice, for the remainder of her life, of occupying a principal wing of the main house or total occupation of the dower house by the gate. I am allowed to remain in the rooms I presently occupy until I finish my education or gain my majority, after which my fate will be decided by Henry. The destiny of our personal servants is linked to our own; the rest of the household is to stay or be disposed of as Henry sees fit.

Our life is to be unravelled.

A few cash legacies have gone to favoured retainers, but the bulk of the fortune is now Henry’s. He made no move, showed no sign, when this was announced. I kissed Mama, then shook hands with several of the estate managers and farmers.

Tomorrow I shall try to decide how I am to live my life, and to make this decision before Henry can make it for me.

3rd April 1873

What am I to do? There is more than another week before I return to school, for what will be my last term.

3rd April 1874

It seems appropriate to return to this diary after the space of a year. I remain at Caldlow House, partly because until I am twenty-one I am in the charge of Henry, my legal guardian, but mainly because Mama wishes me to.

I am minded by Grierson. Henry has taken a residence in London, from where it is reported that he daily attends the House. Mama is in good health, and I walk to the dower house every morning, which is her best time, and we speculate unprofitably about what I might be able to do once I gain my majority.

Following Papa's death I allowed my practice of legerdemain to fall into neglect, but about nine months ago I returned to it. Since then I have been practising intently, and taking every opportunity to watch the performance of stage magic. For this purpose I travel to the music halls of Sheffield or Manchester, where although the standards are variable I do see a sufficient variety of turns to stimulate my interest. Many of the illusions are already known to me, but at least once in every performance I see something that excites or baffles me. After this the hunt for the secret is on. Grierson and I now have a well-trodden path around the various magic dealers and suppliers, where, with persistence, we eventually gain access to what I require.

Grierson, alone in our diminished household, knows of my magical interest and ambition. When Mama speaks pessimistically of what is to become of me, I dare not tell her what I plan, but deep inside me I feel a knot of confidence that when I am eventually cast adrift from this half-life in Derbyshire I shall have a career to follow. The magic journals to which I subscribe write of the immense fees a top illusionist may now command for a single performance, not to mention the social kudos that attaches to a brilliant career on the stage.

Already I am playing a part. I am the disinherited younger brother of a peer, down on his luck, reduced to hand-outs from a guardian, and I trudge through my dispiriting life in these rainy hills of Derbyshire.

I am waiting in the wings, however, because once I am of age my real life will begin!

31st December 1876

Idmiston Villas, London N

I have finally been able to get my boxes and cases from storage, and I spent a dismal Christmas going through my old belongings, sorting out those that I no longer want, and those I am glad to find again. This diary was one of the latter, and I have been reading through it for the last few minutes.

I remember that once before I decided to set down the minutiae of my magical career, and as I write this now I have the same thought. Too many gaps already exist, though. I tore out all those pages where I described my rows with Henry, and with them went the records I kept of my progress. I cannot be bothered to go back in memory and summarize all the various tricks, forces, moves I learnt and practised in those days.

Also I see from my last entry, more than two and a half years ago, that I was then waiting in dejected stupor to reach the age of twenty-one, so that Henry could throw me out of the house. In fact, I did not wait that long, and took matters into my own hands.

So here I am, at the age of nineteen, living in rented lodgings in a respectable street in a London suburb, a man free of his past, and, for the next two years at least (because irrespective of where I am living Henry has to continue my allowance), free of financial worries. I have already performed my magic once in public, but was not paid for it. (The less said about that humiliating occasion the better.)

I have become, and shall remain, plain Mister Rupert Angier. I have turned my back on my past. No one in this new life of mine will ever find out the truth of my birthright.

Tomorrow, being the first day of the new year, I shall summarize my magical aspirations and perhaps set down my resolutions.

1st January 1877

The morning post has brought with it a small parcel of books from New York for which I have been waiting for many weeks, and I have been looking through them for ideas.

I love to perform. I study the craft of using a stage, of presenting a show, of entertaining an audience with a stream of witty or droll remarks… and I dream of laughter, gasps of surprise, and tumults of applause. I know I can reach the top of my profession simply by the excellence of presentation.

My weakness is that I never understand the working of an illusion until it is explained to me. When I see a trick for the first time I am as baffled by it as any other member of the audience. I have a poor magical imagination, and find it difficult to apply known general principles to produce a desired effect. When I see a superb performance I am dazzled by the shown and confounded by the unseen.

Once, in a stage performance at the Manchester Hippo drome, a magician presented a glass carafe for all to see. He held it before his face, so that we could glimpse his features through it; he struck it lightly with a metal rod, so that by its gentle ringing noise we could tell it was symmetrically and perfectly made; finally, he held it upside down for a moment so that we could see for ourselves it was empty. He then turned to his table of props where a metal jug was in place. He poured from this, into the carafe, about half a pint of clear water. Then, without further ado, he went to a tray of wineglasses set up on one side of the stage and poured into each of them a quantity of red wine!

The point of this is that I already had in my possession the device that enabled me to appear to pour water into a folded newspaper, then pour back from it a glass of milk (the sheet of paper remaining unaccountably dry).

The principle was much the same, the presentation was different, and in admiring the latter I lost all sight of the former.

I have spent a large amount of my monthly allowance in magic shops, where I have purchased the secret or the device that has allowed me to add one trick or another to my steadily expanding repertoire. It is devilish hard to discover secrets when they cannot be purchased for cash! And even when I can, it is not always the answer, because as competition increases so illusionists are forced to invent their own tricks. I find it simultaneously a torment and a challenge to see such illusions performed.

Here the magic profession closes ranks on the newcomer. One day, I dare say, I shall join those ranks myself and try to exclude newcomers, but for the present I find it vexing that the older magicians protect their secrets so jealously. This afternoon I penned a letter to Prestidigitators’ Panel , a monthly journal sold by subscription only, setting out my thoughts on the widespread and absurd obsession with secrecy.

3rd February 1877

Every weekday morning, from 9.00 a.m. to midday, I patrol what has become a well-worn path between the offices of the four main theatrical agencies who specialize in magic or novelty acts. Outside the door of each one I brace myself against the inevitability of rejection, then enter with as brave a face as I can feign, make my presence known to the attendant who sits in the reception area, and enquire politely if any commissions might be available to me.

Invariably, so far, the answer has been in the negative. The mood of these attendants seems to vary, but most of the time they are courteous to me while brusquely saying no.

I know they are pestered endlessly by the likes of myself, because a veritable procession of unemployed performers trudges the same daily path as me. Naturally I see these others as I go about my applications, and naturally I have befriended some of them. Unlike most I am not short of a bob or two (or at least will not be so while my allowance continues), and so when we make tracks at lunchtime to one or another tavern in Holborn or Soho I am able to stand a few drinks for them. I am popular for this, of course, but I do not fool myself that it is for any other reason. I am glad of the company, and also for the more subtle hope that through any of these hail-fellows I might one day make a contact who might find or offer me some work.

It is a congenial enough life, and in the afternoons and evenings I have abundant time left to myself in which to continue to practise.

And I have time enough to write letters. I have become a persistent and, I fancy, a controversial correspondent on the subject of magic. I make a point of writing to every issue of the magic journals I see, and try always to be acute, provocative, disputatious. I am partly motivated by the sincere belief that there is much about the tawdry world of magic which needs putting to rights, but also by a sense that my name will not become known unless I spread it about in a way that makes it remembered.

Some letters I sign with my own name; others with the name I have chosen for my professional career: Danton. The use of two names allows me a little flexibility in what I say.

These are early days and few of my letters have so far been published. I imagine that as they start to appear my name will soon be on the lips of many people.

16th April 1877

My financial sentence of death has been pronounced, made official! Henry has informed me, through his solicitors, that my allowance is as expected to end on my twenty-first birthday. I have the continuing right to reside in Caldlow House, but only in the rooms already allocated to me.

I am glad in a way that he has at last said the words. Uncertainty no longer dogs me. I have until September next year. Seventeen months in which to break this vicious circle of failure to get work, leading to failure to become known, leading to failure to build an audience for my skills, leading to failure to find work.

I have continued to trail my coat around the theatrical agencies, and now, from tomorrow, I must do so with renewed resolve.

13th June 1877

Summer weather is here, but springtime has belatedly arrived for me! At last I have been offered some work!

It is not much, some card tricks to perform at a conference of Brummagem businessmen in a London hotel, and the fee is only half a guinea, but this is a red-letter day!

Ten shillings and sixpence! More than a week's rent for these lodgings! Riches indeed!

19th June 1877

One of the books I have studied is by a Hindoo magician called Gupta Hilel. In this he gives advice to the illusionist whose trick goes wrong. There are several resorts Hilel offers, and most of them are concerned with methods of distracting the audience. But he also offers the counsel of fatalism. A magic career is full of disappointment and failure, which must be expected and dealt with stoically.

So it is with stoicism that I record the launch of Danton's professional magical career. I merely report that the very first trick I attempted (a simple card shift) went wrong, immobilizing me with sheer terror and ruining the rest of my act.

I was paid off with a half-fee of five shillings and threepence, and the promoter advised me that I should practise more before trying again. Mr Hilel also advises this.

20th June 1877

Despairing, I have decided to abandon my magical career.

14th July 1877 I have been back to Derbyshire to see Mama, and have now returned in a darker mood of melancholy than the one that was blighting me before I left. Also there is news that my rent is to increase to ten shillings a week from next month.

I still have just over a year before I must be able to support myself.

10th October 1877

I am in love! Her name is Drusilla MacAvoy.

15th October 1877

Too hasty by far! The MacAvoy woman was not for me. I am planning to kill myself, and if the remainder of these pages are blank anyone who comes across this diary will know I succeeded.

22nd December 1877

Now at last I have found the real woman in my life! I have never been so happy. Her name is Julia Fensell, she is but two months younger than I, her hair is a glowing reddish brown and it cascades about her face. She has blue eyes, a long straight nose, a chin with a tiny dimple, a mouth that seems always about to smile, and ankles whose slender shape drives me wild with love and passion! She is easily the most beautiful young woman I have ever seen, and she says she loves me as much as I love her.

It is impossible to believe, impossible to credit my good fortune. She drives from my mind all worries, all fears, all anger and despair and ambitions. She fills my life entirely. I almost cannot bear to write of her, in case I again curse myself with ill-fortune!

31st December 1877

I still cannot write of Julia, or of my life in general, without trembling. The year is ending, and tonight, at 11.00 p.m., I am joining Julia so that we might be together as the new year begins.

Total Income for 1877: 5s 3d.

3rd January 1878

I have been seeing Julia every day since the middle of last month. She has become my dearest, closest friend. I must write of her as objectively as possible, for my knowing her has already set fair to change my fortune.

First let me record that since my abysmal performance at the Langham Street Hotel several months ago I have not secured any other bookings. My confidence was low, and for a day or two I could not summon even false optimism to get me round the agency offices. It was during one of these melancholy tours that I first met Julia. I had seen her before, as I saw everybody on that circuit, but her sheer beauty had made her forbidden to me. We finally spoke to each other while being made to wait together in the outer office of one of the agents in Great Portland Street. It was unheated, bare-boarded, drably painted, furnished with the hardest of wooden seats. Alone with her I could not pretend not to notice her so I plucked up my courage and spoke to her. She said she was an actress; I said I was an illusionist. From the few bookings I soon learned she had been getting recently, her description of herself was as theoretical as my own. We found our similar duplicity amusing and became friends.

Julia is the first person, apart from Grierson, to whom I have shown my tricks in private. Unlike Grierson, who always applauded anything I did, no matter how clumsy or ill performed, Julia was critical and appreciative in more or less equal measure. She encouraged me, but also she devastated and withered me if she found me failing. From anyone else I should have taken this poorly, but whenever her criticism was most merciless, words of love, or support, or constructive suggestion soon followed.

I began with simple sleight of hand involving coins, some of the first tricks I had learned. Card tricks followed, then handkerchief tricks, hat tricks, billiard ball tricks. Her interest spurred me on. I gradually worked my way through most of my repertoire, even the illusions I had not yet fully mastered.

Sometimes, in her turn, Julia would recite for me; lines from the great poets, the great playwrights, work that was always new to me. It amazed me that she could remember so much, but she said there were techniques that were easily learned. This was Julia — half artiste, half craftsman. Art and technique.

Soon Julia began talking to me about presentation, a subject close to my heart. Our affair began to deepen.

Over the Christmas holiday, while the rest of London celebrated, Julia and I were alone, chastely, in my rented lodgings, teaching each other the disciplines to which we each had become attached. She came to me in the mornings, stayed with me through the short hours of daylight, then soon after nightfall I would walk her back to her own lodgings in Kilburn. I spent the evenings and nights alone, thinking of her, of the excitement she was bringing me, of the matters of the stage to which she was introducing me.

Julia is gradually, inexorably, drawing out of me the true talent I think I have always possessed.

12th January 1878

"Why should we not, between us, devise a magical act of a kind no one before us has ever performed?"

This is what Julia said, the day after I wrote the entry above.

Such simple words! Such havoc on my life, one that had become settled into a cycle of despair and depression, because we are building a mentalist act! Julia has been teaching me her techniques of memory. I am learning the science of mnemonics, the use of memory aids.

Julia's memory has always seemed to me extraordinary. When I first knew her, and had been showing her some of my hard-learned card tricks, she challenged me to call out any two-digit numbers I cared to think of, in any order at all, and to write them down covertly. When I had filled a whole page of my notebook, she calmly recited the numbers to me, without pause or error… and while I was still marvelling, she recited them again, this time in reverse order!

I assumed it was magic, that she had somehow forced me into nominating numbers she had previously memorized, or that she somehow had access to the notes that I thought I was keeping privy. Neither of these was true, she assured me. It was no trick, and there was no subterfuge. In direct reversal of the methods of a magician, the secret of her performance was exactly as it seemed — she was memorizing the numbers!

Now she has revealed to me the secret of mnemonics. I am not yet as adept as her, but already I am capable of apparent feats of memory that once I should always have doubted.

26th January 1878

We are now ready! Imagine that I am seated on a stage, my eyes blindfolded. Volunteers from the audience have supervised the placing of the blindfold, and have satisfied themselves that I cannot see out. Julia moves amongst the audience, taking items of their personal property and holding them aloft for everyone, bar myself, to see.

"What do I hold?" she cries.

"It is a gentleman's wallet," I answer.

The audience gasps.

"Now I have taken—?" says Julia.

"It is a wedding ring made of gold."

"And it belongs to—?"

"A lady," I declare.

(Were she to say, "Which belongs to—? " I should reply, with equal conviction, "A gentleman.")

"Here I am holding?"

"A gentleman's watch."

And so it goes. A litany of pre-arranged questions and answers, but one which presented with sufficient aplomb to an audience unready for the spectacle, will clearly imply mentalist contact between the two performers.

The principle is easy, but the learning is hard. I am still new to mnemonics, and, as in all magic, practice has to make perfect.

While the practice goes on we are able to avoid thinking about the most difficult part — obtaining an engagement.

1st February 1878

Tomorrow night we begin! We have wasted two weeks trying to obtain a firm booking from a theatre or hall, but this afternoon, while we walked disconsolately on Hampstead Heath, Julia suggested we should take matters into our own hands.

Now it is midnight, and I have just returned from an evening of preliminary reconnoitre. Julia and I visited a total of six taverns within a reasonable walking distance, and selected the one which seemed the most likely. It is the Lamb and Child, in Kilburn High Road, on the corner with Mill Lane. The main bar is a large, well-lit room, with a small raised platform at one end (presently bearing a piano, which was not being played while we were there). The tables are set out with sufficient room for Julia to move between them while speaking to members of the audience. We did not make our intentions known to the landlord or his staff.

Julia has returned to her lodgings, and soon I will be abed. We rehearse all day tomorrow, then venture forth in the evening!

3rd February 1878

Between us Julia and I have counted Ј2 4s 9d, tossed to us in single coins by an appreciative crowd in the Lamb and Child. There was more, but I fear some of it was stolen, and some might have been lost when the landlord's patience with us expired and we were removed to the street.

But we did not fail! And we have learnt a dozen lessons about how to prepare, how to announce ourselves, how to claim attention, and even, we think, how to ingratiate ourselves with the landlord.

Tonight we are planning to visit the Mariner's Arms in Islington, a good distance from Kilburn, where we shall try again. Already we have made changes to our act, based on Saturday night's experience.

4th February 1878

Only 15s 9d between us, but again what we lack in financial reward we have gained in experience.

28th February 1878

As the month ends I can record that Julia and I have so far earned a total of Ј11 18s 3d from our mentalist act, that we are exhausted by our efforts, that we are elated by our success, that we have now made enough mistakes that we believe we know how to proceed in future, and that already (sure sign of success!) we have heard of a rival pair performing in the inns of south London.

Furthermore, on the 3rd of next month, I shall be performing a legitimate magical act at Hasker's Music Hall in Ponders End; Danton is to appear seventh on the bill after a singing trio. Julia and I have temporarily retired from our mentalist act so as to rehearse me for this great occasion. Already it seems a rather staid booking after the uncertain thrills of husking our act through the gin palaces of London, but it is a real job, in a real theatre, and it is what I have worked for over all these years.

4th March 1878

Received: Ј3 3s 0d from Mr Hasker, who has said he would like to book me again in April. My trick with the coloured streamers was especially popular.

12th July 1878

A departure. My wife (I have not written in this diary for some time, but Julia and I were wed on 11th May, and now live together contentedly at my lodgings in Idmiston Villas) is feeling that we should once again branch out. I agree. Our mentalist act, although impressive to those who have not seen it before, is repetitive and tiring to perform, and the behaviour of the audiences is unpredictable. I am blindfolded for much of the act so that Julia is, to a great extent, alone in an often drunken and rowdy crowd; once, while I sat on my chair in blindfolds, my pocket was picked.

We both feel it is time for a change, even though we have been earning money regularly. I cannot yet make a living from the stage, and in just over two months I will receive the last of my monthly allowances.

Theatrical bookings have in fact shown a recent improvement, and I have six of them between now and Christmas. In readiness, and while I am still relatively solvent, I have been investing in some large-scale illusions. My workshop (this I acquired last month) is stocked with magical devices, from which I may at fairly short notice put together a new and stimulating performance.

The real problem with theatrical bookings is that while they pay fairly well they provide no continuity. Each is at the end of a blind alley. I do my act, I take my applause, I collect my fee, but none of these ensures another booking. Even the reviews in the press are small and grudging. For instance, after a performance at the Clapham Empire, one of my best so far, the Evening Star remarked, "… and a conjuror named Dartford followed the soubrette ." With such pebbles of formal encouragement I am supposed to lay the path of my career!

The idea for a new departure came to me (or I should more properly say, it came to Julia) while I was glancing through a daily newspaper. I saw a report that more evidence had emerged recently that life, or a form of it, continued after death. Certain psychic adepts were able to make contact with newly deceased people, and communicate back from the afterworld to their bereaved relatives. I read out a part of the report to Julia. She stared at me for a moment, and I could see her mind was working.

"You don't believe that, do you?" she said at last.

"I take it seriously," I confirmed. "After all, there are an increasing number of people who have made contact. I treat evidence as it arises. You must not ignore what people say."

"Rupert, you cannot be serious!" she cried.

I continued oafishly, "But these sйances have been investigated by scientists with the highest academic qualifications."

"Am I to believe I am hearing you properly? You, whose very profession is deception!" At this I began to see the argument she was making, but still I could not forget the testimony from (for instance) Sir Angus Johns, whose endorsement of the existence of the spirit world I had just read in the newspaper. "You are always saying," my beloved Julia continued, "that the easiest people to deceive are those who are the best educated. Their intelligence blinds them to the simplicity of magic secrets!"

At last I had it.

"So you are saying these sйances are… ordinary illusions?"

"What else could they be?" she said triumphantly. "This is a new enterprise, my dear. We must be part of it."

And so, I think, our departure is to be into the world of spiritism. In recording this exchange with Julia, I appreciate that it must make me seem stupid, so slow was I to realize what she was saying, but it illustrates my perpetual shortcoming. I have always had difficulty understanding magic until the secret is pointed out to me.

15th July 1878

It has happened that two of the letters I wrote to magic journals at the end of last year have appeared this week. I am a little disconcerted to see them! A lot has changed in my life since then. I remember drafting one of the letters, for example, the day after I discovered the truth about Drusilla MacAvoy; as I read my words now I remember that dreary December day in my poorly heated lodgings, sitting at my desk and venting my feelings on some hapless magician who had been whimsically reported, in the journal, as wishing to set up some kind of bank in which magical secrets would be stored and protected. I realize now that it was one of those comments made half in jest, but there is my letter, in the full spate of tedious seriousness, castigating the poor fellow for it.

And the other letter, just as embarrassing now to behold, and one for which I cannot even recall mitigating circumstances in which I might have written it.

All this has reminded me of the state of emotional bitterness in which I had lived until I met dear Julia.

31st August 1878

We have attended a total of four sйances, and know what is involved. The trickery is generally of a low standard. Perhaps the recipients are in such a state of distress that they would be receptive to almost anything. Indeed, on one of these unfortunate occasions the effects were so patently unconvincing that self-willed credulousness could be the only explanation.

Julia and I have spent much time discussing how we might go about this, and we have decided that the best and only way is to think of our efforts as professional magic, performed to the highest standards. There are already too many charlatans doing the rounds in spiritism, and I have no wish to become one more of them.

This endeavour is for me a means to an end, a way of making and perhaps accumulating a little money until I can support myself in a theatrical career.

The illusions involved in a sйance are simple in nature, but already we have seen ways of elaborating them a little to make them seem more supernatural in effect. As we found with our mentalist act, we will learn by experience, and so we have already drafted and paid for our first advertisement in one of the London gazettes. We shall charge modestly at first, partly because we can afford to do so while we learn, and partly so as to ensure as many commissions as possible.

I am already in receipt of, and therefore spending, my last month's allowance. Three weeks from now I shall be entirely self-sufficient, whether I like it or not.

9th September 1878

Our advertisement has elicited fourteen enquiries! As we offered our services at two guineas a time, and the advertisement cost me 3s 6d, we are already making a profit!

As I write this, Julia is drafting letters of response, trying to arrange a schedule of steady appointments for us.

All this morning I have been practising a technique known as the Jacoby Rope Tie. This is a technique in which a magician is tied to a plain wooden chair with an ordinary rope, yet which still allows an escape. With a minimum of supervision from the illusionist's assistant (Julia, in my case), any number of volunteers may tie, knot and even seal the rope, yet still permit escape. The performer, once hidden inside a cabinet, can not only release himself enough to perform apparent miracles within the cabinet, but can afterwards return to his bonds, to be found, checked and released by the same volunteers who restrained him.

This morning I was twice unable to free one of my arms. Because nothing must be left to chance, I shall devote the rest of this afternoon and evening to further rehearsal.

20th September 1878

We have our two guineas, the client was literally sobbing with gratitude, and contact, I modestly say, was briefly made with the dead.

However, tomorrow, which also happens to be my twenty-first birthday, and the day in which my adult life commences in every way, we have to conduct a sйance in Deptford, and we have much to prepare!

Our first mistake yesterday was to be punctual. Our client and her friends were waiting for us, and as we entered the house and tried to set up our equipment they were watching us. None of this must be allowed to happen again.

We need physical assistance. Yesterday we rented a cart to convey us to the address, but the carter was totally unwilling to help us carry our apparatus into the house (which meant that Julia and I had to do it alone, and some of it is heavy and most of it bulky). When we left the client's house the damned carter had not waited for us as instructed, and I was obliged to stand with all our magical apparatus in the street outside the house we had just left, while Julia went to find a replacement.

And we must never again depend on being able to find in situ the domestic furniture we need for some of our effects. Today we were lucky; there was a table we could use, but we cannot chance that next time!

Many of these improvements have already been arranged. I have today purchased a horse and cart! (The horse will have to be kept temporarily in the small yard behind my workshop until a proper stable can be rented.) And I have hired a man to drive the cart and to help us in and out with all our stuff. Mr Appleby might not be suitable in the long term (I was hoping to find a man closer to my own age, who would be physically strong), but for the time being he is a great improvement over that whey-faced churl of a carter who let us down yesterday.

Our expenses are increasing. For a mentalist act we required only ourselves, two good memories and a blindfold; to become spiritists requires us to make outlays that threaten to overwhelm our potential earnings. Last night I lay awake a long time, thinking of this, wondering how much more expense will follow.

Now we must travel to Deptford for our next! Deptford is one of the more inaccessible parts of London from here, being not only beyond the East End hut on the far side of the river too. To get there in good time means we must leave at dawn. Julia and I have agreed that in future we shall only accept commissions from people who live within reasonable distance of us, otherwise the work is altogether too hard, the day is too long, the financial rewards too small for what we have to do.

2nd November 1878

Julia is with child! The baby is expected next June. With all the excitement this has caused we have cancelled a few of our appointments, and tomorrow we are departing to Southampton, so as to take the news to Julia's mother.

15th November 1878

Yesterday and the day before were given over to sйances; no problems at either, and the clients were satisfied. I am growing concerned, however, at the possible effects of strain on Julia, and I am thinking that I must quickly find and hire a female assistant to work with me.

Mr Appleby, as suspected, handed in his notice after a few days. I have replaced him with one Ernest Nugent, a strongly built man in his late twenties who until last year was a corporal volunteer in Her Majesty's Army. I find him a bit of a rough diamond but he is not stupid, he works all day without complaint, and already he has shown himself loyal. At the sйance two days ago (the first since our return from Southampton), I belatedly discovered that one of the people I thought was a relative of the deceased was in fact a reporter from a newspaper. This man was on some kind of mission to expose me as a charlatan, but once we had realized his purpose, Nugent and I removed him quickly (but politely) from the house.

So another precaution has to be added to this work — I must be on my guard against active sceptics.

For indeed I am the sort of charlatan they seek to discredit. I am not what I say I am, but my deceptions are harmless and, I do believe, helpful at a time of personal loss. As for the money that changes hands the amounts are modest, and so far not a single client has complained to me of short measure.

The rest of this month is filled with appointments, but there is a quiet patch before Christmas. Already we have learned that these occasions are often the result of a sudden tormented decision, not of a lengthy calculation. So we advertise, and will have to keep advertising.

20th November 1878

Today Julia and I have interviewed five young women, all hopeful to replace Julia as my assistant.

None was suitable.

Julia has been feeling continually sick for two weeks, but says now that this is starting to improve. The thought of a baby son or daughter coming into our lives illumines our days.

23rd November 1878

A peculiarly unpleasant incident has occurred, and I am so engulfed in rage that I have had to wait until now (11.25 p.m., when Julia is at last asleep) before I can trust myself to record it with any equanimity.

We had gone to an address near the Angel, in Islington. The client was a youngish man, recently bereaved by the death of his wife, and now having to cope with a family of three young children, one of them barely more than a babe. This gentleman, whose name I shall render as Mr L——, was the very first of our spiritist clients who had come to us on the recommendation of another. For this reason, we had approached the appointment with particular care and tact, because by now we appreciate that if we are to prosper as spiritists then it must be by a spiral of gradually rising fees, sustained by the grateful recommendation of satisfied clients.

We were just about to begin when a latecomer arrived. I was immediately suspicious of him, and I say this without hindsight. None of the family seemed to know him, and his arrival caused a feeling of nervousness in the room. I have already grown sensitive to such impressions at the start of one of these performances.

I signalled to Julia, in our private unspoken code, that I suspected a newspaper reporter was present, and I saw by her expression that she had come to a similar conclusion. Nugent was standing before one of the screened-off windows, not privy to the silent language Julia and I use with each other. I had to make a quick decision about what to do. If I were to insist on the man's removal before the sйance began, it would likely create an unpleasant ruckus of the sort of which I already have some experience; on the other hand, if I were to do nothing I would doubtless be exposed as a charlatan at the end of the performance, thus probably denying me of my fee and my client of the solace he sought.

I was still trying to decide what to do when I realized that I had seen the man before. He had been present at an earlier sйance, and I remembered him because at the time his staring at me throughout my work had been most disconcerting. Was his presence again a coincidence? If so, what were the chances of his being bereaved twice in a short period, and what extra chances were there that I should be called to officiate in a sйance twice in his company?

If not a coincidence, which I suspected, what was his game? Presumably he was there to make some move against me, but he had had his chance before and had not taken it. Why not?

So went my thoughts in the extremity of the moment. I could barely concentrate on them, such was the need to maintain the appearance of calm preparation for communion with the departed. But my quick assessment was that on balance of probabilities I should go ahead with the sйance, and so I did. Writing this now I acknowledge that I made the wrong decision.

For one thing, without raising a hand against me he almost ruined my performance. I was so nervous that I could hardly concentrate on the matter in hand, to the extent that when Julia and one of the other men present put me in the Jacoby Tie, I allowed one of my hands to be restrained more tightly than I wanted. Inside the cabinet, thankfully away from the baleful staring of my silent adversary's eyes I had a protracted struggle before I was able to free my hands.

Once the cabinet illusion was done with, my enemy sprang his trap. He left the table, shouldered poor Nugent aside, and snatched down one of the window blinds. A great deal of shouting ensued, causing intense and uncontrollable grief for my client and his children. Nugent was struggling with the man, and Julia was trying to comfort Mr L——'s children, when disaster struck.

The man, in his madness, grabbed hold of Julia by her shoulders, dragged her back, swung her around, and pushed her to the floor! She fell heavily on the uncarpeted boards, while I, in the greatest distress, stood up from the table where I had been performing and tried to reach her. The assailant was between us.

Again Nugent grabbed him, this time restraining from behind, clasping his arms at the back.

"What shall I do with him, sir?" Nugent cried valorously.

"Into the street with him!" I yelled. "No, wait!"

The light from the window was falling directly on his face. Behind him I saw the sight I then most wanted to see; dearest Julia was rising once more to her feet. She signalled quickly to me that she was not hurt, and so I turned my attention on the man.

"Who are you, sir?" I questioned him. "What interest is it you have in my affairs?"

"Get your ruffian to release me!" he muttered, breathing stertorously. "Then I will depart."

"You will depart when I decide!" I said. I stepped closer to him, for now I recognized him. "You are Borden, are you not? Borden!"

"That is not correct!"

"Alfred Borden, indeed! I have seen your work! What are you doing here?"

"Let me go!"

"What's your business with me, Borden?"

He made no answer, but instead struggled violently against Nugent's hold.

"Get rid of him!" I ordered. "Throw him where he belongs, into the gutter!"

Then it was done, and with commendable despatch Nugent dragged the wretch out of the room, and returned alone a few moments later.

By this time I had taken Julia into my arms and was holding her close, trying to reassure myself that she was indeed unharmed, even after being thrown so roughly to the floor.

"If he has hurt you or the baby—" I whispered to her.

"I am not injured," Julia replied. "Who was he?"

"Later, my dear," I said softly, because I was all too aware that we were still in the shambles of the ruined sйance, with an angry or humiliated client, his miserable children, his four adult relatives and friends now visibly shocked.

I said to them all with as much gravity and dignity as I could muster, "You understand I cannot continue?"

They showed their assent.

The children were led away, and Mr L—— and I went into private conference. He was indeed a sympathetic, intelligent man, proposing at once that we should leave all matters as they presently stood, and that we should meet again in a day or two to decide our next move. I assented gratefully, and after Nugent and I had transported our apparatus back to the cart we set off for home. While Nugent drove, Julia and I huddled together behind him in a state of distress and introspection.

I voiced my suspicions as we trundled along in the gathering twilight.

"That was Alfred Borden," I explained. "I know little of him other than that he is a magician, barely distinguished in the business. Since his interruption I have been trying to recall how I know him. I think I must have seen him perform on the stage. But he is hardly a major figure in our field. Perhaps he was deputing for another when I saw him."

I was speaking as much to myself as to Julia, trying to make the assailant comprehensible in a way I recognized. I could only explain his attack on me in terms of professional jealousy. What other motive could there be? We were virtual strangers to each other, and unless there was a substantial lapse in my memory our paths had never crossed before. Yet his whole demeanour was that of a man bent on a mission of revenge.

Julia was hunched beside me in the foggy evening air. I questioned her about her health many times, trying to reassure myself she had not been harmed by the fall, but she said only that she was anxious to return home.

Soon enough we were here in Idmiston Villas, and I made her go straight to bed. She looked exhausted and strained, but she continued to assert that all she required was rest. I sat with her until she fell asleep, and after a hastily prepared bowl of soup, and a quick and energetic walk through local side streets to try to clear my mind, I returned to write this account of the day.

I have twice broken off to see Julia, and she is sleeping peacefully.

24th November 1878

The worst day of my life.

27th November 1878

Julia is home from hospital. once more she is sleeping, and once again I come to this diary, such barely adequate source of temporary distraction and comfort as it is.

Briefly, Julia wakened in the small hours of the 24th. She was bleeding heavily and racked with pain. This seemed to course through her like a series of waves, making her scream and contort in agony before giving her temporary surcease, then beginning again.

I dressed at once, roused my neighbours, and begged Mrs Janson to leave her own bed and sit with Julia while I sought help. She agreed without complaint, allowing me to rush off into the night. Luck, if that is the word, was briefly with me. I came across a hackney cabman, apparently returning to his home at the end of a night of work, and I pleaded with him to help me. This he did. Within an hour Julia was in St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, and the surgeons did their necessary work.

Our baby was lost; I almost lost Julia too.

She remained in the public ward for the rest of the day, and for the two days following until this morning, when I was allowed at last to collect her.

There is a single name that has now unexpectedly entered my life, and it is one I shall never forget. It is Alfred Borden’s.

3rd December 1878

Julia is still weak, but she says she hopes to be able to help me with my sйances from next week. I have not yet told her, but I have already decided that never again shall she be put at risk. I have advertised once more for a female assistant. Meanwhile, this evening I have a stage performance to carry out, and have had to search through my repertoire to put together an act that does not require assistance.

11th December 1878

I came across Borden's name today. He is advertised as a guest magician in a variety show in Brentford. I checked with Hesketh Unwin, the man whom I have recently appointed as my agent, and learned to my satisfaction that Borden was a replacement for another illusionist who had been suddenly taken ill, and in the process caused the magical act to be moved from second on the bill to the graveyard of all magicians: the first act after the interval! I showed this to Julia.

31st December 1878

Total Income From Magic for 1878: Ј326 19s 3d. From this must be deducted expenses, including the hiring of Appleby and Nugent, the purchase and stabling of the horse, purchase of costumes, and much apparatus.

12th January 1879

My first sйance of the new year, and the first in which I was assisted by Letitia Swinton. Letitia was formerly in the chorus at the Alexandria and has much to learn about the magic profession, but I am hopeful she will improve. At the end of the sйance I asked Nugent to hurry me back to Idmiston Villas, where I have been with Julia, telling her of my day.

A letter was waiting for me here. Mr L—— has decided, in the event, that he no longer requires a sйance in his home, but that in careful consideration of what happened he has decided I should be paid the full fee, as agreed. His payment was enclosed.

13th January 1879

Today Julia locked herself in the bedroom, ignored all my knocking and pleading and admitted only the maid, who took her tea and some bread. I was not working today, and had been planning to be at the workshop, but in view of Julia's strange mood felt I should remain at home. Julia emerged after 8.00 p.m., and said nothing of what she had done or why she had done it. I am perplexed by all this. She says she is no longer in pain, but other than this refuses to discuss what happened.

15th January 1879

Nugent, Letitia Swinton and I conducted a sйance this afternoon. Already it has become a routine event for me, the only novelties being, firstly, the unavoidable need to work with an assistant new to magic, secondly, the particular circumstances of whatever bereavement I am attending, and, thirdly, the physical layout of the room in which the sйance takes place. These last two do not in general present problems to me, and even Letitia is showing herself to be a quick learner.

Returning afterwards I asked Nugent to let me off in the West End. I walked to the Empress Theatre in High Holborn, bought a ticket, and sat in the deep recesses of the rear stalls.

Borden's act was in the first half of the programme, and I watched intently what he did. He performed seven tricks of varying type, and, of these, three were ones whose explanation I do not know. (By tomorrow evening I shall have them!) He is a fairly plausible performer, and carried out his tricks smoothly, but for some reason he addresses the audience in an unconvincing French accent. It made me wish to taunt him as an impostor!

However, I must bide my time. I wish my revenge to be sweet.

On my return Julia was uncommunicative with me, and even after I told her what I had been doing she remained cold towards me.

O Julia! You were not like this before that day!

19th January 1879

We both mourn the loss of the child we never knew. Julia's grief is so deep, so inner-directed, that she sometimes seems unaware that I am even in the same room with her. I am just as miserable, but I have my work to distract me. This is the only difference between us.

For the last week I have been applying myself to perfecting my magic, trying by intensive application to relaunch myself into my intended profession. To this end:

I have tidied up my workshop, thrown away a lot of junk, repaired and repainted several of the illusions, and generally made the workshop into a businesslike place where I might prepare and rehearse properly.

I have started discreet enquiries through Hesketh Unwin's office, and through other magic contacts, for an ingйnieur to work with me. I need expert assistance; of this there is no question.

I have set myself a practice schedule, to which I adhere absolutely: two hours every morning, two hours every afternoon, one hour (if time with Julia permits) in every evening. The only breaks I allow myself are when I am actually working.

I have ordered myself and Letitia new costumes, to give the act professional polish.

Finally, I have promised myself to quit the sйances as soon as I can afford to do so. Meanwhile, I am taking on as many of them for which the time can be found, because they are my only secure means of making a living. My financial responsibilities are immense. I have the lodgings to pay for, rent to find of the workshop and stable, wages to pay for Nugent and Letitia, and soon for my new ingйnieur too… as well as running the household and feeding Julia and myself.

All this to be paid for by the credulous bereaved!

(Tonight, though, another theatrical performance.)

31st December 1879

Total Income from Magic for 1879: Ј637 12s 6d. Before expenses.

31st December 1880

Total Income from Magic for 1880: Ј1,142 7s 9d. Before expenses.

31st December 1881

Total Income from Magic for 1881: Ј4,777 10s 0d.

Before expenses. 1881 is the last year in which I shall record my earnings here. This twelvemonth has been sufficiently successful for me to purchase the house in which, hitherto, we have merely rented our lodgings. Now we occupy the whole building, and we have a domestic staff of three. The restlessness that beset me when I was younger is directed fruitfully into the energy of performance, and I may record that I am probably the most sought-after stage illusionist in Britain. My bookings diary for next year is already full.

2nd February 1891

Ten years ago I put aside my diary, intending never to reopen it, but the humiliating events earlier this evening at the Sefton Theatre of Varieties in Liverpool (whence I am returning to London en train as I write this) cannot go unrecorded. As it has been so long since I wrote in my diary these loose sheets will tonight have to suffice while I am without my notebook and file system.

I was in the second part of my act, heading towards what is currently the climax of my performance. This is the Underwater Escape, an effect which combines physical strength, a certain amount of controlled risk, and a little magic.

The illusion begins with my being tied, apparently inescapably, to a stout metal chair. To effect this I invite on to the stage a committee of six volunteers; these are all genuine members of the audience, none planted, but Ernest Nugent and my ingйnieur Harry Cutter do keep an eye on things.

With the committee on stage I engage them in humorous banter, partly to relax them, partly to misdirect the audience while Ellen Tremayne (my present assistant; it is a long time since I wrote in here) begins the Jacoby Rope Tie.

Tonight, though, I had just taken my seat in the chair when I realized that Alfred Borden was one of the committee! He was the Sixth Man! (Harry Cutter and I use codes to identify and place the on-stage volunteers. The Sixth Man is positioned furthest from me during these preparatory stages, and is given the task of holding one end of the rope.) Tonight Borden was the Sixth Man, only a few feet away from me! The audience was watching us all! The trick had already begun!

Borden played his part well, moving clumsily and with well-faked embarrassment about his small part of the stage. No one in the audience would have guessed that he is almost as practised a performer as me. Cutter, apparently not realizing who he was, propelled Borden into his place. Ellen Tremayne was meanwhile roping my hands together, and tying my wrists to the arms of the chair. It is here that my preparations went awry, because my attention was on Borden. By the time two other volunteers had been given the ends of the rope and instructed to tie me as tightly as possible to the chair, it was too late. In the full glare of the limes I was trussed helplessly.

Amid a roll of drums I was hoisted by the pulley into the air space above the glass tank, and I dangled and rotated on the end of the chain as if a helpless victim of torture. In truth tonight I was, but during a normal performance I would by this stage have freed my wrists, and moved my hands to a position from which I could release them instantly. (My rotating on the chain is an effective cover for the necessarily quick arm movements as I release myself.) Tonight, with my arms tied immovably to the chair, I could only stare down in horror at the cold, waiting water.

Moments later, according to plan, I was plunged into it in a gouting spray of overflow. As the water closed over my head I tried by facial expressions to signal my predicament to Cutter, but he was already engaged in lowering the concealing curtain around the tank.

In semi-darkness, half inverted in the chair, tied hand and foot, and entirely submerged in cold water, I began to drown—

My only hope was that the water would cause the rope to loosen a little (part of my secret preparations, in case the volunteers have tied the secondary knots too tightly for a timely escape), even though I knew that the little extra movement this would allow would not be enough to save me tonight.

I tugged urgently at the ropes, already feeling the pressure of air in my lungs, desperate to burst out of me and allow the deadly water to flood in and take me—

Yet here I am writing this. Obviously I escaped.

I would not be alive to write were it not, by an irony, for Borden's own intervention. He overplayed his hand, could not resist gloating at me.

Here is a reconstruction of what must have happened on the remainder of the stage, hidden from me by the curtain.

In a normal performance, all that can be seen on the stage is the committee of six standing self-consciously around the curtain that encloses the tank. They no more than the audience can see what I am doing. The orchestra plays a lively medley, partly to fill the time partly to mask any noises I cannot suppress while making my escape. But time goes by, and soon both the committee and the audience start to feel disquiet at how much time has elapsed.

The orchestra too becomes distracted, and the music peters out. An anti-climactic silence falls. Harry Cutter and Ellen Tremayne run anxiously on to the stage, as if in response to the emergency, and the audience makes a hubbub of concern. With the help of the committee Cutter and Ellen snatch away the concealing curtain, to reveal—

—The chair is still in the water! The ropes are still tied around it! But I am not there!

While the audience gasps in amazement I dramatically appear. It is usually from the wings, but if I have time I prefer to announce myself in the middle of the auditorium. I run to centre-stage, take my bow, and make sure that everyone notices that my clothes and hair are perfectly dry—

Tonight Borden was there to ruin it all, and, inadvertently perhaps, to save me from a watery end. Long before the illusion was due to finish, thankfully long before, and while the orchestra yet played, he left the position on the stage where Cutter had placed him, strode across to the curtains and snatched them aside!

My first awareness of this was that a shaft of bright light burst upon me. I looked up in vast and sudden hope, as the last air from my lungs bubbled up around my eyes! I felt then my prayers had been answered, that Cutter had interrupted the performance to save my life. Nothing else mattered in that second of bursting hope. What I saw, through the horrid distortions of swirling water and strengthened glass, was the jeering visage of my deadliest enemy! He leaned forward, pressing his face triumphantly against the tank.

I felt unconsciousness rising in me, believed myself to be on the point of death.

Then there is a gap. My next awareness was that I was lying on a hard wooden floor, in semi-darkness, freezing cold, with faces staring down at me. Music was playing close at hand, deafening me as the water drained in gulps from my ear passages. I could feel the floor moving up and down rhythmically. I was in the wings, on the floor of one of the rope alcoves next to the stage. When I raised my head I saw, unfocused and wandering in my sight, the brightly lit stage just a few feet away from me, where the chorus was treading the boards, while the coryphйe strutted to the bawdy tune from the orchestra pit. I groaned with relief, closed my eyes, and allowed my head to fall back to the floor. Cutter had dragged me to safety, somehow restored my breathing, brought the humiliating spectacle to an end.

Not long after I was carried to the green room, where my recovery properly began. For half an hour I felt as wretched as ever I have felt in my life, but I am in general strong and as soon as I was able to breathe without choking on the water in my lungs I began to recover quickly. It was still reasonably early in the evening, and I believed fervently (and still believe, as I write) that I had plenty of time to return to the stage and attempt my illusion again, before the show ended. I was not allowed to do this.

Instead, in a sad postmortem of the ruined performances I convened with Ellen, Cutter and Nugent in my dressing room. We arranged to meet in two days’ time at my workshop in London to improve the method of the escape, so that never again would my life be put in peril. At last my three stalwarts conducted me to the station, satisfied themselves of my mental and physical wellbeing, then returned to the hotel where we had all been planning to stay.

For myself, I seek only a swift return to London to see Julia and the children, as the incident, the brush with what felt like certain death, has made me hungry to be with them. This train will not arrive in Euston Station until just before dawn, but it makes it possible to see them sooner than would otherwise be possible.

By an irony, my failure to keep this diary has been caused by the domestic contentment to which I now hurry to return, and of which I could have written volumes or (as happened) nothing. For most of the past decade I have been not only successful in my career but unprecedentedly happy at home.

At the beginning of 1884, Julia at long last found herself with child again, and in due course safely delivered our son Edward. Two years later came the first of my daughters, Lydia, and last year, belatedly but to our delight, our baby Florence was born.

Against this background, the feud with Borden has taken on trivial proportions. True, we have played pranks on each other over the years. True, the spirit behind them has often been malicious. True, I have shown as much malice as he, and of this I am not in the least proud. It is no coincidence that none of these exploits made reopening the diary seem worthwhile.

Until tonight, though, Borden and I have not directly threatened each other's lives.

Once, years ago, Borden was directly responsible for the miscarriage of my first child. Although my instinct then was one of revenge, as the months went by my anger slowly died, and I satisfied myself instead with a number of retaliations on him designed only to embarrass him or to confound his illusion-making at just the moment he least enjoyed it.

In his turn, he has exacted a few moments of unexpected revenge on me, though none, I declare, as cleverly designed as my own have been on him.

What happened tonight has forced our feud to a new level. He tried to kill me; it is as plain as that. He is a magician; he knows how ropes must be tied to ensure a rapid and safe release.

Now I want revenge again. I hope and pray that time will quickly pass, soothe my feelings, bring sense and sanity and calmness to me, that I do not act as tonight I feel!

4th February 1892

Last night I saw an extraordinary thing. There is a scientist called Nikola Tesla visiting London, and the extravagant claims he makes were last week the talk of the town. Veritable miracles were being spoken of and several informed newspapers reported that in Tesla's hands lay the future of our world. The interviews he gave, and the articles that were written about his work, did not manage to explain why it should be so. It was widely said that his work must be seen demonstrated before its importance might be grasped.

So, swept along by curiosity, yesterday I and several hundred others clamoured at the doors of the Institution of Electrical Engineers to see the great man in action.

What I witnessed was a thrilling, alarming and mostly incomprehensible display of the powers of electricity. Mr Tesla (who spoke excellent American English, almost without hint of his European roots) is an associate of the inventor Thomas Edison. To modern-minded Londoners the use of electrical power for lighting is becoming a commonplace, but Tesla was able to show that it has many other uses.

I watched his sensational experiments uncritically, dazzled and impressed. Many of his effects are astonishing, and many more are deeply mysterious to a layman such as myself. When Tesla spoke, it was in the tones of an evangelist. More than his sparking, fizzing outbursts of lightning, his visionary words thrilled me beyond anything I had hitherto known. He is indeed a prophet of what the next century will hold for us. A worldwide net of electrical generating stations, power given over to the humble as well as the mighty, instantaneous transmission of energies and matter from one part of the world to the other, the air itself vibrating with the essence of the aether!

I grasped an important truth from Mr Tesla's presentation. His show (for it was nothing less than this) bore an odd resemblance to any good illusionist’s; the audience did not need to understand the means to enjoy the effects. In short, Mr Tesla described many scientific theories. While few in that audience understood more than the most basic concepts, every one of us was afforded a compelling glimpse into the future.

I have written off to the address Tesla supplied, and requested copies of his explanatory notes.

14th April 1892

I have been busy preparing for my European Tour, which starts in the latter half of this summer, and have had little time for anything else. To complete the above entry from February, though, I eventually received Mr Tesla's explanatory notes, but could not make head nor tail of them.

15th September 1892

In Paris

They have hailed me in Vienna, Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Marseilles, Madrid, Monte Carlo… yet now that all this is behind me I crave only to see my beloved Julia once more, and Edward and Lydia, and of course my little Florence. Since we spent our weekend together here in Paris two months ago, I have had only letters to buoy me up with news of my precious family. Two days from now, should the sailing be on time, and the trains reliable, I shall be at home and able to rest at last.

We are all exhausted, though mainly through the endless round of travelling and staying in hotels, than because of the exigencies of life on the European stage. But it has overall been a famous success. We planned to be home by the middle of July, but such was our popular reception that a dozen theatres clamoured for us to make an additional visit, and to bless them with our magic. This we were only too glad to do when we realized the scale of the interest, and concomitantly the fees we could command for these extra performances. It would be unwise to record the extent of my earnings until all expenses have been calculated, and the agreed bonuses paid to my assistants, but I may safely say that for the first time in my life I feel I am a wealthy man.

21st September 1892

In London

I had expected to be basking in the afterglow of the tour, but instead I find that while I have been away Borden has been gaining lavish attention. It seems that one of the illusions he has been performing for years has finally caught the public's fancy, and he is in terrific demand.

Although I have watched his act several times, I have never seen him attempt anything unusual. This could of course be that for various reasons I have rarely stayed to the end of his act!

Cutter knows as little about this applauded trick as I do, for the obvious reason that he has been in Europe with me. I was about to shrug it off as an irrelevance until I read through some of the correspondence that was waiting for me here. Dominic Brawton, one of my magic scouts, had sent a terse note.

Performer : Alfred Borden (Le Professeur de la Magie). Illusion : The New Transported Man. Effect : brilliant, not to be missed. Adaptability : difficult, but as Borden manages it somehow, so I imagine could you.

I showed this to Julia.

Later I showed her another letter. I have been invited to take my magic show to the New World! If I agree we would begin touring in February with a week-long residency in Chicago! And then a tour to the dozen or so largest American cities!

The thought of it simultaneously thrills and exhausts me.

Julia said to me, "Forget Borden. You must take your show to the USA."

And I too think I must.

14th October 1892

I have seen Borden's new illusion, and it is good. It is devilishly good. It is the better for being simple. It galls me to say it, but I must be fair.

He begins by wheeling on to the stage a wooden cabinet, of the sort familiar to all magicians. This is tall enough to contain a man or a woman, has three solid walls (back and two sides), and a door at the front that opens wide enough to reveal the whole of the interior. It is mounted on castors, and these raise the entire thing high enough to show that no escape or entry would be possible through the base, without being noticed by the audience.

With the usual demonstrations of present vacancy completed, Borden closes the cabinet door, then moves the apparatus up to stage left.

Standing at the footlights he then delivers, in his wonderfully unconvincing French accent, a short lecture on the great dangers involved in what he is about to do.

Behind him, a remarkably pretty young woman wheels on to the stage a second cabinet, identical to the first. She opens the door, so that the audience can see that it too is empty. With a swirl of his black cape, Borden then turns and steps briskly into the cabinet.

On cue, the drummer starts a roll.

What happens next takes place in an instant. Indeed, it takes longer to write down than it does to see it performed.

As the drum rolls louder, Borden removes his top hat, steps back into the recesses of his cabinet, then tosses his hat high into the air. His assistant slams closed the door of the cabinet. In the same instant , the door of the first cabin we saw bursts open, and Borden is now impossibly there! The cabinet he entered only moments before collapses, and folds emptily on to the floor of the stage. Borden looks up to the rigging loft, sees his top hat plummeting towards him, catches it, puts it on his head, taps it down into place, then beaming and smiling steps forward to the footlights to take his bow!

The applause was raucous, and I admit I joined it myself.

I am damned if I know how he did that!

16th October 1892

Last night I took Cutter to the Watford Regal, where Borden was performing. The illusion with the two cabinets was not part of his act.

During the long journey back to London, I described to Cutter again what I had seen. His verdict was the same as when I first told him about it, two days ago. Borden, he says, is using a double. He tells me about a similar act be saw performed twenty years ago, involving a voting woman.

I'm not sure. It didn't look like a double to me. The man who went into one cabinet and the man who emerged from the other was one and the same. I was there, and that is what I saw.

25th October 1892

Because of my own commitments it has been impossible to see Borden's act every night, but Cutter and I have been to his performances twice this week. He has still not repeated the illusion with the two cabinets. Cutter refuses to speculate until he has seen it himself, but declares I am wasting his time and my own. It is becoming a source of friction between us.

13th November 1892

At last I have seen Borden perform his two-cabinets illusion again, and this time Cutter was with me. It happened at the Lewisham World Theatre, on an otherwise straightforward variety bill.

As Borden produced the first of his two cabinets, and went through his routine of revealing it to be empty, I felt a thrill of anticipation. Cutter, beside me, raised his opera glasses in a businesslike way. (I glanced at him to try to see where he was looking, and was interested to note that he was not watching the magician at all. With quick movements of the glasses he appeared to be inspecting the rest of the stage area; the wings, the flies, the backcloth. I cursed myself for not thinking of this, and left him to get on with it.)

I continued to watch Borden. As far as I could tell the trick was conducted exactly as I had observed it before, even to an almost word-for-word repetition of the French-accented speech about danger. When he went into the second cabinet, though, I noticed a couple of tiny deviations from the earlier occasion. The more trivial of these was that he had left the first cabinet closer to the rear of the stage, so that it was not at all well lit. (I again glanced quickly at Cutter, and found that he was paying no attention to the magician, but had his glasses turned steadfastly on the upstage cabinet.)

The other deviation interested me, and in fact rather amused me. When Borden removed his top hat and flung it into the air, I was leaning forward, ready to see the next and most amazing step. Instead, the hat rose quickly into the flies, and did not reappear! (Clearly, there was a stagehand up there, slipped a ten-bob note to catch it.) Borden turned to the audience with a wry smile, and got his laugh. While the laughter was still ringing out, he extended his left hand calmly… and the top hat skittered down from the flies, for him to catch with a natural and unforced movement. It was excellent stagecraft, and he deserved the second laugh for that.

Then, without waiting for the laughter to die, and with dashing speed:

Up went the hat again! The cabinet door was slammed! The upstage cabinet door burst open! Borden leapt out, hatless! The second cabinet collapsed! Borden skipped nimbly across the stage, caught the top hat, rammed it down on his head!

Beaming, bowing, waving, he took his well-deserved applause. Cutter and I joined in.

In the taxicab rattling back to north London I demanded of Cutter, "Well, what do you think of that!"

"Brilliant, Mr Angier!" he stated. "Quite brilliant! It is not often that one has the chance to see a completely new illusion."

I found this acclaim none too pleasing, I must say.

"Do you know how he did it?" I insisted.

"Yes, sir, I do," he replied. "And so I fancy do you."

"I'm as baffled as ever I was. How the devil could he be in two places at once? I cannot see that it is possible!"

"Sometimes you do surprise me, Mr Angier," Cutter said trenchantly. "It is a logical puzzle, solved only by the application of our own logic. What did we see before us?"

"A man who transported himself instantly from one part of the stage to the other."

"That is what we thought we saw, what we were intended to see. What was the reality?"

"You still maintain he uses a double?" I queried him.

"How else could it be effected?"

"But you saw it as I did. That was no double! We saw him clearly before and after. He was the same man! The very same!"

Cutter winked at me, then turned away and gazed out at the dimly lit houses of Waterloo past which we were presently driving.

"Well?" I clamoured of him. "What do you say?"

"I say what I have said, Mr Angier."

"I pay you to explain the unexplainable, Cutter. Do not trifle with me about this! It is a matter of high professional importance!"

At this he realized the seriousness of my mood, and not a moment before time, because the piqued admiration induced in me by Borden's performance was being transmuted to frustration and anger.

"Sir," he said steadily. "You must know of identical twins. There is your answer!"

"No!" I exclaimed.

"How else might it be done?"

"But the first cabinet was empty—"

"So it did appear," said Cutter.

"And the second cabinet collapsed the moment he left it—"

"Very effectively too, I thought."

I knew what he was saying; these were standard stage effects for making apparatus that is concealing someone seem empty. Several of my own illusions turn on similar deceptions. My difficulty was the same I have always suffered; when I see another's illusion from the auditorium, I am as easily misdirected as anyone else. But identical twins! I had not thought of that!

Cutter had given me much food for thought, and after I had dropped him off at his lodgings, and I had returned here, I did some thinking. Now I have written down this account of the evening, I think I have to agree with him. The mystery is solved.

Damn Borden! Not one man but two! Damn his eyes!

14th November 1892

I have told Julia what Cutter suggested last night, and to my surprise she laughed delightedly.

"Brilliant!" she cried. "We hadn't thought of that, had we?"

"Then you too think it's possible”

"It is not merely possible, my dear… it is the only way that what you have seen could be performed on an open stage."

"I suppose you are right."

Now, irrationally, I feel angry at my Julia. She has not seen the illusion being performed.

30th November 1892

Yesterday I obtained an extremely interesting view on Borden, and, into the bargain, some remarkable facts about him.

I should mention that all this week I have been unable to add to this diary because I have been appearing top of the bill at the London Hippodrome. This is an immense honour, one that has been signified not only by full houses at every performance (bar one matinйe), but also by the audiences’ reactions. One other consequence is that the gentlemen of the Press are paying me some attention, and yesterday a young reporter from the Evening Star came to interview me. His name was Mr Arthur Koenig and he turned out to be an informant as well as an interviewer!

During the course of a question-and-answer session he asked me if I had any opinions I would wish to record about my magical contemporaries. I duly launched into an appreciative summary of the best of my colleagues.

"You have not mentioned Le Professeur," said my interlocuter, when I eventually paused. "Do you not hold an opinion on his work?"

"I regret I have not been present at any of his performances," I demurred.

"Then you must go to see his work!" ejaculated Mr Koenig. "His is the best show in London!"

"Indeed."

"I have seen his act several times," the reporter went on. "There is one trick he does, not every night for he says it exhausts him too much, but there is this one trick—"

"I have heard of it," I said, affecting disdain. "Something to do with two cabinets."

"That's the one, Mr Danton! He vanishes and reappears in a trice! No one knows how he does it."

"No one, that is, except his fellow magicians," I corrected him. "He is using standard magical procedures."

"Then you know how it is done?"

"Of course I know," I said. "But naturally you will not expect me to divulge the exact method—"

Here I confess I was torn. Over the last two weeks I have been thinking hard about Cutter's twins theory, and I had convinced myself that he is right. Here was my chance to reveal the secret. I had an eager listener, a journalist with access to one of the great newspapers of our city, a man whose curiosity was already provoked by the mystery of magic performance. I felt the lust for revenge that I normally suppressed, that I had told myself a score of times was a weakness to which I must never again succumb. Naturally, Koenig knew nothing of the bitterness between Borden and myself.

Sense did prevail once more. No magician gives away the secret of another.

At length I said, "There are ways and means. An illusion is not what it seems. A great deal of practice and rehearsal—"

Whereat the youthful reporter practically leapt out of his seat.

"Sir, you believe he uses a twin double! Every magician in London thinks the same! I thought so too when I saw it the first time."

"Yes, that is his method." I was relieved to discover how straightforward he was being.

"Then, sir!" cried the young man. "You are wrong like all the others, sir! There is no double. This is what is so amazing!"

"He has a twin brother," I said. "There is no other way."

"It is not true. Alfred Borden has neither twin brother nor a double who can pass for him. I have personally investigated his life, and I know the truth. He works alone but for the female assistant seen on the stage with him, and a technical manager who builds his apparatus with him. In this he is no different from any other in your profession. You too—"

"I do have an ingйnieur ," I confirmed readily. "But tell me more. You interest me greatly. You are certain of this information?"

"I am."

"Can you prove it to me?"

"As you know, sir," Mr Koenig replied, "it is not possible to prove that which does not exist. All I can say is that for the last few weeks I have been bringing journalistic methods to the investigation, and have not found a single jot of evidence to confirm what you assume."

At this point he produced a thin sheaf of papers and showed them to me. They contained certain information about Mr Borden that I found instantly intriguing, and I begged the reporter to let me have them.

There followed something of a wrangle between our two professions. He maintained that as a journalist he could not impart the fruit of his researches to a third party. I countered that even if he were to discover the final, absolute truth about Borden, he would never be able to publish it while the subject remained alive.

On the other hand, I said, if I were to start my own investigations, then I might be able at some future time to guide him to a truly uncommon story.

The upshot of it was that Koenig agreed to let me take handwritten extracts from several of his notes, and these I scribbled down on the spot at his dictation. His conclusions were not conveyed to me, and to be candid I was not greatly interested in them. At the end I passed him five sovereigns.

As I finished, Mr Koenig said to me, "May I ask what you are hoping to learn from this, sir?"

"I seek only to improve my own magical art," I affirmed.

"I understand." He stood up to leave, and took hold of his hat and stick. "And when you have so improved , do you suppose you too will be able to perform Le Professeur's illusion?"

"I assure you, Mr Koenig," I said with cold disdain, as I showed him to the door. "I assure you that should the occasion arise I could take his bauble of a trick and make it mine this very night!"

Then he was gone.

Today I have not been working, and so I have written up this account of the meeting. All through it that final taunt of Koenig's has been in my thoughts. It is imperative that I learn the secret of Borden's illusion. I can think of no sweeter revenge than to outshine him with his own trick, outperform him, outdo him in every way.

And, courtesy of Mr Koenig, the facts I possess about Mr Borden will prove to be of immense value. First, though, I must check them.

9th December 1892

I have in fact so far done nothing about Borden. The American tour has been confirmed as definite, and Cutter and I are in the thick of preparations. I am to be travelling for more than two whole months, and to be separated from Julia and the children for such a length of time is almost unthinkable.

However, I cannot miss the tour. Setting aside the matter of the generous fees, I am probably the youngest magician from Britain or Europe to have been invited to follow in the steps of some of magic's greatest performers. The New World is the source and location of some of the finest magicians currently in performance, and it is a magnificent compliment to be invited to undertake this tour.

And Borden has not so far visited the USA!

10th December 1892

I had been looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home. No magic, no rehearsals, no travelling. I wanted to submerge myself in my family, and set everything else aside. But following a cancellation I have been offered a lucrative and irresistible two-week residency in Eastbourne, and it is such that I might take my entire household with me. My family shall spend Christmas at the Grand Hotel, overlooking the sea!

11th December 1892

A propitious discovery. Looking at a gazetteer this afternoon I could not help but notice that Eastbourne is just a few miles away from Hastings, and that the two towns are linked by a direct railway line. I think I shall spend a day or two in Hastings. I hear it is a pleasant place to visit.

17th January 1893

All of a sudden my life is overshadowed by the immensity of the journey before me. In two days’ time I leave for Southampton, and embark for New York City, thence to Boston and beyond, into the American heartland. The last week has been a nightmare of packing and preparations, and arranging for the apparatus I need with me to be dismantled, crated, then despatched ahead of me. Nothing can be left to chance, for without my equipment I have no stage show. A lot depends on this transatlantic adventure!

But now I have a day or two of leisure in which to prepare myself mentally and relax at home for a while. Today I have visited London Zoo with Julia and the children, already feeling a sense of loss because I know I shall be away from them for so long. The children are asleep, Julia is reading in her sitting room, and in the calm of this dark January evening, quietly in my study, I may at last record, thanks to the industrious Mr Koenig, the fruits of my enquiries about Mr Alfred Borden.

The following are facts I have personally verified.

He was born on 8th May 1856, in the Royal Sussex Infirmary in Bohemia Road, Hastings. Three days after his birth he and his mother, Betsy Mary Borden, returned to their house at 105 Manor Road, where the father worked as a carpenter. The child's full name was Frederick Andrew Borden, and according to the almoner's records his was a single birth. Frederick Andrew Borden was not one of two identical twins at birth, so therefore neither can he be one today.

Next I looked into the possibility of Frederick Borden having brothers of a close age to him, and bearing a strong family resemblance. Frederick was the sixth-born child. He had three older sisters and two older brothers, but of these one brother was eight years his senior, and the other had died at the age of two weeks.

Using the files of the Hastings & Bexhill Announcer , I obtained a description of Frederick's older brother Julius (who according to the newspaper had won a prize at school). At the age of fifteen Julius was said to have straight blond hair. Frederick Borden is dark-haired, but there was a possibility that Julius was the stage double, having coloured his hair. This line of enquiry came to nothing, when I later discovered that Julius had died of consumption in 1870, when Frederick was fourteen.

There was a younger brother too. This was Albert Joseph Borden, seventh-born into the family, on 18th May 1858. (Albert + Frederick = Alfred? Is this how Frederick chose his first nom de thйвtre ?)

Again, the existence of a brother whose age was reasonably close to Frederick's raised the possibility of a double. I dug out and examined Albert's birth records at the hospital, but I found it difficult to ascertain much more about him. However, the enterprising Mr Koenig had suggested a visit to a photogenic portrait artiste called Charles Simpkins, who has his studio in Hastings High Street.

Mr Simpkins greeted me cordially and was pleased to show me a selection of his daguerreotypes. Amongst these, as Mr Koenig had hinted to me, was a studio portrait of Frederick Borden and his younger brother. It had been taken in 1874, when Frederick was eighteen and his brother was sixteen.

The two are clearly unalike in appearance. Frederick is tall, he has the sort of features often referred to as "noble", and his bearing is arrogant (all of these I have frequently observed for myself), while Albert is much less prepossessing. He has a slack-jawed expression; his features are puffy, and his cheeks are round; his hair is wavier than his brother's and apparently paler in colour; and from his stance I would say he was at least four or five inches shorter than his brother.

This portrait convinced me that Koenig was right: Frederick Borden does not have a close relation he can use as a double.

It remains possible that he has scoured the streets of London to find a man sufficiently like him to pass as a double, with the aid of stage make-up, but no matter what Cutter says I have myself seen Borden's performance. Most illusionists’ doubles are only briefly glimpsed, or they misdirect the perceptions of the audience by wearing identical costumes, so that in the few seconds in which the double is visible he seems to be the original.

Borden, after the transformation, allows himself to be seen, and to be seen clearly. He steps forward to the footlights, he bows, he smiles, he takes the hand of his female assistant, he bows again, he walks to and fro. There is no question but that the man who emerges from the second cabinet is the man who entered the first.

So it is with a certain frustrated equanimity that I am able to prepare myself for my long journey to the New World.

I still do not know how Borden works that damnable illusion, but I do at least know that he works it alone.

I am going to what is fast becoming the centre of the world of magic, and for two months I shall be meeting, and perhaps working with, some of the finest illusionists in the United States of America. There will be many there who can work out how it is done. I go to America to build my reputation, and to amass what must certainly be reckoned as a small fortune in fees, but I now have an extra quest.

I swear that when I return in two months I shall have Borden's secret with me. I also swear that within a month of returning I shall be performing a superior version of the same trick on the London stage.

21st January 1893

On board SS Saturnia

One day out from Southampton, a vile day in the English Channel behind us, and a short stay in Cherbourg, and now we are in the Western Approaches ploughing steadily towards America. The ship is a magnificent vessel, coalfired, triple-stacked, equipped to house and entertain the finest of Europe and America. My cabin is on the second deck, and I share it with an architect from Chichester. I have not told him my own profession, in spite of well-mannered and tentative enquiries. Already I am in pain — the pain of being away from my family.

I see them still in my mind's eye on the rain-swept quay, waving and waving. At times like this I yearn for the magic reality my profession seems to conjure from nowhere: 0! that I could wave my wand, utter some mumbo jumbo, and manifest them here with me!

24th January 1893

Still on board SS Saturnia

I have been suffering mal de mer , but not nearly as badly as my friend from Chichester, who last night spewed disgustingly across our cabin floor. The poor fellow was overcome with contrition and apology, but the deed was done. Partly as a consequence of this unenjoyable experience I have not eaten for two days.

27th January 1893

As I write, the city of New York is clearly visible on the horizon ahead. I have arranged a meeting with Cutter in half an hour, to make sure he has right all the arrangements for disembarkation. No more time for diary writing!

Now the adventure begins!

13th September 1893

I am not surprised to discover that nearly eight months have elapsed since last I came to this diary to record my life. In returning to it I am tempted, as before I have sometimes been tempted, simply to destroy it in its entirety.

Such an act would stand as a summary of my own actions, as I have destroyed, removed or abandoned every aspect of my life that existed when I last wrote here.

One tiny shred remains, however. When I began the diary it was with a childish earnest to write of my entire life, no matter how it might turn out. I can no longer remember what I thought I might actually become, by my thirty-sixth year of life, but I certainly did not imagine this.

Julia and the children are gone. Cutter is gone. Much of my wealth is gone. My career has withered away and gone, through apathy.

I have lost everything.

But I have gained Olivia Svenson.

I shall write little of Olivia here, as in glancing back over the pages I see I depict my love for Julia with such enthusiasm that now I can only recoil in shame. I am old enough, and have travelled far enough in matters of the heart, no longer to trust my emotions in such things.

It is sufficient to say that I have left Julia so that I might be with Olivia, after I met and fell in love with her during my American tour earlier this year. I met Olivia at a reception given in my honour in the fine city of Boston, Massachusetts, where she approached me and made her admiration known, in the way many women have approached me in the past. (I record this without vanity.) Perhaps it was because I was so far from home, and ironically so lonely without my family, that for once the forthright intention was one I could not resist. Olivia, then working as a danseuse , joined my party. When I left Boston she remained with us, and thereafter we travelled together. More than this, within a week or two she was working on stage with me as my assistant, and has returned with me to London.

Cutter did not care for this, and although he saw out the tour we parted immediately on our return.

As, inevitably, did Julia and I. Sometimes, even now, I lie awake at night to marvel at the madness of my sacrifice. Once Julia meant the very world to me, and indeed she helped build the world I inhabit today. My children, my three helpless and innocent children, are nothing less than victims of the same sacrifice. All I can say is that my madness is the madness of love; Olivia blinds me to every other feeling that is not passion for her.

So I cannot bring myself to write down, even in the privacy of this journal, what was said, done and suffered at that time. Much of the saying and doing was mine, while all the suffering was Julia’s.

I now support Julia in a household of her own, where to maintain appearances she lives the life of a widow. She has the children with her, she has her material needs taken care of, and she has never to see me again if that should be what she wants. Indeed, were I to be seen at her house the appearances would be betrayed, so I have perforce become a dead man. I can never meet my children in their own house again, and have to make do with the occasional excursion with them. Naturally, I blame only myself for this predicament.

Julia and I meet briefly on such occasions, and her sweetness of nature wrenches at my heart. But there is no going back. I have made my bed and now I lie in it. When I manage to close my mind to the family I have lost I am a happy man. I expect no favourable judgement of myself. I know I have wronged my wife.

I have always tried never to hurt the people around me. Even in my dealings with Borden I have shrunk from causing him pain or danger, preferring to take revenge by irritating or embarrassing him. But now I find I have caused the greatest hurt of all, to the four people who meant the most to me. At the risk of humbug, I can only aver that I shall never do anything like this again.

14th September 1893

My career struggles towards a new version of stability. In the upheavals of the weeks following my return from the United States, I let go most of the bookings Unwin had taken while I was away. I had, after all, returned from the tour with a tidy sum in hand, so I felt that I could survive for some time without having to work.

This diary entry is to record, though, that I feel at last I can emerge from the hole of misery and lethargy into which I declined, and I am ready to return to the stage. I have instructed Unwin to find me bookings, and my career may resume.

To celebrate the decision, Olivia and I went this afternoon to the premises of a theatrical costumier, where she chose, and was measured for, her new stage outfit.

1st December 1893

In my appointments book I have a thirty-minute Christmas show that I am to perform for a school of orphans. Other than that, my book is empty. 1894 looms up, bereft of work. Since the end of September I have earned only Ј18 18s.

Hesketh Unwin speaks of a whispering campaign against me. He warns me to disregard it, because the success of my tour of America is well known and it is easy to cause jealousy.

I am disturbed by this news. Is Borden behind it?

Olivia and I have been discussing a return to spiritism, to keep body and soul together, but so far I am thinking of it only as a last-ditch resort.

Meanwhile, I occupy my days with practice and rehearsal. A magician can never practise enough, because every moment spent will improve his performance. So I toil in my workshop, usually alone, but sometimes with Olivia, and rehearse until I feel sick with preparation. Although my skill with prestidigitation increases, sometimes, in my darker moments, I do wonder why I am continuing to rehearse at all.

At least the orphans will see a marvellous entertainment!

14th December 1893

Bookings have been made for January and February. Not major appearances, but our spirits have nevertheless risen.

20th December 1893

More bookings for January, one of them, I do declare, left vacant by a certain Professeur de la Magie! I am happy to take his guineas.

23rd December 1893

A Happy Christmas! I have been visited with an amusing idea, one I hasten to record before I change my mind. (Once committed to pen and paper, my actions will be set!) Unwin has sent me the contract for my appearance on 19th January at the Princess Royal Theatre in Streatham. This happens to be the booking left free by Borden. I was glancing through the contract (contracts have lately been so few and far between that I should likely have signed anything!) when my gaze fell on one of the clauses toward the end. It contained a common enough provision found when one act is booked in place of another; that my performance should be to the same general standard of excellence as the act that was being replaced.

My first reaction was a sardonic snort. The idea that I should live up to Borden's standards was ironic indeed. Then I thought again. If I was to replace Borden, why should I not produce a replica of the act they were no longer going to see? In short, why shall I not at last perform Borden's illusion for him?

I am so taken with the idea that I have been dashing around London all day, trying to find someone who will act as my double. This is the wrong time of year to be looking; all the unemployed actors one can generally count on finding in any public bar in the West End are working in the numerous pantomimes and Christmas shows around the town.

I have just over three weeks in which to prepare. Tomorrow I shall start to build the cabinets!

4th January 1894

Two weeks to go, and at last I have my man! His name is Gerald William Root, an actor, reciter of declamatory verse, monologist… and, by all accounts, regular drunkard and brawler. Mr Root is however desperate for cash, and I have drawn from him a pledge that so long as he works for me he shall only taste liquor after each performance. He is anxious to please, and the cash that even I am able to offer him is so generous, by his usual standards, that I believe I can purchase his reliability.

He is the same height as me, and his general stance and figure are roughly mine. He is a little stouter than I am, but either he will lose those extra folds of flesh, or I shall wear padding. It is of no concern. His coloration is fairer than mine, but again this is a small matter that can be resolved with greasepaint. Although his eyes are an impure blue, while mine are the colour generally described as hazel, the difference is not noticeable, and again we can use theatrical make-up to misdirect attention.

None of the details matters. More potentially serious is the problem of his gait, which is noticeably looser than mine, with longer strides, and his feet turn slightly outwards as he walks. Olivia has taken charge of the problem, and believes she can coach him in time. As any actor knows, you convey more about a character with a walk or a bearing than any number of facial characteristics, accents or gestures. If my double walks differently from me while on the stage he will not be mistaken for me. It is as simple as that.

Root, fully briefed in the deception to which he is privy, says that he understands the problem. He tries to dismiss my worries on this score by regaling me with his professional reputation, but I care for none of it. Provided that on the night he is mistaken for me, he will have earned his money.

A fortnight remains in which to rehearse.

6th January 1894

Root goes through the movements in which I rehearse him, but I cannot help feeling that he does not relish the illusion . Actors play a part, but the audience is in on the deception throughout; they know that behind the appearance of Prince Hamlet is a man who merely speaks the lines. My audiences must leave the theatre foxed by what they have seen! They must both believe and disbelieve the evidence of their eyes!

10th January 1894

I have given Mr Root tomorrow as a day off, so that I might consider. He is not right, not right at all! Olivia too thinks it is all a mistake, and urges me to drop the Borden illusion from my act.

But Root is a disaster.

12th January 1894

Root is a marvel! We both needed the time to think it through. He told me he passed the day with friends, but I suspect from the smell about him that he spent the time with a bottle to his lips.

No matter! His moves are right, his timing is nearly right, and as soon as we have been fitted out in our identical costumes, the deception will be good enough to pass muster.

Tomorrow, I go with Root and Olivia to Streatham, where we will inspect the stage, and make final preparations.

18th January 1894

I am unaccountably nervous about tomorrow's performance, even though Root and I have rehearsed it until we are sick of it. In perfection lies a risk; if tomorrow I perform Borden's illusion, and improve on it, and I shall, word that I have done so will reach him within days.

In these quiet hours around midnight, with Olivia abed, the house silent and my thoughts welling around me, I know there is yet a terrible truth that I have not faced up to. It is that Borden will instantly know the means by which I have brought off the illusion, but I still do not know his.

20th January 1894

It was a triumph! Applause rang out to the very rafters! Today, in its final edition, the Morning Post describes me as "probably Britain's greatest living illusionist". (There are two small qualifications there that I could gladly live without, but it will be enough to rattle Mr Borden's complacency!)

It is sweet. But it also has a sour side I had not anticipated! How could I not have thought of this? At the conclusion of the illusion, at the climax of my act, I am perforce huddled ignominiously in the artfully collapsed panels of my cabinet. While the applause fills the hall, it is the drunkard Root who strides out in the spotlight. It is he who takes the ovation, who holds Olivia's hand in his, who bows and waves and blows kisses, who acknowledges the bandmaster, who salutes the gentry in the loges, who doffs his hat and bows again and again—

And I can only wait for the darkness of the stage when the curtain descends, before I make my escape.

This will have to change. We must arrange it that I am the one who emerges from the unexpected cabinet, so the switch with Root must be made before the illusion begins. I shall have to think of a way.

21st January 1894

Yesterday's notice in the Post has made its impact, and already today my agent has taken several enquiries about and three firm bookings for my act. My miraculous illusory switch is demanded each time.

I have rewarded Root with a small cash bonus.

30th June 1895

Already the events of two years ago seem like a fading nightmare. I return to this journal at the half-year merely to record that I am once again on an even keel. Olivia and I co-exist harmoniously, and although she can never be the driving stimulus that Julia once was, her quiet support has become the bulwark on which I build my life and career.

I intend another discussion with Root, since the last one had little effect. In spite of the excellence of his performance he is a trouble to me, and another reason for returning to this diary is to record the fact that he and I will at last be having words.

7th July 1895

There is a cardinal rule in the world of magic (and if there is not one, let me formulate it) that you do not antagonize your assistants. This is because they know many of your secrets, and they therefore have a particular power over you.

If I fire Root I shall be at his mercy.

The problem he presents is partly his alcoholic addiction, and partly his arrogance.

He has often been inebriated during my performance, a fact he does not deny. He claims he can handle it. The trouble is that there is no controlling the behaviour of a heavy drinker, and I am terrified that one evening he will be too drunk to take part. A magician should never leave any aspect of his act to chance, yet here am I, dicing with it every time I perform the switch with him.

His arrogance is, if anything, a worse problem. He is convinced that I am unable to function effectively without him, and whenever he is around me, be it in rehearsal, backstage at the theatres, or even in my own workshop, I have to suffer a constant stream of advice based on his years of experience as a thespian.

Last night we had our long-planned "discussion", although in the event he did most of the talking. I have to report that much of what he said was nasty and threatening indeed. He said the words I most feared to hear, that he could expose my secrets and ruin my career.

And worse. He has somehow found out about my relationship with Sheila Macpherson, a matter which I had thought was strictly under the wraps. I am being blackmailed, of course. I need him, and he knows it. He has power over me, and I know it.

I was forced even to offer him a raise in his performance fees, and this, of course, he promptly accepted.

19th August 1895

This evening I returned early from my workshop because there was something (I forget what) I had left at home. Calling in first on Olivia, I was surprised, to say the very least, to discover Root with her in her parlour.

I should explain that after I bought my house at 45 Idmiston Villas I left it in its former configuration of two self-contained flats. During our marriage Julia and I moved freely between the two, but since Olivia has been with me we have lived apart under the same roof. This is partly to preserve the proprieties, but it also reflects the more casual nature of our association. While maintaining separate households, Olivia and I call without ceremony on each other whenever it pleases us.

I heard laughter while I climbed the stair. When I opened the door to her flat, which opens directly into her parlour, Olivia and Root were still merrily laughing away. The sound quickly died when they saw me standing there. Olivia looked angry. Root attempted to stand up, but swayed unsteadily and sat down again. I noticed, to my intense aggravation, that a half-empty bottle of gin stood on the table to the side, and that another, completely empty, was beside it. Both Olivia and Root were holding glasses containing the liquor.

"What is the meaning of this?" I demanded of them.

"I was calling in to see you, Mr Angier," replied Root.

"You knew I was rehearsing in my workshop this evening," I riposted. "Why did you not seek me there?"

"Honey, Gerry just called round for a drink," said Olivia.

"Then it is time he left!"

I held the door open with my arm, indicating he should depart, and this he did, promptly in spite of his inebriation, but staggeringly because of it. His gin-soaked breath curled briefly around me as he passed.

A tense conversation ensued between Olivia and I, which I shall not report here in detail. We left it at that, and I retired to pen this account. I have many feelings I have not described here.

24th August 1895

I learnt today that Borden is taking his magical show on a tour of Europe and the Levant, and that he will be out of England until the end of the year. Curiously, he will not be performing his own version of the two-cabinets illusion.

Hesketh Unwin informed me of this when I saw him earlier today. I made the pleasantry that I hoped that by the time he reached Paris Borden's spoken French would be better than when I last heard him at it!

25th August 1895

It took me twenty-four hours to work it out, but Borden has just done me a favour! I finally realized that with Borden out of the country I have no need to keep performing the switch illusion, and so without delay or scruple I have given Root the sack!

By the time Borden returns from his tour abroad, either I shall have replaced Mr Root or I shall no longer be performing the illusion at all.

14th November 1895

Olivia and I worked on the stage together for the last time tonight, at a performance at the Phoenix Theatre in Charing Cross Road. Afterwards, we drove home together, holding hands contentedly in the back of the cab. Since Mr Root departed, we have been perceptibly more contented. (I have been seeing less and less of Miss Macpherson.)

Next week, when I open for a short season at the Royal County Theatre in Reading, my assistant will be a young lady I have been training for the last two weeks. Her name is Gertrude, she is blessed with a supple and beautiful body, she has both the prettiness and the mental ability of a china ornament, and is the fiancйe of my other new employee, a carpenter and apparatus technician named Adam Wilson. I am paying them both well, and am satisfied with their contributions so far to my act.

Adam, I must record, is an almost exact double for me in terms of physique, and although I have not yet broached it to him I shall keep him in mind as Root's replacement.

12th February 1896

I have tonight learned the meaning of the phrase one's blood runs cold.

I was engaged in one of my customary tricks with playing cards in the first half of my show. In this, I ask a member of the audience to select a card and then to write his name upon it in full view of the audience. When this is done I take the card from him and tear it up before his eyes, tossing aside the pieces. Moments later, I show a live canary in a metal cage. When my volunteer takes the cage from me it unaccountably collapses in his hand (the bird vanishes from sight), and leaves him holding what appears to be the remains of the cage in which can be seen a single playing card. When he removes it, he discovers that it is the very one on which his name is inscribed. The trick ends, and the volunteer returns to his seat.

Tonight, at the conclusion of the trick, as I beamed towards the audience in anticipation of the applause, I heard the fellow say, "Here, this isn't my card!"

I turned towards him. The fool was standing there with the remains of the cage dangling from one hand, and the playing card in the other. He was trying to read it.

"Let me take it, sir!" I boomed theatrically, sensing that my forcing of the card might have gone wrong, and preparing to cover the mistake with a sudden production of a multitude of coloured streamers which I keep on hand for just such an eventuality.

I tried to snatch the card from him, but calamity piled on disaster.

He swung away from me, shouting in a triumphant voice, "Look, it's got summat else written on it!"

The man was playing to the audience, making the most of the fact that he had, somehow, beaten the magician at his own game. To save the moment I had to take possession of the card, and I did, wrenching it out of his hand. I showered him with coloured streamers, cued the bandmaster, and waved the audience to applaud, to waft the appalling fellow back towards his seat.

In the swelling music, and the paltry applause, I stood transfixed, reading the words that had been written there.

They said, "I know the address you go to with Sheila Macpherson — Abracadabra! — Alfred Borden."

The card was the trey of clubs, the one I had forced on the volunteer for the trick.

I simply do not know how I managed to get through the rest of the performance, but somehow I must have done so.

18th February 1896

Last night I travelled alone to the Empire Theatre in Cambridge where Borden was performing. As he went through the rigmarole of setting up a conventional illusion with a cabinet, I stood up in my seat in the auditorium and denounced him. As loudly as I could I informed the audience that an assistant was already concealed inside the cabinet. I immediately left the theatre, glancing back only as I exited the auditorium, to be rewarded by the sight of the tabs coming down prematurely.

Then, unexpectedly, I found I had to pay a price for what I had done. Conscience struck me as I took my long, cold and solitary train journey back to London. In that dark night I had abundant opportunity to reflect on my actions. I bitterly regretted what I had done. The ease with which I destroyed his magic appalled me. Magic is illusion, a temporary suspension of reality for the benefit and amusement of an audience. What right had I (or he, when he took his turn) to destroy that illusion?

Once, long ago, after Julia lost our first baby, Borden wrote to me and apologized for what he had done. Foolishly, O how foolishly!, I spurned him. Now the time has come when I anxiously desire a surcease of the feud between us. How much longer do two grown men have to keep sniping at each other in public, to settle some score that no one but they even know about, and one that even they barely comprehend? Yes, once, when Julia was hurt by the buffoon's intervention, I had a valid case against him, but so much has happened since.

All through that cold journey back to Liverpool Street Station, I wondered how it might be achieved. Now, twenty-four hours later, I still think about it. I shall brace myself, write to him, call an end to it, and suggest a private meeting to thrash out any remaining scores that he feels have to be settled.

20th February 1896

Today, after she had opened her letters, Olivia came to me and said, "So what Gerry Root informed me of is true!"

I asked what she could possibly mean.

"You're still seeing Sheila Macpherson, right?"

Later, she showed me the note she had received, in an envelope addressed to "Occupant, Flat B, 45 Idmiston Villas’. It was from Borden!

27th February 1896

I have made peace with myself, with Olivia, even with Borden!

Let me simply record that I have promised Olivia I shall never see Miss Macpherson again (nor shall I), and that my love for her is undying.

And I have decided that never again shall I conduct a feud with Alfred Borden, no matter how provoked I feel. I still expect a public reprisal from him for my ill-advised outburst in Cambridge, but I shall ignore him.

5th March 1896

Sooner even than I had expected, Borden tried successfully to humiliate me while I was performing a well-known but popular illusion called Trilby. (It is the one where the assistant lies on a board balanced between two chair backs, then is seen to hover apparently unaided in the air when the chairs are removed.) Borden had somehow secreted himself backstage.

As I removed the second chair from beneath Gertrude's board, the concealing backdrop lifted quickly to reveal Adam Wilson crouched behind, operating the mechanism.

I brought down the main curtains, and discontinued my act.

I shall not retaliate.

31st March 1896

Another Borden incident. So soon after the last!

17th May 1896

Another Borden incident.

This one puzzles me, for I had already established he was also performing this same evening, but somehow he got across London to the Great Western Hotel to sabotage my performance.

Again, I shall not retaliate.

16th July 1896

I shall not even record any more Borden incidents here, such is my disdain for him. (Another one this evening, yes, but I plan no retaliation.)

4th August 1896

Last night I was performing an illusion comparatively new to my act, which involves a revolving blackboard on which I chalk simple messages called out to me by members of the audience. When a certain number have been written for all to see, I suddenly spin the blackboard over… to reveal that by some apparent miracle the same messages are already written there too!

Tonight when I rotated the blackboard I found that my prepared messages had been erased. In their place was the message:

I SEE YOU HAVE GIVEN UP TRYING

TO TRANSPORT YOURSELF

DOES THIS MEAN YOU STILL DON'T

KNOW THE SECRET?

COME AND WATCH AN EXPERT!

Still I shall not retaliate. Olivia, who perforce knows every fact relating to our feud, agrees that a dignified disdain is the only response I should make.

3rd February 1897

Another Borden incident. How tiresome it is to open this journal only to report this!

He is becoming more daring. Although Adam and I carefully check our apparatus before and after every performance, and scour through the backstage parts of the theatre immediately before going on, somehow tonight Borden gained access to the mezzanine floor, beneath the stage.

I was performing a trick known simply as The Disappearing Lady. This is an attractive illusion both to perform and see, as the apparatus is extremely straightforward. My assistant sits on a plain wooden chair in the centre of the stage, and I throw over her a large cotton sheet. I spread it out smoothly around her. Her figure can be plainly seen still sitting on the chair, thinly veiled by the sheet. Her head and shoulders, in particular, may easily be made out as proof of her presence.

Suddenly, I whip away the sheet in a continuous movement… and the chair is empty! All that remains on the bare stage is the chair, the sheet and myself.

Tonight, when I pulled away the sheet, I discovered to my amazement that Gertrude was still in the chair, her face a torment of confusion and terror. I stood there, aghast.

Then, compounding the moment, one of the stage trapdoors snapped open, and a man came rising into view from below. He was wearing full evening dress, with silk hat, scarf and cape. As calmly as the devil, Borden (for it was he) doffed his hat to the audience, then strode calmly towards the wings, a drift of tobacco smoke swirling in his wake. I dashed after him, determined at last to confront him, when my attention was drawn by an immense discharge of brilliant light, from over my head!

An electrified sign was being lowered from the flies! In bright blue lettering, picked out in some electrical device, it said:

LE PROFESSEUR DE LA MAGIE

AT THIS THEATRE — ALL NEXT WEEK!

A ghastly cyanic pallor imbued the stage. I signalled to the stage manager in the wings and at last the curtain came down, concealing my despair, my humiliation, my rage.

When I arrived home and told her what had happened, Olivia said, "You got to take revenge, Robbie. And you better make it good!"

At last I agree with her.

18th April 1897

Tonight, for the first time in public, Adam and I performed the switch illusion. We have been rehearsing it for more than a week, and technically the performance was faultless.

Yet the applause at the end was polite rather than enthusiastic.

13th May 1897

After many long hours of work and rehearsal, Adam and I have developed our cabinet switching routine to a standard which I know cannot be bettered. Adam, after eighteen months working closely with me, can imitate my movements and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy. Given an identical suit of clothes, a few touches of greasepaint and a (most expensive) hairpiece, he is my double to the last detail.

Yet each time we perform it, we bring the show to what we imagine will be a devastating climax, and our audiences declare themselves, by their lukewarm ripples of applause, to be unimpressed.

I do not know what I have to do to better the illusion. Two years ago the mere suggestion that I might be prevailed upon to include it in my act was enough to double my fee. These days, it is almost an irrelevance. I am brooding long.

1st June 1897

I have been hearing rumours for some time that Borden has "improved" his switch illusion, but without further information I have taken no notice. It is years since I saw him performing it, and so yesterday evening I betook myself and Adam Wilson to a theatre in Nottingham, where Borden has been in residence for the last week. (I have a show tonight in Sheffield, but I left London a day early so that I might visit Borden at work en route .)

I disguised myself with greyed hair, cheek pads, untidy clothes, a pair of unnecessary eye-glasses, and took a seat only two rows from the front. I was just a few feet away from Borden as he performed all his tricks.

Everything is suddenly explained! Borden has substantially advanced his version of the illusion. He no longer conceals himself inside cabinets. There is no more stuff-and-nonsense with some object tossed across the stage (which I have been continuing to work with until this week). And he does not use a double.

I say with certainty: Borden does not use a double . I know everything there is to know about doubles. I can spot one as easily as I can spot a cloud in the sky. I am as sure as I can be that Borden works alone.

The first part of his act was performed before a half-drop, which only allowed the full stage set to be seen when he came to the climactic illusion. At this, the half-drop was raised and the audience saw an array of jars fuming with chemicals, cabinets adorned with coiling cables, glass tubes and pipettes, and above all a host of gleaming electrical wires. It was a glimpse into the laboratory of a scientific fiend.

Borden, in his embarrassing persona of a French academic, strolled around the equipment, lecturing the audience on the perils of working with electrical power. At certain moments he touched one wire against another, or to a flask of gas, and there came an alarming flash of light, or a loud bang. Sparks flew around him, and a mist of blue smoke began to hover about his head.

When he was ready to perform, he indicated that a roll of drums be played from the orchestra pit. He seized two heavy wires, brought them dramatically together and made an electrical connection.

In the brilliant flash that followed, the switch took place. Before our very eyes, Borden vanished from where he was standing (the two thick wires fell snaking to the stage floor, emitting a trail of dangerous fizzing sparks), and he instantly reappeared on the other side of the stage — at least twenty feet away from where he had been!

It was impossible for him to have moved across that distance by normal means. The switch was too quick, too perfect. He arrived with his hands still flexed as if gripping the wires, the ones that even at that moment were zigzagging spectacularly across the stage.

Borden stepped forward in tumultuous applause to take his bow. Behind him the scientific apparatus still frothed and fumed, a deadly backdrop that seemed, perversely, to heighten his ordinariness.

As the applause continued to thunder, he reached into his breast pocket as if to produce something. He smiled modestly, inviting the audience to urge him to one final magical production. The applause accordingly lifted, and with his smile broadening into a full beam Borden thrust his hand into the pocket and produced… a paper rose, brilliant pink in colour.

This production was a reference back to an earlier trick. In this he had allowed a lady from the audience to select one flower from a whole bunch, before wonderfully making it vanish. To see the rose reappear utterly charmed his audience. He held the little flower aloft — it was most definitely the one the lady had chosen. When he had displayed it long enough he turned it in his fingers, to reveal that part of it had been charred black, is if by some infernal force! With a significant glance towards his apparatus behind him, Borden made one more sweeping bow, then departed the stage.

The applause continued for long afterwards, and I report that my hands were clapping as loudly as anyone’s.

Why should this fellow-magician, so gifted, so endowed with skill and professionalism, pursue a sordid feud against me?

5th March 1898

I have been working hard, with little time for the diary. Once more, several months have passed between my last entry and this. Today (a weekend) I have no bookings, so I may make a brief entry.

To record that Adam and I have not included our switch illusion in my act since that night in Nottingham.

Even without this mild provocation, the soi-disant greatest living magician has meanwhile dignified me with two more unprovoked attacks while I was performing. Both involved potentially risky interruptions to my act. One of them I was able to joke away, but the other was for a few minutes an unsustainable disaster.

I have as a result abandoned my faзade of disdain.

I am left with two apparently unachievable ambitions. The first is to forge some kind of equable reconciliation with Julia and the children. I know I have lost her forever, but the distance she puts between us is terrible to endure. The second is minor in comparison. It is that now my unilateral truce with Borden has ended, I of course wish to discover the secret of his illusion so that I might again outperform him.

31st July 1898

Olivia has proposed an idea!

Before describing it I should say that in recent months the ardour between Olivia and myself has noticeably cooled. There is neither rancour nor jealousy between us, but a vast indifference has been hanging like a pall over the house. We continue to cohabit peacefully, she in her apartment, I in mine, and at times we have behaved as man and wife, but overall we no longer act as if we love or care for each other. Yet we cling together.

The first clue I had came after dinner. We had eaten together in my apartment, but at the end she absented herself with some haste, taking with her a bottle of gin. I have grown used to her solitary drinking, and no longer remark on it.

A few minutes later, though, her maid, Lucy, came up and asked me if I would step downstairs for a few minutes.

I found Olivia seated at her green-baize card table, with two or three bottles and two glasses standing on it, and an empty chair opposite her. She waved me to sit down, and then poured me a drink. I added some orange syrup to the gin, to help take away the taste.

"Robbie," she said with her familiar directness. "I'm going to leave you."

I mumbled something in reply. I have been expecting some such development for months, although I had no idea how I would cope with it if, as at this moment, it happened.

"I'm going to leave you," she said again, "and then I'm going to come back. Do you want to know why?"

I said that I did.

"Because there's something you want more than you want me. I figure that if I get out there and find it for you, then I have a chance to make you want me all over again."

I assured her I wanted her as much as ever I had, but she cut me short.

"I know what's going on," she declared. 'You and this Alfred Borden are like two lovers who can't get along together. Am I right?"

I tried to prevaricate, but when I saw the determination in her eyes I quickly agreed.

"Look at this!" she said, and brandished this week's copy of The Stage . "See here." She folded the paper in half and passed it across to me. She had circled one of the classified advertisements on the front page.

"That's your friend Borden," she said. "See what he says?"

An attractive young female stage assistant is required for full-time employment. She must be terpsichorally adept, strong and fit, and willing to travel and to work long hours, both on and off stage. Pleasing appearance is essential, and so is a willingness to participate in exciting and demanding routines before large audiences. Please apply, with suitable references, to—

The address of Alfred Borden's rehearsal room followed.

"He's been advertising for an assistant for a couple of weeks, so he must be finding it difficult to hire the right one. I guess I could help him out."

"You mean you—"

"You always said I was the best assistant you ever had."

"But you—? Going to work for him ?" I shook my head sadly. "How could you do this to me, Olivia?"

"You want to find out how he does that trick, don't you?" she said.

As it dawned on me what she was saying I sat silently before her, staring at her and marvelling. If she could gain his confidence, work with him in rehearsal and on stage, move freely in his workshop, it would not be long before Borden's secret was mine.

We soon got down to details.

I was worried in case he recognized her, but Olivia was not. "You think I'd dream up this idea if I thought he knew my name?" she drawled. She reminded me that he had had to address her as "Occupant". The need to supply references seemed for a time to be an insurmountable problem, because Olivia had worked for no one but me, but she pointed out that I was entirely capable of forging letters.

And I had doubts, I don't mind admitting here. The thought of this beautiful young woman, who had wreaked such exciting emotional havoc on me, and who had given up her own life to be with me, and who had shared almost everything with me for five years, the thought of her preparing to enter the camp of my blackest enemy was almost too much to countenance.

Two hours or more went quickly by while we discussed her idea, and began to lay our plans. We emptied the bottle of gin, while Olivia kept saying, "I'll get the secret for you, Robbie. That's what you want me to do, isn't it?" And I said yes, but that I did not want to lose her.

The spectre of Borden's ruthlessness loomed over us. I was torn between the euphoria of making a definitive strike against him, and the prospect of him taking some even greater revenge should he realize Olivia was mine. I voiced these fears. She replied, "I'll come back to you Robbie, and I'll bring you Borden's secret—" We were soon both of us inebriated, both of us frolicsome and affectionate, and I did not return to my own apartment until after breakfast this morning!

At the moment she is in her own apartment, drafting a letter of application to Alfred Borden. I must go to forge one or two testimonials for her. We are using the address of her maid for poste restante ; as a further subterfuge she is taking her mother's maiden name.

7th August 1898

It is a week since Olivia applied to Borden for a job, and there has been no reply. In some ways this is almost an irrelevance, as since the idea came into being Olivia and I have been as tender and loving to each other as we were during those heady weeks of my American tour. She looks more comely than she has for many months, and she has entirely given up her gin.

14th August 1898

Borden has replied (at least, an assistant called T. Elbourne replied on his behalf), suggesting an interview early next week.

I am suddenly dead against it, having in the last few days found a renewal of happiness with Olivia, and more unwilling than ever to see her fall into Borden's clutches even if it should be for a ruse of our own invention.

Olivia still wants to go through with it. I argue against her. I minimize the importance of his trick, shrug off the earnestness of the feud, try to laugh the whole thing off.

I fear that in the past I gave Olivia too many months and years to think alone, however.

18th August 1898

Olivia has been to the interview and returned from it, and she says the job is hers.

While she was gone I was in a torment of fears and regrets. Such is my suspicion of Borden that the moment she had left me I imagined that he had placed the advertisement in an attempt to snare her, and I had to restrain myself from dashing out after her. I went around to my workshop and tried to distract myself with mirror practice, but at last I came home and paced around my room again.

Olivia was gone far longer than either of us had expected, and I was seriously wondering what I should do when suddenly she arrived back. She was safe and sound, elated and excited.

Yes, the job is hers. Yes, Borden read the references I had written, and he accepted them as genuine. No, there was no apparent suspicion of me, and no, he appeared not to suspect there was any link between us.

She told me about some of the apparatus she had seen in his workshop, but it was all disappointingly ordinary.

"Did he say anything at all about the switch illusion?" I queried her.

"Not a word. But he told me there were several tricks he did alone, and for which he did not need a stage assistant."

Later, saying she was tired, she went to her flat to sleep, and here I am once more, alone. I must try to understand; it is tiring going through an audition, no matter what the circumstances.

19th August 1898

It transpires that Olivia has started work with Borden immediately. When I went to the door of her flat this morning the maid told me Olivia had risen early, and would not be home until this afternoon.

20th August 1898

Olivia came in at 5.00 p.m. yesterday, and although she went straight to her flat she did admit me when I went to her door. She looked tired again. I was eager for news, but all she would say was that Borden had spent the day showing her the illusions in which she would be needed, and she had been rehearsing them intensively.

Later we had dinner together, but she was plainly exhausted and went again to sleep alone in her flat. This morning she departed at an early hour.

21st August 1898

A Sunday, and even Borden does not work. At home with me all day Olivia is being tight lipped about what she is seeing and doing in his workshop, and it puzzles me. I asked her if she felt constrained by professional ethics, that she perhaps felt she must not reveal to me the workings of his magic, but she denied it. For a few seconds I glimpsed Olivia in the mood of two weeks ago. She laughed and said that of course she realized where her loyalties lay.

I know I can trust her, however difficult it is proving, and so I have let the subject rest all day. As a consequence, we have together enjoyed an innocent, ordinary day today, while we went for a long walk in the warm sunshine on Hampstead Heath.

27th August 1898

The end of another week, and still Olivia has no information for me. She seems unwilling to talk to me about it.

Tonight she gave me a free pass to Borden's next series of performances. Billed as an "extravaganza", his show will occupy the Leicester Square Theatre for a two-week run. Olivia will be on stage with him at every performance.

3rd September 1898

Olivia has not returned home at all this evening. I am mystified, alarmed, and full of forebodings.

4th September 1898

I sent a boy to Borden's workshop with a message for her, but he returned to say the place was bolted up with no one apparently inside.

6th September 1898

Abandoning subterfuge I went in search of Olivia. First to Borden's workshop, which was empty as described, then to his house in St Johns Wood, and propitiously discovered a coffee shop from where I could observe the front of the building. I sat there as long as I was able, but without being rewarded with a single glimpse of any significant matter. I did however see Borden himself, leaving his house with a woman I took to be his wife. A carriage drew up outside the house at 2.00 p.m., and after a short pause Borden and the woman appeared, then climbed into the carriage. Shortly afterwards it drove off in the direction of the West End.

Having waited for a full ten minutes to be certain he was away from the house, I walked nervously across to the door and rang the bell. A male servant answered.

I said directly, "Is Miss Olivia Svenson here?"

The man looked surprised.

"I think you must be calling in error, sir," he said. "We have no one here of that name."

"I'm sorry," I said, remembering just in time that we had used her mother's maiden name. "I meant to ask for Miss Wenscombe. Would she be here?"

Again the man shook his head, politely and correctly.

"There is no Miss Wenscombe here, sir. Maybe you should enquire at the Post Office in the High Street."

"Yes, indeed I shall," I replied, and, no longer wanting to draw attention to myself, I beat a retreat.

I went back to my vigil in the coffee shop and waited there for another hour, by the end of which Borden and his wife returned to the house.

12th September 1898

With no further sign of Olivia returning home, I took the pass she had given me and went to the box office of the Leicester Square Theatre. Here I claimed a ticket for Borden's show. I deliberately selected a seat near the rear of the stalls, so that my presence might not be noticed from the stage.

After his customary opening with Chinese Linking Rings, Borden quickly and efficiently produced his assistant from a cabinet. It was of course my Olivia, resplendent in a sequinned gown that glittered and flashed in the electrically powered lights. She strode elegantly into the wings, whence she emerged a few moments later, now clad in a fetching costume of the leotard type. The blatant voluptuousness of her appearance quickened my pulse, even in spite of my intense and despairing feelings of loss.

Borden climaxed his show with the electrical switch illusion, performing it with a flair that plunged me further into depression. When Olivia returned to the stage to take the final bow with him my gloom was complete. She looked beautiful, happy and excited, and it seemed to my troubled gaze that as Borden held her hand for the applause he did so with unnecessary affection.

Determined to see the thing through, I raced from the auditorium and hurried around to the Stage Door. Although I waited while the other artistes filed out into the night, and until the doorman had locked the door and turned off the lights, I saw neither Borden nor Olivia departing the building.

18th September 1898

Today Olivia's maid, whom I have retained in the household for the time being lest Olivia should return, brought me a letter she had received from her erstwhile mistress.

I read it anxiously, clinging to the hope that it might contain a clue as to what had happened, but it merely said:

Lucy—

Would you kindly make up packages and cases of all my belongings, and have them delivered as soon as possible to the Stage Door of the Strand Theatre.

Please be sure that everything is clearly labelled as being for myself, and I will arrange collection.

I enclose an amount to cover the costs, and that which is left over you must keep for yourself. If you require a reference for your next employment Mr Angier will of course write it for you.

Thank you, &c

Olivia Svenson

I had to read this letter aloud to the poor girl, and to explain what she had to do with the five-pound note Olivia had enclosed.

4th December 1898

I am currently engaged for a season of shows at the Plaza Theatre in Richmond, by the side of the River Thames. This evening, I was relaxing in my dressing room between first and second performances, just prior to going out to find a sandwich meal with Adam and Gertrude. Someone knocked on the door.

It was Olivia. I let her into the room almost without thinking what I was doing. She looked beautiful but tired, and told me she had been trying to locate me all day.

"Robbie, I have gotten you the information you want," she said, and she held up a sealed envelope for me to see. "I brought you this, even though you must understand that I'm not going to be coming back to you. You have to promise me that your feud with Alfred will end immediately. If you do, I'll let you have the envelope."

I told her that as far as I was concerned the feud was already at an end.

"Then why do you still need his secret?"

"You surely know why," I said.

"Only to continue the feud!"

I knew she was touching the truth, but I said, "I'm curious."

She was in a hurry to depart, saying that already Borden would be suspicious of her long absence. I did not remind her of the similar wait I had had to endure when this endeavour began.

I asked her why she had written down the message, when she could as easily have told me in words. She said it was too complicated, too intricately devised, and that she had copied the information from Borden's own notes. Finally, she handed over the envelope.

Holding it, I said, "Is it really the end of the mystery for me?"

"I believe it is, yes."

She turned to go and opened the door.

"Can I ask you something else, Olivia?"

"What is it?"

"Is Borden one man, or two?"

She smiled, and maddeningly I glimpsed the smile of a woman thinking of her lover. "He is just one man, I do assure you."

I followed her out into the corridor, where technical staff were loitering within earshot.

"Are you happy now?" I asked her.

"Yes, I am. I'm sorry if I've hurt you, Robbie."

She left me then, without an embrace or even a smile or a touch of hands. I have hardened myself against her in the last few weeks, but even so it was painful to be with her like that.

I returned to the dressing room, closed the door and leant my weight upon it. I slit the envelope at once. It contained one sheet of paper, and on it Olivia had written a single word.

Tesla.

3rd July 1900

Somewhere in Illinois

We departed from Chicago Union Street Station at 9.00 promptly, and after a slow journey through the industrial wasteland that surrounds that most vibrant and thrilling of cities we have since been moving at a fair speed across the agricultural plains to the west.

I have a splendid sleeping berth, and a seat permanently reserved for me in the first-class saloon. American trains are sumptuously fitted and magnificently comfortable in which to travel. The meals, prepared in one of the carriages entirely devoted to being a galley, are large, nutritious and attractively served. I have been travelling for five weeks on American railroads, and I have rarely been happier or better fed. I dare not weigh myself! I feel I am ensconced securely in the great American world of convenience, plenty and courtesy, while the terrific American realm slips by beyond the windows.

My fellow travellers are all Americans, a mixed bunch in appearance, friendly towards me and curious about me in equal measure. About a third of them, I hazard, are commercial travellers of the superior kind, and several more appear to be employed in business in one way or another. In addition, there are two professional gamblers, a presbyterian minister, four young men returning to Denver from college in Chicago, several well-to-do farmers and landowners, and one or two others I have not yet been able to pin down exactly. In the American way we have all been on first-name terms from the moment of meeting. I have long ago learned that the name Rupert attracts amused inquisitiveness, so while I am in the United States I am always Rob or Robbie.

4th July 1900

The train stopped last night in Galesburg, Illinois. Because today is American Independence Day the railroad company gave all first-class passengers the choice of staying aboard the train in our cabins or of spending the night in the town's largest hotel. Since I have been sleeping in many trains in the last few weeks I opted for the hotel.

I was able to take a brief tour of the town before turning in. It is an attractive place, and possesses a large theatre. A play happens to be on this week, but I was told that variety shows ("vaudeville") are frequent and popular. Magic acts often appear. I left my card with the manager, hoping for an engagement one day.

I must record that the theatre, the hotel and the streets of Galesburg are lit by electricity. At the hotel I learned that most American towns and cities of any significance are so equipping themselves. Alone in my hotel room I had the experience of personally switching on and off the electric incandescent lamp in the centre of the ceiling. I dare say as a novelty this would quickly pall and become commonplace, but the light cast by electricity is bright, steady and cheerful. In addition to lighting I have seen many different appliances on sale: ventilating fans, clothes irons, room heaters, even an electrically driven hairbrush! As soon as I return to London I shall make enquiries about having electrical current installed in my home.

5th July 1900

Crossing Iowa

I stare for long periods through the window of the carriage, hoping for a break in the monotony, but the agricultural land stretches flat and wide in all directions. The sky is a bright pale blue, and it hurts the eyes to look at it for more than a few seconds. Clouds pile somewhere to the south of us, but they seem never to shift their position or shape, no matter how far we travel.

A Mr Bob Tannhouse, a fellow passenger on the train, is by small coincidence the vice-president of sales in a company that manufactures the sort of electrical appliances that have caught my eye. He confirms that as we move towards the 20th century there is no limit, no bound, to what we might expect electricity to do for our lives. He predicts that men will sail the seas in electric ships, sleep in electric beds, fly in electric heavier-than-air machines, eat electrically cooked food… even shave our beards with electric razor blades! Bob is a fantasist and a salesman, but he fires me with a tremendous hope. I believe that in this enthralling country, as a new century dawns, anything really is possible, or it can be made possible. My present quest into the unknown heart of this land will give me the secrets for which I hunger.

7th July 1900

Denver, Colorado

In spite of the luxuries of railroad travel, it is undoubtedly a blessing not to be travelling. I plan to rest in this city for a day or two before continuing my journey. This is the longest continuous break I have ever made from magic: no performances, no practising, no conferences with my ingйnieur , no auditions or rehearsals.

8th July 1900

Denver, Colorado

To the east of Denver lies the great plain, across part of which I came while travelling from Chicago. I have seen enough of Nebraska to last me the rest of my lifetime; memories of its dull scenery daunt me even yet. All day yesterday a wind blew from the southeast, hot and dry and apparently laden with grit. The staff at the hotel complain that it is from the arid neighbouring states, like Oklahoma, but no matter what its source it meant that my explorations of the town were hot and unpleasant. I curtailed them and returned to the hotel. However, before I did so, and when the haze finally cleared, I saw for myself what lies immediately to the west of Denver: the great jagged wall of the Rocky Mountains. Later in the day, when it was cooler, I went out to the balcony of my room and watched the sun setting behind these stunning peaks. I estimate that twilight must last half an hour longer here than elsewhere, because of the vast shadow thrown by the Rockies.

10th July 1900

Colorado Springs, Colorado

This town is about seventy miles to the south of Denver, but the journey has taken all day in a horse-drawn omnibus. It made frequent stops to take on and put down passengers, to change horses, to change drivers. I felt uncomfortable, prominent and travel-weary. My appearance was probably ridiculous, to judge by the expressions on the faces of the farming people who rode with me. However, I have arrived safe and sound, and am immediately charmed by the place in which I find myself. It is not anywhere near as large as Denver, but abundantly reveals the care and affection that Americans lavish on their small towns.

I have found a modest but attractive hotel, suitable for my needs, and because I liked my room on sight I have registered for a week's stay with an option to extend it if necessary.

From the window of my room I can see two of the three features of Colorado Springs that have brought me here.

The whole town dances with electric lights after the sun has set; the streets have tall lamps, every house has brightly illuminated windows, and in the "downtown" area, which I can see from my room, many of the shops, businesses and restaurants have dazzling advertising signs that glisten and flash in the warm night.

Beyond them, bulking against the night sky, is the black mass of the famous mountain that stands beside the town: Pike's Peak, nearly 15,000 feet in height.

Tomorrow, I shall make my first ascent of the lower slopes of Pike's Peak, and seek out the third singular feature that has brought me to this town.

12th July 1900

I was too weary to write in my diary yesterday evening, and I have perforce to spend today alone here in the town, so I have plenty of opportunity to recount at leisure what transpired.

I was awake at an early hour, took my breakfast in the hotel, and walked quickly to the central square of the town where my carriage was supposed to be waiting for me. This was something I had arranged by letter before leaving London, and although everything had been confirmed at that time I had no way of knowing for sure that my man would be there for me. To my astonishment, he was.

In the casual American manner we quickly became great friends. His name is Randall D. Gilpin, a Colorado man born and bred. I call him Randy, and he calls me Robbie. He is short and round, with a great circling of grey whiskers about his cheerful face. His eyes are blue, his face is burned red ochre by the sun, and his hair, like the whiskers, is steel-grey. He wears a hat made of leather, and the filthiest trousers I have ever seen in my life. He has a finger missing from his left hand. He carries a rifle under the seat from which he drives the horses, and he told me he keeps it loaded.

Though polite, and effusively friendly, Randy displayed a reserve about me that I was only able to detect by having spent so many weeks in the USA. It took me most of the ride up the Pike's Peak ascent for me to work out the probable cause.

It seemed to be a combination of things. From my letters he had assumed that I, like many people who come to this region, was a prospector (from this I discovered that the mountain has many rich seams of gold). As he became more talkative, though, he told me that when he saw me crossing the square he guessed from my clothes and general demeanour that I was a minister of the church. Gold he could understand, one of God's ministers he could also accord a place in the scheme of things, but not a combination of two. That this weird Briton should then direct him to drive to the notorious laboratory on the mountain only compounded the mystery.

Thus arose Randy's caution about me. There was little I could do to assuage it, as my real identity and purpose would probably have seemed just as incomprehensible!

The route to Nikola Tesla's laboratory is a steady climb of mixed gradients across the eastern face of the great mountain, the land densely wooded for the first mile or so as the lane wends its way out of the town, but soon thinning into rocky ground supporting immensely tall and well-spaced firs. The views to the east were vast, but the landscape in this region is so flat and uniformly used that there was virtually nothing scenic at which to marvel.

After an hour and a half we came to a plateau, on the northeast face of the mountain, and here no trees grew at all. I noticed many fresh stumps, indicating that what few trees had actually once grown here had been recently felled.

In the centre of this small plateau, not nearly as large as I had been led to believe, was Tesla's laboratory.

"You got business here, Robbie?" said Randy. "You watch how you go. It can get darn dangerous up here, from what folks say."

"I know the risks," I averred. I negotiated with him briefly, unsure of what arrangements, if any, Tesla himself had for descending to the town, and wanting to be sure that I could later get back to my hotel without difficulty. Randy told me that he had business of his own to attend to, but would return to the laboratory in the afternoon and wait for me until I appeared.

I noticed that he would not take the carriage too close to the building, and I had to walk the last four or five hundred yards by myself.

The laboratory was a square construction with sloping roofs, built with unstained or unpainted wood, showing many signs of impromptu decisions about its design. It appeared that various small extensions had been added after the main structure went up, because the roofs were not all at the same pitch, and in places met at odd angles. A large wooden derrick had been built on (or through) the main roof, and another, smaller rig had been built on one of the side sloping roofs.

In the centre of the building, rising vertically, was a tall metal pole that tapered gradually to what would have been a point, although there was no visible apex because at the top there was a large metal sphere. This was glinting in the bright morning sunshine, and waving gently to and fro in the fresh breeze that was blowing along the mountainside.

On each side of the path a number of technical instruments of obscure purpose had been set on the ground. There were many metal poles driven into the stony soil, and most of these were connected to each other with insulated wires. Close by the side of the main building was a wooden frame with a glass wall, inside which I saw several measuring dials or registers.

I heard a sudden and violent crackling sound, and from within the building there came a series of brilliant and horrific flashes: white, blue-white, pink-white, repeated erratically but rapidly. So fierce were these explosions of light that they glared not only at the one or two windows in my sight, but revealed the tiny cracks and apertures in the fabric of the walls.

I confess that at this moment my resolve briefly failed, and I even glanced back to see if Randy and his carriage were still within hailing distance. (No sign of him!) My faint heart became even fainter when, within two or three more steps, I came upon a hand-painted sign mounted on the wall beside the main door. It said:

GREAT DANGER

Keep Out!

As I read this the electric discharges from within died away as abruptly as they had started, and it seemed a positive omen. I banged my fist on the door.

After a wait of a few moments, Nikola Tesla himself opened the door. His expression was the abstracted one of a busy man who has been irritatingly interrupted. It was not a good start, but I made the best of it.

"Mr Tesla?" I said. "My name is Rupert Angier. I wonder if you recall our correspondence? I have been writing to you from England."

"I know nobody in England!" He was staring behind me, as if wondering how many more Englishmen I had brought with me. "Say your name again, good sir?"

"My name is Rupert Angier. I was present at your demonstration in London, and was greatly interested—"

"You are the magician! The one Mr Alley knows all about?"

"I am the magician," I confirmed, although the meaning of his second query was for the moment lost on me.

"You may enter!"

So many impressions about him at once, of course reinforced by my having spent several hours with him after our first exchange. At the time I noticed his face first. It was gaunt, intelligent and handsome, with strong Slavic cheekbones. He wore a thin moustache, and his lanky hair was parted in the middle. His appearance was in general untended, that of a man who worked long hours and slept only when there was no alternative to exhaustion.

Tesla is equipped with an extraordinary mind. Once I had made my identity clear to him he remembered not only what we had corresponded briefly about, but that I had written to him earlier, some eight years ago, asking for a copy of his notes.

Inside the laboratory he introduced me to his assistant, a Mr Alley. This interesting man appears to fulfil many roles in Tesla's life, from scientific assistant and collaborator, to domestic servant and companion. Mr Alley declared himself to be an admirer of my work! He had been in the audience during my show in Kansas City in 1893, and spoke briefly but knowledgeably about magic.

By all appearances the two men work in the laboratory alone, with only the astonishing research equipment for company. I ascribe this near-human quality to the apparatus because Tesla himself has a habit of referring to his equipment as if it had thoughts and instincts. Once, yesterday, I heard him say to Alley, "It knows there's a storm coming"; at another moment he said, "I think it's waiting for us to start again."

Tesla seemed relaxed in my company, and the brief hostility I had experienced at the door was nowhere evident during the rest of my time with him. He declared that he and Alley had been soon to break for luncheon, and the three of us sat down to simple but nourishing food that Alley quickly produced from one of the side rooms. Tesla sat apart from us, and I noticed he was a finicky eater, holding up each morsel for close inspection before putting it in his mouth, and discarding as many of them as he consumed. He wiped his hands and dabbed his lips on a small cloth after each mouthful. Before he rejoined us, he swept away his uneaten food into a bin outside the building, then scrupulously washed and wiped dry his utensils before placing them inside a drawer, which he locked.

Rejoining Alley and myself, Tesla interrogated me about the use of electricity in Britain, how widespread it was becoming, what was the British government's commitment to long-term generation and transmission of power, the kinds of transmission being envisioned and the uses to which it was being put. Fortunately, because I had planned to have this meeting with Tesla, I had done my homework on the subject before leaving England, and was able to converse with him on a reasonably informed level, a fact for which he seemed appreciative. He was especially gratified to learn that many British installations appeared to favour his polyphase system, which was not the case here in the USA. "Most cities still prefer the Edison system," he growled, and went into a technical exposition of the failings of his rival's methods. I sensed that he had rehearsed these sentiments many times in the past, and to listeners better equipped to take them in than I was. The upshot of his complaint was that in the end people would come around to his alternating current system, but that they were wasting a lot of time and opportunities while they did so. On this subject, and on several others related to his work, he sounded humourless and forbidding, but at other times I found him delightful and amusing company.

Eventually, the focus of his questions turned to myself, my career, my interest in electricity, and to what uses I might wish to put it.

I had resolved, before leaving England, that were Tesla to enquire into the secrets of my illusions he would be one person to whom I would make an exception and reveal anything in which he might show interest. It seemed only right. When I had seen his lecture in London he had had all the appearance of a member of my own profession, taking the same delight in surprising and mystifying the audience, yet, unlike a magician, being more than willing, anxious even, to reveal and share his secrets.

He turned out to be incurious, though. I sensed that nothing would be gained by my harking on the subject. Instead, I let him direct our conversation, and for an hour or two he rambled entertainingly over his conflicts with Edison, his struggles against bureaucracy and the scientific establishment, and most of all his successes. His present laboratory had been funded, in effect, by the work of the last few years. He had installed the first water-powered city-sized electricity generator in the world; the generating station was at Niagara Falls, and the beneficiary city was Buffalo. It is true to say that Tesla had made his fortune at Niagara, but like many men of sudden wealth he wondered how long he could make last what he had.

As gently as I could I kept the conversation centred on money, because this is one of the few subjects where our interests genuinely meet. Of course he would not impart details of his finances to me, a virtual stranger, but funding is clearly a preoccupation. He mentioned J. Pierpoint Morgan, his present sponsor, several times.

Nothing was discussed between us that touched directly on the reason for my visit here, but there will be plenty of time for that in the days ahead. Yesterday, we were just getting to know one another, and learning of each other's interests.

I have said little of the dominant feature of his laboratory. All through the meal, and during the long conversation that followed, we were overshadowed by the bulk of his Experimental Coil. Indeed, the entire laboratory can be said to be the Coil, for there is little else there apart from recording and calibrating apparatus.

The Coil is immense. Tesla said that it had a diameter in excess of fifty feet, which I can well believe. Because the interior of the laboratory is not brightly lit the Coil has a gloomy, mysterious presence, at least while it is not being used. Constructed around a central core (the base of the tall metal pole that I had seen protruding through the roof), the Coil is wound around numerous wooden and metal battens, in a complexity that increases the closer in to the core you explore. With my layman's eyes I could make no sense of its design. The effect was to a large extent that of a bizarre cage. Everything about it and around it seemed haphazard. For instance, there were several ordinary wooden chairs in the laboratory, and several of these were in the immediate vicinity of the Coil. As indeed were many other bits and pieces: papers, tools, scraps of dropped and forgotten food, even a grubby-looking kerchief. I duly marvelled at the Coil when Tesla conducted me around it, but it was impossible for me then to understand any of it. All I grasped was that it was capable of using or transforming huge amounts of electricity. The power for it is sent up the mountain from Colorado Springs below; Tesla has paid for this by installing the town generators himself!

"I have all the electricity I want!" he said at one juncture. "As you will probably find during the evenings."

I asked him what he meant.

"You will notice that from time to time the town lights momentarily dim. Sometimes they even go off altogether for a few seconds. It means we are at work up here! Let me show you."

He led me out of the ramshackle building and across the uneven ground outside. After a short distance we came to a place where the side of the mountain dropped steeply away, and there, a long way below, was the whole extent of Colorado Springs, shimmering in the summer heat.

"If you come up here one night I'll demonstrate," he promised. "With a pull on one lever I can plunge that whole city into the dark."

As we headed back, he said, "You must indeed visit me one night. Night-time is the finest time in the mountains. As you have no doubt observed for yourself, the scenery here is on a grand scale but intrinsically lacking in interest. To one side, nothing but rocky peaks; to the other, land as flat as the top of a table. It is a mistake to look down or around. The real interest is above us!" He gestured towards the sky. "I have never known such clarity of air, such moonlight. Nor have I ever seen such storms as occur here! I chose this site because of the frequency of storms. There is one coming at this moment, as it happens."

I glanced around me, looking for the familiar sight of the piling anvil-topped cloud in the distance, or, if closer, the black mass of rain-bearing cloud that darkens the sky in the minutes before a storm actually breaks, but the sky was an untrammelled blue in every direction. The air, too, remained crisp and lively, with no hint of the ominous sultriness that always presages a downpour.

"The storm will arrive after seven this evening, in fact, let us examine my coherer, from which we can ascertain the exact time."

We walked back to the laboratory. As we did so I noticed that Randy Gilpin and his carriage had arrived, and were parked well away from where we were. Randy waved to me, and I waved back.

Tesla indicated one of the instruments I had noted earlier.

"This shows that a storm is currently in the region of Central City, about eighty miles to the north of us. Watch!"

He indicated a part of the device that could be seen through a magnifying lens, and jabbed a finger at it at odd moments. After peering at it for a while I saw what he was trying to indicate — a tiny electrical spark was bridging the visible gap between two metal studs.

"Each time it sparks it is registering a flash of lightning," Tesla explained. "Sometimes I will note the discharge here, and more than an hour later I will hear the thunder rumbling in from far away."

I was about to express my disbelief when I remembered the intense seriousness of the man. He had moved to another instrument, next to the coherer, and noted down two or three readings from it. I followed him to it.

"Yes," he said. "Mr Angier, would you be good enough to look at your timepiece this evening, and note the moment it happens to be when you see the first flash of lightning. By my calculation it should be between 7.15 p.m. and 7.20 p.m."

"You can predict the exact moment?" I said.

"Within about five minutes."

"Then you could make your fortune with this alone!" I exclaimed.

He looked uninterested.

"It is peripheral," he said. "My work is purely experimental, and my main concern is to know when a storm is going to break so that I might make the best use of it." He glanced over to where Gilpin was waiting. "I see your carriage has returned, Mr Angier. You plan to make another visit to see me?"

"I came to Colorado Springs for one reason only," I said. "That is so that I might put a business proposition to you."

"The best kind of proposition, in my experience," Tesla said gravely. "I shall expect you the day after tomorrow."

He explained that today was going to be taken up by a trip to the railhead to collect some more equipment.

With this I departed, and in due course returned with Gilpin to the town.

I must record that at exactly 7.19 p.m. there was a flash of lightning visible in the town, followed soon after by a crack of thunder. There then began one of the more spectacular storms it has been my lot to experience. During the course of it I ventured on to the balcony of my hotel room, and looked up at the heights of Pike's Peak for some glimpse of Tesla's laboratory. All was darkness.

13th July 1900

Today Tesla gave me a demonstration of his Coil in operation.

At the start he asked me if I was of a nervous disposition, and I said I was not. Tesla then gave me an iron bar to hold, one that was connected to the floor by a long chain. He brought to me a large glass dome, apparently filled with smoke or gas, and put it on the table before me. While I continued to hold the iron rod in my left hand, I placed, at his direction, the palm of my right hand against the glass chamber. Instantly, a brilliant light burst out inside the dome, and I felt every hair on my arm rise proud from my skin. I pulled back in alarm, and the light immediately vanished. Noticing Tesla's amused smile, I returned my hand to the glass and held it there steadily as the uncanny radiance burst forth once more.

There followed several more such experiments, some of which I had seen Tesla himself demonstrating in London. Determined not to reveal my nervous feelings, I endured the electrical discharging of each piece of apparatus stoically. Finally, Tesla asked me if I should care to sit within the main field of his Experimental Coil while he raised its power to twenty million volts!

"Is it entirely safe?" I enquired, but jutting my jaw a little, as if I were accustomed to taking risks.

"You have my word, sir. Is this not why you have come to see me?"

"Indeed it is," I confirmed.

Tesla indicated I should sit on one of the wooden chairs, and I did so. Mr Alley also came forward. He was dragging one of the other chairs, and he placed it beside me and sat down. He handed me a sheet of newspaper.

"See if you can read by unearthly light!" he said, and both he and Tesla chuckled.

I was smiling with them as Tesla brought down a metal handle and with an ear-shattering crashing noise there was a sudden discharge of electrical power. It burst out from the coils of wire above my head, folding out like the petals of some vast and deadly chrysanthemum. I watched in stupefaction as these jerking, spitting electrical bolts curved first up and around the head of the coil, then began moving down towards Alley and myself, as if seeking us as prey. Alley remained still beside me, so I forced myself not to move. Suddenly, one of the bolts touched me, and ran up and down the length of my body as if tracing my outline. Again, my skin horripilated, and my eyes were scorched by the light, but otherwise there was no pain, no burning sensation, no feeling of electrical shock.

Alley indicated the newspaper I was still clutching, so I held it before me and discovered, sure enough, that the radiance from the electricity was more than bright enough to read by. As I held the page before me, two sparks ran across its surface, almost as if an attempt was being made to ignite the paper. Marvellously, miraculously, the page did not burn.

Afterwards, Tesla suggested I might like to take another short walk with him, and as soon as we were outside in the open air he said, "Sir, let me congratulate you. You are brave."

"I was determined not to show my true feelings," I demurred.

Tesla told me many visitors to his laboratory were offered the same demonstrations I had just seen, but that few of them seemed ready to submit themselves to the imagined ravages of electrical discharge.

"Maybe they have not seen your demonstrations," I suggested. "I know you would not risk your own life, nor indeed that of someone who has travelled all the way from Great Britain to make you a business offer."

"Indeed not," said Tesla. "Perhaps now is the time when we should quietly discuss business. May I beg details of what you have in mind?"

"This is what I am not entirely sure about—" I began, and paused, trying to formulate the words.

"Do you propose to invest in my researches?"

"No, sir, I do not," I was able to say. "I know that you have had many experiences with investors."

"That indeed I have. I am thought by some to be a difficult man to work with, and very little I have in mind is likely to turn a short-term profit for an investor. It is something that has in the past caused vexed relationships."

"And in the present too, may I dare to venture? Mr Morgan was clearly on your mind when we spoke the other day."

"Mr J.P. Morgan is indeed a current preoccupation."

"Then let me say candidly that I am a wealthy man, Mr Tesla. I hope I might be able to assist you."

"But not by investment, you say."

"By purchase," I replied. "I wish you to build me an electrical apparatus, and if we can agree a price I shall gladly pay for it."

We had been strolling around the circumference of the cleared plateau on which the laboratory stands, but now Tesla came to a sudden halt. He struck a pose, staring thoughtfully towards the trees that covered the rising side of the mountain ahead of us.

"Which piece of apparatus do you require?" he said. "As you have seen my work is theoretical, experimental. None of it is for sale, and everything I am using at present is invaluable to me."

"Before I left England," I said, "I read a new article about your work in The Times . In the article it was said that you had discovered on a theoretical basis that electricity might be transmitted through the air, and that you planned to demonstrate the principle in the near future." Tesla was watching me fiercely while I spoke, but having declared my interest to such an extent I had to go on. "Many of your scientific colleagues have apparently said it is impossible, but you are confident of what you are doing. Would this be true?"

I stared directly into Tesla's eyes as I asked this final question, and saw that another great change had come across his features. Now his expression and gestures became animated and expressive.

"Yes, it is entirely true!" he cried, and at once launched into a wild and (to me) fairly incomprehensible account of what he planned.

Once thus begun he was unstoppable! He strode off in the direction we had been heading, speaking quickly and excitedly, making me trot to keep up with him. We were circling the laboratory at a distance, with the great balled spire constantly in view. Tesla gesticulated towards it several times while he spoke.

The essence of what he said was that he had long ago established that the most efficient way of transmitting his polyphase electrical current was to boost it to high voltages and direct it along high-tension cables. Now he was able to show that if the current was boosted to an even greater voltage then it became of extremely high frequency, and no cables at all would be required. The current would be sent out, radiated, cast broadly into the aether, whereupon by a series of detectors or receivers the electricity could be captured once more and turned to use.

"Imagine the possibilities, Mr Angier!" Tesla declared. "Every appliance, every utility, every convenience known to man or imaginable by him will be propelled by electricity that emanates from the air!"

Then, in a way I found curiously reminiscent of my erstwhile fellow passenger Bob Tannhouse, Tesla launched into a litany of possibilities: light, heat, hot-water baths, food, houses, amusements, automobiles… all would be electrically powered in some mysterious and undescribed way.

"You have this working?" I asked.

"Without question! On an experimental basis, you understand, but the experiments are repeatable by others, should they bother to try, and they can be controlled. This is no phantasm! Within a few years I shall be generating power for the whole world in the way that at present I power the city of Buffalo!"

We had circled the large area of ground twice while this exposition poured out of him, and I kept my pace beside him, determined to let his scientific rapture run its course. I knew that with his great intelligence he would return eventually to what I had first told him.

Finally he did. "Do I understand you to say you wish to buy this apparatus from me, Mr Angier?" he said.

"No, sir," I replied. "I am here to ask for another purchase."

"I am fully engaged in the work I am describing!"

"I appreciate that, Mr Tesla. I am seeking something new. Tell me this: if electrical energy may be transmitted, could physical matter also be sent from one place to another?"

The steadiness of his answer surprised me. He said, "Energy and matter are but two manifestations of the same force. Surely you realize this?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Then you already know the answer. Though I must add that I cannot see why anyone should wish to transmit matter."

"But could you make me the apparatus that would achieve this?"

"How much mass would be involved? What weight would there be? What size object?"

"Never more than two hundred pounds," I said. "And the size… let us say two yards in height, at most."

He waved a hand dismissively. "What sum are you offering me?"

"What sum do you require?"

"I desperately need eight thousand dollars, Mr Angier."

I could not prevent myself laughing aloud. It was more than I had planned, but still it was within my means. Tesla looked apprehensive, apparently thinking me mad, and backed away from me a little… but only a few moments later we were embracing on that windy plateau, clapping our hands against each other's shoulders, two needs meeting, two needs met.

As we drew apart, and clasped hands in contract together, a loud peal of thunder rang out somewhere in the mountains behind us, and rolled around us, rumbling and echoing in the narrow passes.

14th July 1900

Tesla drives a harder bargain than I had reckoned. I am to pay him not eight but ten thousand dollars, a small fortune by any standards. It seems he sleeps on important matters just like ordinary men, and awoke this morning with the realization that the eight thousand dollars would cover only the shortfall he was bearing before I arrived. My apparatus will cost more. Beside this, he has demanded that I pay him a goodly percentage in cash, and in advance. I have three thousand dollars I can produce in cash, and can raise another three with the bearer bonds I have brought with me, but the remainder will have to be sent from England.

Tesla agreed promptly to the arrangement.

Today he has quizzed me more closely about what I require of him. He is incurious about the magical effect I plan to achieve, but is concerned instead with practicalities. The size of the apparatus, the source of power for it, the weight it will need to be, the degree of portability required.

I find myself admiring his analytical mind. Portability was one aspect I had not thought about at all, but of course this is a critical factor for a touring magician.

He has already drawn up rough plans, and has banished me to the distractions of Colorado Springs for two days, while he visits Denver to acquire the constituent parts.

Tesla's reaction to my project has finally convinced me of something that until now I have only suspected. Borden has not been to Tesla!

I am learning about my old adversary. Through Olivia he was trying to misdirect me. His illusion uses the sort of flashy effects that ordinary people think are the power of electricity, but are in fact nothing more than flashy effects. He thought I would go on a wild-goose chase, while Tesla and I are actually confronting the heart of the hidden energy itself.

But Tesla works slowly! I am anxious about the passage of time. Naпvely I had thought that once I commissioned Tesla it would be a matter of hours before he produced the mechanism I required. I see, by the abstracted expression he bears as he mutters to himself, that I have started a process of invention that might know no practical end. (In an aside, Mr Alley confirmed that Tesla sometimes worries at a problem for months.)

I have firm bookings in England in October and November, and must be home well before the first of them.

I have two idle days until Tesla returns, and so I suppose I might use the time to research train and ship timetables. I find that America, a country great in many things, is not good at providing such information.

21st July 1900

Tesla's work apparently proceeds well. I am allowed to visit his laboratory every two days, and although I have seen something of the apparatus there has been no question yet of a demonstration. Today I found him tinkering with his research experiments. He seemed abstracted by them and was partly irritated and partly puzzled to see me.

4th August 1900

Violent thunderstorms have been playing around Pike's Peak for three days, casting me into gloom and frustration. I know that Tesla will be involved with his own experiments, not with mine.

The days are slipping by. I must be aboard the train out of Denver before the end of this month!

8th August 1900

Tesla told me on my arrival at the laboratory this morning that my apparatus was ready for demonstration, and in a state of great excitement I readied myself to see it. When it came to it, though, the thing refused to function, and after I had watched Tesla fiddling with some of the wiring for more than three hours I returned here to the hotel.

I am told by the First Colorado Bank that more of my money should be available in a day or two. Perhaps that will spur Tesla to greater efforts!

12th August 1900

Another abortive demonstration today. I was disappointed by the outcome. Tesla seemed puzzled, claiming that his calculations could not be in error.

The failure is briefly recorded. The prototype apparatus is a smaller version of his Coil, with the wiring arranged in a different fashion. After a prolonged lecture about the principles (none of which I understood, and which I soon came to realize was delivered by Tesla mainly for his own sake, a form of thinking aloud), Tesla produced a metal rod which he or Mr Alley had painted in a distinctive orange colour. He placed it on a platform, immediately beneath a kind of inverted cone of wiring; the apex of the cone focused directly on the rod.

When at Tesla's instruction Mr Alley worked a large lever situated close by the original Coil, there was the noisy but now familiar outburst of arcing electrical discharge. Almost at once the orange rod was surrounded by blue-white fire, which snaked around it in a most intimidating way. (I, thinking of the illusion I wished to work on the stage, was quietly satisfied by the appearance of this.) The noise and incandescence built up quickly, and soon it seemed as if molten particles of the rod itself were splashing to the floor; that they were not was evidenced by the unchanged, unharmed appearance of the rod.

After a few seconds Tesla waved his hands dramatically, Mr Alley threw back the control lever, the electricity instantly died away, and the rod was still in place.

Tesla immediately became absorbed in the mystery, and, as has happened before, my presence was thereafter ignored. Mr Alley has recommended me to stay away from the laboratory for a few days, but I am acutely conscious of time running out. I wonder if I have sufficiently impressed this upon Mr Tesla?

18th August 1900

Today is notable less for a second failed demonstration than for the fact that Tesla and I have argued with some bitterness. This quarrel happened in the immediate aftermath of his machine's failure to work, and so we were both keyed up, I with disappointment, Tesla with frustration.

After the orange-painted rod had failed to move again, Tesla picked it up and offered it to me to hold. A few seconds before it had been bathed in radiant light, with sparks flying in every direction. I took it from him gingerly, expecting my fingers to be singed by it. Instead, it was cold. This is the odd thing: it was not just cool, in the sense that it had not been heated, but actively cold, as if it had been surrounded by ice. I hefted the rod in my hand.

"Any more failures like this, Mr Angier," Tesla said, in a friendly enough voice, "and I might be obliged to give you that as a souvenir."

"I shall take it," I replied. "Although I should prefer to take with me what I came here to buy."

"Given enough time I shall move the Earth."

"Time is what I do not have much of," I riposted, tossing the rod to the floor. "And it is not the Earth I wish to move. Nor is it this metal stick."

"Then pray name your preferred object," Tesla said, with sarcasm. "I shall concentrate on that instead."

At that moment I felt impelled to release some of the feelings I have been holding back for several days.

"Mr Tesla," I said. "I have stood by while you have been using a chunk of metal, assuming that you needed to do so for experimental purposes. Is it my understanding, at this belated moment, that you could be using something else instead?"

"Within reason, yes."

"Then why do you not build the thing to do what I require?"

"Because, sir, you have not expressly described your requirements!"

"They do not involve the sending of short iron sticks," I said hotly. "Even if the contraption were to work in the way I thought I had specified, it would be of little use to me. I wish it to transmit a living body! A man!"

"So you wish me to demonstrate my failures not on a hapless iron rod, but on a human being? Whom do you nominate for this dangerous experiment?"

"Why should it be dangerous?" I said.

"Because all experiment is risky."

"I am the one who will be using this."

"You wish to submit yourself ?" Tesla laughed with brittle menace. "Sir, I shall require the remainder of your money before I start experimenting on you!"

"It is time for me to leave," I said, and turned away, feeling angry and chastened. I pushed past him and Alley, and made it to the outside. There was no sign of Randy Gilpin but I strode off anyway, determined if necessary to walk the whole way down to the town.

"Mr Angier, sir!" Tesla was standing at the door to his laboratory. "Let us not exchange hasty words. I should have explained properly to you. Had I but known that you wished to transmit living organisms, you would not have presented me with such a challenge. It is difficult to deal with massy, inorganic compounds. Living tissue is not of the same order of problem."

"What are you saying, Professor?" I asked.

"If you wish me to transmit an organism, please return here tomorrow. It shall be done."

I nodded my confirmation then continued on my way, stepping on the loose gravel of the path that descended the mountainside. I expected to meet Gilpin on the way down, but even should he not appear I was anyway determined to make the most of the exercise. The road snaked down the mountain in a series of sharp bends doubling back on each other, often with a precipitous drop to the side.

When I had walked about half a mile my attention was caught by a flash of colour in the long grass beside the track, and I stopped to investigate. It was a short iron rod, painted orange, apparently identical to the one Tesla had been using. Thinking I might after all keep a souvenir of this extraordinary meeting with Tesla, I picked it up, brought it down the mountain, and I have it with me now.

19th August 1900

I found Tesla in a mood of despond when Gilpin deposited me at the laboratory this morning.

"I fear I am about to let you down," he said to me when he came to the door. "Much work remains, and I know how pressing is your return to Britain."

"What has occurred?" I inquired, glad that the anger that flared between us yesterday was a thing of the past.

"I believed it would be a simple matter with life organisms. The structure is so much simpler than that of the elements. Life already contains minute amounts of electricity. I was working on the assumption that all I had to do was boost that energy. I am at a loss as to why this has not worked! The computations worked out exactly. Come and see the evidence for yourself."

Inside the laboratory I noticed Mr Alley was adopting a stance I had never associated with him before; he stood in bellicose fashion, arms folded protectively, jaw jutting pugnaciously, a man angry and defensive if ever I saw one. Beside him on the bench was a small wooden cage, containing a diminutive black cat with white whiskers and paws, presently asleep.

As his eyes were fixed on me as I walked in, I said, "Good morning, Mr Alley!"

"I hope you will not be a party to this, Mr Angier!" Alley cried. "I brought my children's cat on the firm promise that it would not be harmed. Mr Tesla gave me an exact assurance last night! Now he insists that we submit the wretched creature to an experiment that will undoubtedly kill it!"

"I don't care for the sound of this," I said to Tesla.

"Nor I. Do you think I am inhumane, capable of torturing one of God's more beautiful creatures? Come and see what you think."

He led me to the apparatus, which I immediately saw had been entirely rebuilt overnight. When I was a foot or two away from it, I recoiled in horror! About half a dozen enormous cockroaches, with shiny black carapaces and long antennae, were scattered all around. They were the most repulsive creatures I had ever seen.

"They are dead, Angier," said Tesla, noticing my reaction. "They cannot harm you."

"Yes, dead!" said Alley. "And that's the rub! He intends me to place the cat in the same jeopardy."

I looked down at the huge and disgusting insects, wary of any sign from them of a return to life. I stepped back again when Tesla nudged at one with the toe of his boot, and turned it over for me to see.

"It seems I have built a machine that murders roaches," Tesla murmured gently. "They are God's creatures too, and I am made despondent by it all. I did not intend that this device should take life."

"What's going wrong?" I said to Tesla. "Yesterday you sounded so sure."

"I have calculated and recalculated a dozen times. Alley has checked the mathematics too. It is the nightmare of every experimental scientist: an inexplicable dichotomy between theoretical and actual results. I confess I am confounded. Such a thing has never happened to me before."

"May I see the calculations?" I said.

"Of course you may, but if you are not a mathematician I fear they will not convey much to you."

He and Alley produced a great loose-leaf ledger in which his computations had been carried out, and together we pored over them for a long time. Tesla showed me, as best I was able to understand, the principle behind them, and the calculated results. I nodded as intelligently as I could, but only at the end, when I could take the calculations for granted and concentrate on the results, did an unexpected glimmering of sense shine through.

"You say that this determines the distance?" I said.

"That is a variable. For purposes of experimentation I have been using a value of one hundred metres, but such a distance is academic, since, as you see, nothing I try to transmit travels any distance at all."

"And this value here?" I said, jabbing my finger at another line.

"The angle. I have been using compass points. It will direct in any of three hundred and sixty degrees from the apex of the energy vortex. Again, for the time being that is an entirely academic entry."

"Do you have a setting for elevation?" I asked.

"I am not using it. Until the apparatus is fully working I am merely aiming into the clear air to the east of the laboratory. One must be careful not to cause a rematerialization in a position already occupied by another mass! I do not care to think what might happen."

I looked thoughtfully at the neatly inscribed mathematics. I do not know the process by which it happened, but suddenly I was struck by inspiration! I dashed out of the laboratory and stared from the doorway due east. As Tesla had said, what lay beyond was mostly clear air, because in this direction the plateau was at its narrowest and the ground began to drop away some ten metres from the path. I moved quickly over and looked downwards. Below me I could glimpse through the trees the pathway snaking down the mountainside.

When I returned to the laboratory I went straight to my portmanteau and pulled out the iron rod I had found beside the path yesterday evening. I held it up for Tesla to see.

"Your experimental object, I do believe?" I said.

"Yes it is."

I told him where I had found it, and when. He hurried across to the apparatus where its twin was lying, discarded in favour of the unlucky cockroaches. He held the two together, and Alley and I stood with him, marvelling at their identical appearance.

"These marks, Mr Angier!" Tesla breathed in awe, lightly fingering a criss-cross patch neatly etched into the metal. "I made them so that I might prove by identification that this object had been transmitted through the aether. But—"

"It has made a facsimile of itself!" Alley said.

"Where did you say you found this, sir?" Tesla demanded.

I led the two men outside and explained, pointing down the mountain. Tesla stared in silent thought.

Then he said, "I need to see the actual place! Show me!" To Alley he said, "Bring the theodolite, and some measuring tape! As soon as you can!"

And with that he set off down the precipitous path, clutching me by my upper arm, imploring me to show him the exact location of the find. I assumed I would be able to lead him straight to it, but as we moved further down the track I was no longer so sure. The huge trees, the broken rocks, the scrubby forest-floor vegetation, all looked much alike. With Tesla gesticulating at me and gabbling in my ear it was almost impossible to concentrate.

I eventually came to a particular turn in the path where the grass grew long, and I paused before it. Alley, who had been trotting after us, soon caught us up and under Tesla's directions set up the theodolite. A few careful measurements were enough for Tesla to reject the place.

After about half an hour we had agreed on another likely site. It was exactly to the east of the laboratory, although of course a substantial distance beneath it. When we took into account the steepness of the mountainside, and the fact that the iron rod would have bounced and rolled on hitting the ground, it did seem that this was a likely position in which it would end up. Tesla was evidently satisfied, and he was deep in thought as we walked back up the mountain to his laboratory.

I too had been thinking, and as soon as we were inside once more I said, "May I make a suggestion?"

"I am already greatly indebted to you, sir," Tesla replied. "Say what you will!"

"Since you are able to calibrate the device, rather than simply aim your experiments into the air to the east of us, could you not send them a shorter distance? Perhaps across the laboratory itself, or outside to the area surrounding the building?"

"We evidently think alike, Mr Angier!"

In all the times I had been with him I had never seen Tesla so cheerful, and he and Alley set to work immediately. Once again I became supernumerary, and went to sit silently at the rear of the laboratory. I have long since fallen into the habit of taking some food with me to the laboratory (Tesla and Alley have the most irregular feeding habits when engrossed by their work) and so I ate the sandwiches made for me by the staff at the hotel.

After a longer and more tedious period than I can describe here, Tesla finally said, "Mr Angier, I believe we are ready."

And so it was that I went to examine the apparatus, for all the world like a member of a theatre audience invited on stage to inspect a magician's cabinet, and with Tesla I went outside and established beyond doubt that his designated target area was empty of any metal rods.

When he inserted the experimental rod, and manipulated his lever, a most satisfactory bang heralded successful completion of the experiment. The three of us rushed outside, and sure enough, there on the grass, was the familiar orange-painted iron rod.

Back in the laboratory we all examined the "original" piece. Stone-cold it was, but undoubtedly identical to the twin that had been made of it across the emptiness of space.

"Tomorrow, sir," Tesla said to me, "tomorrow, and with the consent of my noble assistant here, we shall endeavour to safely transport the cat from one place to another. If that can be achieved, I take it you will be satisfied?"

"Indeed, Mr Tesla," I said warmly. "Indeed."

20th August 1900

And indeed it has been done. The cat has crossed the aether unscathed!

There was a small hitch, however, and Tesla has returned to the preoccupations of his calling, and once more I am banished to my hotel, and once more I find myself fretting about the time that is slipping away.

Tesla promises me another demonstration tomorrow, and this time he has told me there will be no more problems. I sense a man who is anxious for the remainder of his fee.

11th October 1900

Caldlow House, Derbyshire

I did not expect to live to write these words. Following the accidental demise of my elder brother Henry, and because of his having left no issue, I have finally come to the title and lands of my father.

I am now permanently in residence in the family home, and have abandoned my career as a stage illusionist. My daily routine is occupied with the administration of the estate, and by needing to attend to the numerous practical problems that have been created by Henry's whims, peccadillos and sheer financial misjudgements.

I now sign myself,

Rupert, 14th Earl of Colderdale.

12th November 1900

I have just returned from a visit of a few days to my old house in London. My intention had been to clear out the place, and my former workshop, and sell both properties on the open market. The Caldlow estate is on the verge of bankruptcy and I am in a hurry to raise some cash for urgent repairs to both the house and some of the estate buildings. Naturally, I have been cursing myself for squandering practically all the accumulated wealth from my stage career on Tesla. Just about my last act on leaving Colorado, as I returned to England in haste on the news of Henry's death, was to hand over the rest of the fee. It did not occur to me then how radically my whole life was to be changed by the news.

Returning to Idmiston Villas had an unanticipated effect on me, though. I found it full of memories, of course, and these were as mixed as all such memories can be, but above all I was reminded of my first days in London. Then I was hardly more than a boy, disinherited, callow in the ways of the world, incompletely educated, not trained in any skill or profession. Yet I had carved out a life and livelihood for myself, against the odds, and in the end made myself moderately wealthy and more than usually renowned. I was, I suppose I still am, at the top of the magic profession. And far from resting on my laurels, I had invested most of my money in new and innovative magical apparatus, the use of which would doubtless have given my career a new momentum.

I thought in such wistful fashion for two days, and finally sent round a note to Julia's address. She was on my mind, because in spite of the fact that we separated many years ago I still identify my early days in London with her. I cannot any longer distinguish my early plans and dreams from the period in which I fell in love with her.

Rather to my surprise, but to my intense pleasure, she consented to meet me, and two days ago I spent an afternoon with her and the children at the house of one of her women friends.

To see my family again in such circumstances was emotionally overwhelming, and any plans I might have made beforehand to raise practical matters were abandoned. Julia, at first cool and remote, was obviously much affected by my expressions of shock and emotion (Edward, sixteen now, is so tall and good-looking!; Lydia and Florence are so beautiful and gentle!; I could not keep my eyes off them all afternoon) and before long she was speaking kindly and warmly to me.

I then told her my news. Even when we were married and living together I had never revealed my past to her, so what I had to say to her was a triple surprise. Firstly I had to tell her that I had once renounced a family and estate of which she had never heard, secondly that I had now returned to it, and thirdly that as a consequence I had decided to abandon my stage career.

As I should have guessed in advance, Julia appeared to take all this calmly. (Only when I told her that she should henceforward be correctly addressed as Lady Julia did her composure momentarily break.) A little later, she asked me if I was sure I should abandon my career. I said I saw no alternative. She told me that although we were separated she had continued to follow my magic career with admiration, regretting only that she were no longer a part of it.

As we spoke I felt rising in me, or more correctly sinking out of me, a despair that I had thrown away my wife, and more unforgivably my splendid children, for the sake of the American woman.

Yesterday, before leaving London, I sought out Julia a second time. This time the children were not with her.

I threw myself at her mercy, and begged her forgiveness for all the sins I had committed against her. I pleaded with her to return to me, and live with me once more as my wife. I promised her anything in my power to grant, should she accept.

She said no, but promised that she would consider carefully. I deserve no better.

Later in the day I caught the overnight train to Sheffield. I thought of nothing but reconciliation with Julia.

14th November 1900

However, I am obliged to think of nothing but money, faced once more as I am with the realities of this decaying house.

It is ridiculous to be inconvenienced by shortage of money so soon after squandering that huge amount, so I have written to Tesla and demanded a refund of everything I paid him. It is nearly three months since I left Colorado Springs and I have not had a single word from him. He will have to pay, no matter what his circumstances, because at the same time I have written to the firm of attorneys in New York who aided me in a small legal matter during my last tour. I have instructed them to start proceedings against him from the first day of next month. If he refunds me immediately he receives my letter I shall call off the hounds, but he will have to take the consequences if he does not.

15th November 1900

I am about to return to London.

17th November 1900

I am back in Derbyshire, and weary of travelling on trains. I am not, however, weary of life.

Julia has put to me a proposition about a way we could possibly be together in the future. It boils down to my having to make a simple decision.

She says she will return to me, live with me once more as my wife, but only if I resume my magic career. She wishes me to leave Caldlow House and return to Idmiston Villas. She says that she and the children do not wish to move to a house in a remote and, to them, unknown part of Derbyshire. She has put the point to me in terms so simple that I know they are non-negotiable.

To try to persuade me that her proposal is also for my own good, she adds four general arguments.

First she says the stage is in her blood as much as mine, and that although she now sees the children as her first duty she would wish to participate wholly in all my future stage endeavours. (I presume by this she means I will not be allowed foreign tours without her, so there will be no risk of another Olivia Svenson coming between us.)

At the beginning of this year, she next argues, I was at the peak of my profession, but that by default the wretched Borden is on the brink of taking my laurels. Apparently, he is continuing to perform his version of the switch illusion.

Julia then reminds me that the only reliable way I know of earning money is to perform magic, and that I have a duty to go on supporting her as well as running the family estate she has never seen and had never heard of until last week.

Finally she points out that I will not lose my inheritance by continuing to work in London, and the house and everything that goes with the estate will still be waiting for me when the time comes for retirement. Urgent matters, such as repairs, can be managed from London almost as easily as from the house.

So I have returned to Derbyshire, ostensibly to attend to matters here, but in fact I do need some time alone to think.

I cannot walk away from my responsibilities in Caldlow House. There are the tenant farmers, the household staff, the commitments my family have traditionally made to the rural council, the church, the parishioners, and so on. I find myself taking these matters seriously, so I presume they have always been flowing, unsuspected, in the blood hitherto.

But what practical use can I be in any of these functions if I am to become, as seems likely, bankrupt?

19th November 1900

What I really want is to be with Julia and my family once more, but to do so means accepting Julia's terms. Moving back to London would not be difficult, but I do feel a terrific resistance to the idea of going back on the stage.

I have been away from it for just a few weeks, but I had not realized what a burden it had all become. I remember the day, back in Colorado Springs, when the news of Henry's death belatedly reached me. I thought nothing of Henry and his humiliating but appropriate demise in Paris. What I felt was for myself, a burst of relief, genuine and uplifting relief.

I would be free at last of the mental stresses and strains associated with performing illusions. There would be an end, a thankful end, to the daily hours of practice. No more overnight stays in appalling provincial hotels or seaside lodging houses. No more tiresome train journeys. I would be free of the ceaseless attention to practical matters; making sure the props and costumes would arrive in the same places as me and at the same time, checking the backstage areas of the theatres for the best use of my props, employing and paying the staff, and a hundred other minor chores. All these had suddenly vanished from my life.

And I had also thought about Borden. There was my unshakable foe, lurking out there in the world of magic, ready to resume his campaign of pranks against me.

If I never went back I would miss none of it. I had not realized how the resentment had been growing inside me.

But Julia tempts me.

There is the happy laughter from the audience when I work a surprising effect, the radiance of the lights beaming down upon me, the friendship of the other artistes I meet in the daily round, the applause at the end of my performance. Inevitably also, the fame, the admiring glances in the street, the respectful regard of my contemporaries, the recognition in the highest areas of society. No honest man could say these mean nothing to him.

And the money. How I crave the money!

It is of course no longer a question of what I will decide, but how soon I can convince myself I must do it.

20th November 1900

To London once more by train.

21st November 1900

I am at Idmiston Villas, and I have found here a letter from Alley, the assistant to Nikola Tesla. I now transcribe it:

September 27, 1900

Mr Angier, Sir:

I don't expect you have heard but Nikola Tesla has left Colorado already, and is rumored to have moved his operation to the East, probably to New York or New Jersey. His laboratory here has been seized by his creditors, and it is currently looking for a purchaser. I have been left in the lurch, with more than a month's pay due to me.

You will wish to know, however, that in some matters Mr Tesla is a man of honor, and before our work here was completed your equipment was as instructed shipped to your workshop.

Once the apparatus has been correctly put together (I wrote the assembly instructions myself) you will find it is in complete working order, and operates exactly to the agreed technical specification. The device is self-regulating, and should continue to work without adjustment or repair for many years. All you should do is keep it clean, brighten the electrical contact points should they become dull, and in general ensure that no physical damage goes unrepaired. (Mr Tesla enclosed a set of spares for those parts which will, in the ordinary course, require replacement. All the other parts, such as the wooden struts, may be replaced from normal sources.)

I would of course be fascinated to learn what illusions you work with this extraordinary invention, because I am as you know one of your greatest admirers. Although you were not here to see it for yourself, I can testify that Snowshoes (the name of my children's pet cat) was safely transported several times by the device, but is back once more with our family as a domestic animal.

Let me say in conclusion, Sir, that I was honored to play some part, no matter how small, in building this apparatus for you.

Yours most sincerely, Fareham K. Alley, Dip. Eng.

P.S.: You were once kind enough to admire, and pretend bafflement by, the small tricks I had the temerity to show to you. Since you made such a point of demanding an explanation, perhaps you would like to know that my little illusion with the five playing-cards and the disappearing silver dollars was achieved by a combination of classic palming and a card force. I was most gratified by your response to this trick, and would be delighted to send on detailed instructions about each move in turn, should you require them. F.K.A.

As soon as I read this I hurried around to my workshop. I enquired of my neighbours there if a large package might recently have been delivered from the USA, but they knew nothing of it.

22nd November 1900

I showed Alley's letter to Julia this morning, quite forgetting that I had not yet told her about my most recent trip to the USA, and what I had done there. Of course her curiosity was aroused by it, and I then needed to explain.

"So this is where all your money has gone?" she said.

"Yes."

"And Tesla has apparently absconded, and we have only this letter to show for it?"

I assured her that Alley was trustworthy, and pointed out that he had written his letter without solicitation from me. For a while we discussed what might have happened to the package while en route to me, where it might be, and how we might recover it.

Then Julia said, "What is so special about the illusion?"

"Not the illusion itself," I replied. "It is the means by which it is achieved."

"Is Mr Borden something to do with this?"

"You have not forgotten Mr Borden, I see."

"My dear, it was Alfred Borden who drove the first wedge between us. I have had many years to reflect, and I trace everything that went wrong back to that day when he attacked me." Tears had started in her eyes, making them gleam with grief, but she spoke in quiet rage and without any trace of self-pity. "Had he not hurt me I should not have lost our first child, and the aftermath, in which I felt a great divide opening between us, would not have occurred. Your restlessness began then. Even the dear children who followed could not compensate for the cruelty and stupidity of what Borden did that day, and that the feud between you continues is proof of the outrage you too must still feel."

"I have never spoken to you about that," I said. "How do you know?"

"Because I am not a fool, Rupert, and I have seen occasional remarks in the magic magazines." I had not known she continued to subscribe to those. "You are still prime amongst my concerns," she said. 'I wonder only why you have never spoken to me of his attacks."

"Because I am, I suppose, a little ashamed of the feud."

"Surely he is the aggressor?"

"I have had to defend myself," I said.

I told her about my investigations into his past, and my attempts to discover how he worked the illusion. Then I described the hopes I had for Tesla's equipment.

"Borden relies on standard stage trickery," I explained. "He uses cabinets and lights and make-up, and when he transports himself across the stage he does so by concealment. He enters one apparatus and emerges from another. It is brilliantly done, but the mystery is not only concealed by his props it is also made banal by them. The beauty of the Tesla device is that the trick can be carried out in the open, and the materialization uses no props at all! If it works as planned I shall be transporting myself instantly to any position I like: to an empty part of the stage, to the royal box, to the front of the grand circle, even to an empty seat in the centre of the stalls! Anywhere, indeed, that will produce the greatest impact on the audience."

"You make it sound a little provisional," Julia said. "You say this is still being planned?"

"As Alley says in his letter, it has been despatched to me

… but I have yet to receive it!"

Julia was the perfect audience for my enthusiasms about Tesla's device, and for the next hour or more we discussed all the possibilities it presented to me. Julia quickly identified the instinct that had been at the heart of it; if I were to perform this illusion on any public stage it would thwart Borden forever!

Were there any remaining doubts about what I should be doing, Julia dispelled them forever. Indeed, so excited was she that we began our search for the shipment at once.

I proposed, gloomily, that it would take several weeks to tour around the many shipping agents’ offices in London, trying to trace an undelivered crate. But Julia said, in her familiar way of cutting through the Gordian Knot: "Why do we not begin our enquiries with the Post Office?" So it was, two hours later, that we located two immense crates addressed to me, waiting safely in the dead-letter section of the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.

15th December 1900

Most of the last three weeks have been an agony of frustration, because I have been waiting for electricity to be supplied to my workshop. I have been like a small boy with a toy I could not play with. The Tesla apparatus has been erected in my workshop ever since I picked it up from Mount Pleasant, but without a supply of current it is useless. I have read Mr Alley's lucid instructions a thousand times! However, after my increasingly frequent reminders and urgings, the London Electricity Company has at last done the necessary work.

I have been rehearsing ever since, wrapped up mentally and emotionally in the demands this extraordinary device makes on me. Here, in no particular order, is a summary of what I have learned.

It is in full working order, and has been ingeniously designed to work on all presently known versions of electrical supply. This means I may travel with my show, even to Europe, the USA and (Alley claims in his instructions) the Far East.

However, I cannot perform my show unless the theatre has electrical current supplied. In future I will have to check this before I accept any new bookings, as well as many other new matters (some of which follow).

Portability. I know Tesla has done his best, but the equipment is damnably heavy. From now on, planning the delivery, unpacking and setting up of the apparatus is a priority. It means, for instance, that the simple informality of a train-ride to one of my shows is a thing of the past, at least if I wish to perform the Tesla illusion.

Technical rehearsals. The apparatus has to be erected twice. First for private testing on the morning of the show, then, while the main curtain is down and another act is in progress, it has to be re-erected for the performance. The admirable Alley has included suggestions as to how it might be carried out speedily and silently, but even so this is going to be hard work. Much rehearsal will be necessary, and I shall require extra assistants.

Physical layout of the theatres. I or Adam Wilson will always need to reconnoitre beforehand.

Boxing the stage. This is practicably straightforward, but in many theatres it antagonizes the backstage staff, who for some reason think they have an automatic right to have revealed to them what they consider to be trade secrets. In this case, allowing strangers to see what I am actually doing on stage is out of the question. Again, more preparatory work than usual will be necessary.

Post-performance sealing of the apparatus, and private disassembly, are also procedures fraught with risk. I cannot accept any bookings until these procedures have been worked out and ensuing problems resolved.

All this special preparation! However, careful planning and rehearsal are in the essence of successful stage magic, and I am no stranger to any of them.

One small step forward. All stage illusions are given names by their inventors, and it is by these that they become known in the profession. The Three Graces, Decapitation, Cassadaga Propaganda, are examples of three illusions at present popular in the halls. Borden, stodgily, calls his second-rate version of the trick The New Transported Man (a name I have never used, even when I was employing his methods). After some thought I have decided to call the Tesla invention In a Flash, and by this it will become known.

I also use this entry to note that as of last Monday, 10th December, Julia and the children have returned and are living with me at Idmiston Villas. They will see Caldlow House for the first time when we spend the Christmas holiday there.

29th December 1900

In Caldlow House

I am a happy man, given this, my second chance. I cannot bear to think of past Christmases when I was estranged from my family, nor the thought that somehow I might again lose this happiness.

I am therefore busily preparing for what must follow, all in order to avert that which might otherwise follow. I say this with deliberate obscurity, because now that I have rehearsed In a Flash a couple of times, and I have learned its true working, I must be circumspect about its secret, even here.

"When the children are asleep, and Julia encourages me to attend to business, I have been concentrating on the affairs of the estate. I am determined to put right the neglect my brother allowed.

31st December 1900

I write these words as the nineteenth century draws to a close. In an hour from now I shall descend to our drawing room, where Julia and the children are waiting for me, and together we shall see in the New Year and the New Century. It is a night resonant with auguries for the future, also with unavoidable reminders from the past.

Because secrecy again has a hold on me, I must say that what Hutton and I did earlier this evening had to be done.

What I am about to write will be written with a hand that still trembles from the primaeval fears that were aroused in me. I have been thinking hard about what I can record of the experience, and have decided that a straightforward, even bald, description of what happened is the only way.

This evening, soon after nightfall, while the children were taking an early nap so that they could be awake later to see in the new century, I told Julia what I was about to do, and left her waiting in her sitting room.

I found Hutton, and we left the house and went together across the East Lawn towards the family vault. We transported the prestige materials on a handcart sometimes used by the gardeners.

Hutton and I had only storm lanterns to guide us, and unlocking the padlocked gate in near darkness took several minutes. The old lock had grown stiff with disuse.

As the wooden portal swung open, Hutton declared his unease. I felt terrific sympathy for him.

I said, "Hutton, I don't expect you to go through with this. You may wait for me here if you like. Or you could return to the house, and I'll continue alone."

"No, my Lord," he replied in his honest way. "I have agreed to this. To be frank I would not go in there alone, and neither, I dare say, would you. But apart from our imaginings there is nothing to fear."

Leaving the cart by the entrance, we ventured inside. We held the storm lanterns raised at arm's length. The beams ahead did not reveal much, but our large shadows fell on the walls beside us. My memory of the vault was vague, because the only other time I had been inside I was still just a boy. The shallow flight of roughly cut stone steps led down into the hillside, and at the bottom, where there was a second door, the cavern widened a little.

The inner door was unlocked, but it was stiff and heavy to move aside. We grated it open, then went through into the abysmally dark space beyond. We could sense rather than see the cavern spreading before us. Our lanterns barely penetrated the gloom.

There was an acrid smell in the air, so sharp that it was almost a taste in the mouth. I lowered my lantern and adjusted the wick, hoping to tease a little more light from it. Our irruption into the place had set free a million motes of dust, swirling around us.

Hutton spoke beside me, his voice muted in the stifling acoustics of the underground chamber.

"Sir, should I collect the prestige materials?"

I could just make out his features in the lantern's glow.

"Yes, I think so. Do you need me to help you?"

"If you would wait at the bottom of the steps, sir."

He walked quickly up the flight of steps, and I knew he wanted to be done as soon as possible. As his light receded I felt more keenly alone, vulnerable to childish fears of the dark, and of the dead.

Here in this place were most of my forebears, laid out ritually on shelves and slabs, rendered down to bones or fragments of bones, lying in boxes and shrouds, wreathed in dust and flaking garments. When I cast the lantern about I could make out dim shapes on some of the nearer slabs. Somewhere, down the vault, out of the range of my lamp, I heard the scuttling of a large rodent. I moved to the right, reaching out with my hand, and felt a stone slab at about the height of my waist and I groped across it. I felt small sharp objects, loose to the touch. The stink immediately intensified in my nose, and I felt myself beginning to gag. I recoiled away, glimpsing the horrid fragments of that old life as my beam swung around. All the rest were invisible to me, yet with no difficulty I could imagine the scene that lay before me just beyond the feeble reach of the lamp. In spite of this I held the lamp high, and swung it around, hoping for a sight of what was there. I knew the reality could hardly be as unpleasant as my imaginings! I sensed that these long-dead ancestors were being roused by my arrival, and were shifting from their positions, raising a grisly head or a skeletal hand, croaking out their own obscure terrors that my presence was arousing in them.

One of these rocky shelves bore the casket of my own father.

I was torn by my fears. I wanted to follow Hutton up to the outside air, yet I knew I had to plunge further on into the depths of the vault. I could make neither move, because dread held me to where I stood. I am a rational man who seeks explanations and welcomes the scientific method, yet for those few seconds Hutton was away from me I was tormented by the easy rush of the illogical.

Then at last I heard him again on the steps, dragging the first of the large sacks containing the prestige materials. I was only too glad to turn and give him a hand, even though he seemed able to shift the weight on his own. I had to put down my lantern while we got the sack through the door, and because Hutton had left his own light with the handcart we were working in almost total darkness.

I said to him, "I'm profoundly glad you are here to help me, Hutton."

"I realize that, my Lord. I should not have cared to do this myself alone."

"Then let us complete it quickly."

This time we went back to the handcart together, and dragged down the second large sack.

My original plan had been to explore the crypt in full, looking for the best place in which to store the prestige materials, but now I was here I lost all wish to do anything of the sort. Because our lights were so inadequate at penetrating the darkness I knew that all searching would have to be done at close quarters. I dreaded having to investigate any more of those shelves and slabs that I was so readily envisaging. They were around me on both sides, and the cavern extended far beyond. It was full of death, full of the dead, redolent of finality, life abandoned to the rats.

"We'll leave the sacks here," I said. "As far off the floor as possible. I'll come down here again tomorrow, when it's daylight. With a better torch."

"I completely understand, sir."

Together we went to the left wall, and located another of the slabs. Bracing myself, I felt across it with my hand. There seemed to be nothing significant there, so with Hutton's help I lifted up the two sackfuls of prestige materials. With this done, and without saying another word between us, we returned quickly to the surface, and pushed the outer door closed behind us. I shuddered.

In the cold air of the night-time garden, Hutton and I shook hands.

"Thank you for helping me, Hutton," I said. "I had no idea that it would be like that down there."

"Nor I, my Lord. Will you be requiring anything else from me this evening?"

I considered.

"Would you and your wife care to join myself and Lady Colderdale at midnight? We plan to see in the New Year."

"Thank you, sir. We shall be honoured to do so."

And that was how our expedition ended. Hutton dragged the handcart away towards the garden shed, and I crossed the East Lawn then walked around the periphery of the house to the main entrance. I came directly to this room, to write my account while events were still fresh.

However, a necessary delay arose before I could begin. As I entered the room I caught a sight of myself in my dressing mirror, and I stopped to look.

Thick white dust clung to my boots and ankles. Cobwebs straggled across my shoulders and chest. My hair had become matted on my head, apparently held down by a thick layer of grey dirt, and the same filth caked my face. My eyes, red-rimmed, stared out from the hollow mask my face had become, and for a few moments I stood there transfixed by the sight of myself. It seemed to me that I had been hideously transformed by my visit to the family tomb, becoming one of its denizens.

I shook off the thought with the dirty clothes, climbed into the filled bath waiting for me in my dressing room, and washed away the grime.

Now this account has been written, and it is close to midnight. It is time for me to seek out my family and household for the simple and familiar ceremony that celebrates the end of one year and, in this case, one century, then welcomes in the next.

The twentieth century is the one when my children shall mature and thrive, and I, of the old century, shall in due course leave it to them. But before I go I intend to leave my mark.

1st January 1901

I have been back to the vault, and moved the prestige materials to a better position. Hutton and I then put down some rat poison, but in future I shall have to find something more secure than canvas sacks in which to store the materials.

15th January 1901

Idmiston Villas

Hesketh Unwin reports that he has received three bookings for me. Two of them are already confirmed, while the other is conditional on my inclusion of In a Flash (which is now temptingly described in Unwin's standard proposal). I have agreed to this, and so all three bookings may be considered secure. A total of three hundred and fifty guineas!

Yesterday, the Tesla apparatus arrived back from Derbyshire, and with Adam Wilson's assistance I immediately unpacked it and erected it. According to my clock it took under fifteen minutes. We must be able to be sure of doing it within ten minutes, when working in a theatre. Mr Alley's sheet of instructions declares that when he and Tesla were testing its portability they were able to erect the whole thing in under twelve minutes.

Adam Wilson knows the secret of the illusion, as he must. Adam has been working for me for more than five years, and I believe I can trust him. To be as sure as reasonably possible I have offered him a confidentiality bonus of ten pounds, to be paid into an accumulating fund in his name after each successful performance. He and Gertrude are expecting their second child.

I have been putting in more work on my stage presentation of In a Flash, as well as rehearsing several of my other illusions. As it is several months since my last public performance I am a little rusty. I confess I approached such routine work without enthusiasm, but once I settled down to it I began to enjoy myself.

2nd February 1901

Tonight I performed at the Finsbury Park Empire, but did not include In a Flash. I accepted the commission as a way of testing the water, to experience the feeling once again of performing before a live audience.

My version of The Disappearing Piano went down exceptionally well, and I was applauded loud and long, but at the end of my act I felt myself frustrated and dissatisfied.

I hunger to perform the Tesla illusion!

14th February 1901

I rehearsed In a Flash twice yesterday, and will do so twice again tomorrow. I dare not make it any more than that. I shall be performing it on Saturday evening at the Trocadero in Holloway Road, then at least once again in the week following. I believe that if I can perform it regularly enough then extra rehearsals, beyond stage movements, misdirection and patter, should not be necessary.

Tesla warned me that there would be aftereffects, and these are indeed profound. It is no trivial matter to use the apparatus. Each time I pass through it I suffer.

In the first place there is the physical pain. My body is wrenched apart, disassembled. Every tiny particle of me is thrown asunder, becoming one with the aether. In a fraction of a second, a fraction so small that it cannot be measured, my body is converted into electrical waves. It is radiated through space. It is reassembled at its designated target.

Slam! I am broken apart! Slam! I am together again!

It is a violent shock that explodes in every part of me, in every direction. Imagine a steel bar smashing into the palm of your hand. Now imagine ten or twenty more hammering down in the same place from different angles. More fall on your fingers, your wrist. A hundred more strike the back of your hand. The ends of your fingers. Every joint.

More explode out from inside your flesh.

Now spread the pain through your whole body, inside and out.

Slam!

A millionth of a second of total agony!

Slam again!

That is how it feels.

Yet I arrive in the selected place, and I am exactly as I was that millionth of a second earlier. I am whole in myself, and identical to myself, but I am in the shock of ultimate pain.

The first time I used the Tesla apparatus, in the basement of Caldlow House, with no warning of what I was to experience, I collapsed to the floor in the belief that I had died. It did not seem possible that my heart, my brain, could survive such an explosion of pain. I had no thoughts, no emotional reactions. It felt as if I had died, and I acted as if I had died.

As I slumped to the floor, Julia, who of course was there with me for the test, ran to my side. My first lucid memory in the post-death world is of her gentle hands reaching into my shirt to feel for a sign of life. I opened my eyes, in shock and amazement, happy beyond words to find her beside me, to feel her tenderness. Quickly I was able to stand, to reassure her that I was well, to hold her and kiss her, to be myself once more.

In truth, then, physical recovery from this brutal experience is itself speedy, but the mental consequences are formidable.

On the day of that first test in Derbyshire, I forced myself to repeat the test in the afternoon, but as a result I was cast into the darkest gloom for much of the Christmas period. I had died twice. I had become one of the walking dead, a damned soul.

And the reminders of what I did then are the materials that later had to be put away. I could not even face that gruesome task until New Year's Eve, as I have described.

Yesterday, here in London, in the electrical brightness and familiarity of my workshop, with the Tesla equipment reassembled, I felt I should undergo two more rehearsals. I am a performer, a professional. I must give an appearance to what I do, give it a sheen and a glamour. I must project myself about the theatre in a flash, and at the moment of arrival I must appear to be a magician who has successfully performed the impossible.

To sink to my knees, as if poleaxed, would be out of the question. To reveal even a glimpse of the millionth-second of agony I have endured would also be unconscionable.

The point is that I have a double level of subterfuge to convey. A magician ordinarily reveals an effect that is "impossible": a piano seems to disappear, a billiard ball magically reproduces itself, a lady is made to pass through a sheet of mirror glass. The audience of course knows that the impossible has not been made possible.

In a Flash, by scientific method, in fact achieves the hitherto impossible. What the audience sees is actually what has happened! But I cannot allow this ever to be known, for science has in this case replaced magic.

I must, by careful art, make my miracle less miraculous. I must emerge from the elemental transmitter as if I have not been slammed apart, and slammed together again.

So I have been trying to learn how to prepare for and brace myself against the pain, how to react to it without keeling over, how to step forward with my arms raised and with a flashing smile to bow and acknowledge applause. To mystify sufficiently, but not too much.

I write of what happened yesterday, because last night, when I returned home, I was in too great a despair even to think of recording what had happened. Now it is the afternoon and I am more or less myself again, but already the prospect of two more rehearsals tomorrow is daunting and depressing me.

16th February 1901

I am full of trepidation about tonight's performance at the Trocadero. I have spent the morning at the theatre, setting up the apparatus, testing it, dismantling it, then locking it away again safely in its crates.

After that, as anticipated, came the protracted negotiations with the scene-shifters, actively hostile to my intentions of boxing the stage. In the end, a straightforward cash transaction settled the matter and my wishes prevailed, but it has meant a huge dent in my income for the show. This illusion is clearly only performable if I can demand fees greatly in excess of anything I have earned before. A lot depends on the show tonight.

Now I have an hour or two of free time, before I must go back to Holloway Road. I plan to spend part of it with Julia and the children, and try to take a short nap in whatever is left. I am so keyed up, however, that sleep seems only remotely possible.

17th February 1901

Last night I safely crossed the aether from the stage of the Trocadero to the royal box. The equipment worked perfectly.

But the audience did not applaud because it did not see what was happening! When finally the applause came it was more bemused than enthusiastic.

The trick needs a stronger build-up, a greater sense of danger. And the point of arrival must be picked out with a spotlight, to draw attention to my position as I materialize. I have talked to Adam about it, and he suggests, ingeniously, that I might be able to rig up an electrical spur from the apparatus so that turning on the light is not left to a stagehand but is commanded by me from the stage. Magic always improves.

We perform again on Tuesday at the same theatre.

I have left the best to last — I was able to disguise completely the shock of the impact on me. Both Julia, who saw the show from the auditorium, and Adam, who was watching from the rear of the stage through a small flap in the box screen, say my recovery was almost flawless. In this case it works to my advantage that the audience was not fully attentive, because only these two noticed the single weakness that occurred (I took one inadvertent step backwards).

For myself, I can say that practice with the apparatus has meant the terrible shock is not nearly as terrible as before, and that it has been getting slightly better each time I try it. I can foresee that in a month or so I will be able to bear the effect with outward indifference.

I also note that the consequent gloom I suffer is much less than after my first attempts.

23rd February 1901

In Derbyshire

My performance on Tuesday, much improved after the lessons of the weekend, gained me a laudatory review in The Stage , an outcome more to my favour than anything else I can imagine! On the train yesterday Julia and I read and re-read the words to each other, glorying in the undoubted effect they will have on my career. By our temporary exile here in Derbyshire we will not learn of tangible results until we are back in London early next week, when we have finished here. I can wait contented. The children are with us, the weather is cold and brilliant, and the moorland scenery is ravishing us with its muted colours.

I feel I am at last approaching the peak years of my career.

2nd March 1901

In London

I have an unprecedented thirty-five confirmed bookings in my appointments diary, accepted for the period of the next four months. Three of these are for shows in my own stage name, and one of these is to be called The Great Danton Entertains ; in seventeen theatres I shall top the bill; the remainder of the dates amply repay in money what they do not offer in prestige.

With this richness of choice I have been able to demand details of technical specifications of the backstage area before accepting, as well as forcing through compliance with my need to box the stage. I have made it a standard term of contract that I am supplied with an accurate plan of the auditorium, as well as being given firm undertakings about the steadiness and reliability of the electrical supply. In two cases, the theatre managements are so anxious to attract me to their houses that they have guaranteed to convert over to electricity in advance of my show.

I shall be roaming the country. Brighton, Exeter, Kidderminster, Portsmouth, Ayr, Folkestone, Manchester, Sheffield, Aberystwyth, York, all these and many more will greet me on my first tour, as well as the capital itself, where I have several dates.

In spite of the travelling (which will be in first-class trains and carriages and paid for by others), the schedule is leisurely within reason, and as my little entourage crisscrosses the country we shall have abundant opportunity to make our necessary visits to Caldlow House.

The agent is already speaking of foreign tours, with perhaps yet another trip to the USA in the offing. (There would be certain extra problems here, but none is beyond the wit of a magician in his prime!)

It is all extremely satisfactory, and I hope I may be forgiven for recording it in a state of unqualified self-confidence.

10th July 1901

In Southampton

I am in the middle of a week's run at the Duchess Theatre here in Southampton. Julia came down to visit me yesterday, bringing with her at my request my portmanteau of papers and files, and as I therefore have access to this diary it seems like a good moment to make one of my periodic entries.

I have been continually revising and rehearsing In a Flash for some months, and it is now more or less a perfected skill. All my earlier hopes for it have come to fruition. I can pass through the aether without registering any reaction to the physical traumas I endure. The transition is smooth and seamless, and from the point of view of the audience impossible to explain.

Nor are the mental aftereffects, which so scourged me at the outset, a problem any more. I suffer no agonies of depression, or self-doubt. To the contrary (and I confide this to no one, and record it in no other document than in this secret and lockable diary), the wrenching apart of my body has become a pleasure to which I am almost addicted. At first I was disheartened by the imaginings of death, of living in an afterlife, but now I nightly experience my transmission as a rebirth, a renewal of self. In the early days I was concerned by the many times I should have to perform the trick to keep in practice, but now as soon as I have completed one performance I begin to crave the next.

Three weeks ago, during a temporary break in my round of engagements, I erected the Tesla equipment in my workshop and put myself through the process. Not to try out new performance techniques, not to perfect existing ones, but purely for the physical pleasure of the experience.

Disposal of the prestige materials produced at each show is still a problem, but after all these weeks we have developed a few routines so that the job is done with a minimum of fuss.

Most of the improvements I have made have been in the area of performance technique. My error at first was to assume that the sheer brilliance of the effect would be enough to dazzle my audiences. What I was neglecting was one of the oldest axioms of magic, that the miracle of the trick must be made clear by the presentation. Audiences are not easily misled, so the magician must provoke their interest, hold it, then confound every expectation by performing the apparently impossible.

By supplementing Tesla's apparatus with a range of magical effects and techniques (most of them familiar to professional illusionists), I make my presentation of In a Flash intriguing, more than a little terrifying to behold, and ultimately baffling. I do not use every effect at every performance, and deliberately vary the show to keep myself fresh and my rivals confounded, but here are some of the ways I engage and misdirect my audience:

I allow inspection of the apparatus before it is used, and, on some occasions and in some theatres, after it has been used;

I occasionally invite a committee of witnesses onto the stage from the audience;

I am able to produce a personal object donated by a member of the audience, and identifiable by them, after I have taken it through transmission;

I allow myself to be marked with flour or chalk or something similar, so that when I appear in my chosen place it can be seen that I am, beyond any doubt, the same man who was moments earlier fully visible on the stage;

I project myself to numerous different parts of the theatre, partly depending on the physical plan of the building, partly on the degree of effect I wish to achieve. I can travel instantly to the centre or rear of the stalls, to the dress circle, to one of the loges; I can arrange for myself to be transmitted to other stage props or artefacts placed in view for just this purpose. Sometimes, for example, I arrive in a large net that has been dangling empty from the roof of the auditorium all through the show. Another popular effect is when I project myself to a sealed box or crate, placed on a stand fully in view of the audience and surrounded by a committee so that I might not enter through a hidden door or trap.

However this freedom has made me reckless. One evening, almost on a whim, I projected myself into a glass tank of water placed on the stage. This was a grave mistake, because I committed the cardinal sin of the magician — I had not rehearsed the effect and I left much of it to chance. Although my sensational and aquatically explosive arrival in the water had the audience on its feet with excitement it also nearly killed me. My lungs instantly filled with water, and within a couple of seconds I was fighting to stay alive. Only quick action by Adam Wilson saved my life. It was a gruesome reminder of one of Borden's earlier attacks on me.

After this unwelcome lesson in rematerialization, if I am ever tempted to try a new effect I rehearse thoroughly first.

Of course, my act mostly consists of conventional illusions. I have a huge repertoire of tricks, and whenever I open at a new theatre I change my programme. I always present a varied show, starting with one of the familiar prestidigitations, such as Cups and Balls or Mysterious Wine Bottles. Several card tricks of different kinds come next, and then for visual flourish I perform one of a range of tricks involving silks, flags, paper flowers or handkerchiefs. I work towards the climax through two or three illusions involving tables, cabinets or mirrors, frequently using volunteers from the audience. In a Flash invariably closes my show.

14th June 1902

In Derbyshire

I am busier than ever. I had my British tour, August-October 1901. There was another trip to the USA, from November last year to February this. Until May I was in Europe, and I'm presently engaged for an extended tour of British theatres, this time concentrating on those located in seaside resorts.

Plans for the future:

I intend to take a long rest and spend much time with my family! Most of September is being kept clear for this, as is the first part of October.

(While in the USA I tried to locate Nikola Tesla. I have certain questions about his apparatus, and suggestions for improving its performance. I also felt sure he would be interested to know how well it has served me so far. However, Tesla has gone to ground. He is rumoured to be a bankrupt, in hiding from his creditors.)

3rd September 1902

In London

A momentous revelation!

Early yesterday evening, while I was resting between shows at Daly's Theatre in Islington, a man called at the stage door to see me. When I saw his card I asked for him to be shown immediately to my dressing room. It was Mr Arthur Koenig, the young journalist from the Evening Star who had given me so much food for thought about Borden. I was not surprised to learn that Mr Koenig now has the position of Deputy News Editor of that paper. The years have added a touch of grey to the whiskers on his face, and several inches to his girth. He entered cordially, pumped my hand up and down, and slapped me around the shoulders.

"I just saw your matinйe, Mr Danton!" he said. "My hearty congratulations to you. For once the reviews do justice to a music hall act. I confess myself baffled and entertained in equal measure."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said, and signed for my dresser to pour Mr Koenig a small glass of whisky. When this was done I asked my dresser to leave us alone together, and to return in fifteen minutes.

"Your good health, sir!" Koenig announced, raising his glass. "Or should I say, my Lord?"

I stared at him in surprise.

"How the devil do you know about that?"

"Why do you think I should not? The news of your brother's death reached the press in the usual way, and was duly reported."

"I've seen those reports," I replied. 'None of them mentioned me."

"I think it might be because few in Fleet Street know you by more than your stage name. It took a true admirer to connect you to Henry Angier."

"Nothing escapes you, does it?" I said, with grudging admiration.

"Not that kind of information, sir. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. I assume it is a secret?"

"I have always kept the two parts of my life separate. In that sense, it is a secret and I'd be glad if you would treat it as such."

"You have my word, my Lord. I'm grateful you are so honest with me. I accept that secrets are your stock in trade, and I've no wish either to discover or expose them."

"That was not always the case," I pointed out. "When last we met—"

"Mr Borden, yes indeed. That, I confess, is a slightly different case. I felt he was goading me with his secrecy."

"I know what you mean."

"Yes, sir, I think you do."

"Tell me, Koenig. You have seen my show today. What do you think of my final illusion?"

"You have perfected what Mr Borden has merely shaped."

That was music to my ears, but I asked him, "You say you were baffled by it, but you don't feel goaded by it too, do you?"

"I do not. The sense of mystery you provoke is one that I find familiar. When you watch a master illusionist at work you are curious about how the miracle is achieved, but you also realize that great disappointment would ensue if an explanation was offered."

He smiled as he said this, then in silence sipped happily at his whisky.

"May I ask," I said eventually, "to what I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

"I've come to apologize in the matter of Mr Borden, your rival. I confess that all my elaborate theories about him were in error, while your theory, blunt and simple, was correct."

"I don't follow you," I said.

"When I came to see you before, you will recall I held some hifalutin theory of Mr Borden performing a greater magic than any that had existed before."

"I remember," I said. "You wisely convinced me of it. I was grateful to you—"

"You, however, had a plainer explanation. Borden is not one man but two, you said. Twins, you said. Identical twin brothers, each taking the place of the other as required."

"But you proved—"

"You were right, sir! Mr Borden's act is indeed based on twins. Alfred Borden is a name conflated from two: Albert and Frederick, twin brothers, who perform together as one."

"That's not true!" I said.

"But it was your own theory."

"In lieu of any other," I explained. "You swiftly disabused me. You had evidence—"

"Much of which turns out to have been circumstantial, the rest of which had been falsified. I was a young reporter, not then fully practised in my profession. I have since learnt to check facts, to double-check them, then to check them once more."

"But I went into the matter myself," I said. "I examined the hospital records of his birth, the register of the school he attended—"

"Falsified long since, Mr Angier." He looked at me questioningly, as if to be sure he was addressing me correctly. I nodded, and he went on, "The Bordens have built their lives around sustaining this illusion. Nothing about them can be trusted."

"I investigated most carefully," I insisted. "I knew there were two brothers with those names, but one is two years younger than the other!"

"Both coincidentally born in May, as I recall. It does not take much forgery to change a birth record from 8th May 1856 to 18th May 1858."

"There was a photograph of the two brothers, taken together!"

"Yes, and one so easy to find! It must have been left as a red herring for such as you and I to stumble across. As we duly did."

"But the two brothers were clearly unalike. I saw the portrait myself!"

"And so did I. Indeed, I have a copy of it in my office. The distinction between their facial characteristics is remarkable. But surely you of all people understand the deceptive use of stage make-up."

I was thunderstruck by the news, and stared at the floor, unable to think coherently.

"Galling and goading, isn't it?" Koenig said. "You must feel it too. We have both been taken in by pranksters."

"Are you sure of this?" I demanded. "Totally sure?" Koenig was nodding slowly. "For instance, have you ever seen the two brothers together?"

"This is the basis of my certainty. Just once, and then only briefly, they met in my presence."

"Were you shadowing them?"

"I was shadowing one of them," Koenig corrected me. "I followed Mr Borden from his house one evening in August. He walked alone into Regents Park, apparently taking a leisurely stroll. I was following at a distance of about a hundred yards. As he walked round the Inner Circle, a man approached him from the opposite direction. As they met they paused for about three seconds and spoke together. Then they walked on as before. Now, though, Borden was carrying a small leather case. The man he had spoken to soon passed me, and as he did so I could see that he looked exactly like Borden."

I stared at Koenig thoughtfully.

"How do you know—?" I was thinking carefully of some possibility of error. "How do you know that the man who walked on, the one now carrying the case, was not the man who had spoken to Borden? He could simply have walked back the way he had come. And if that was so, wouldn't it have been the Borden you had been following who passed you?"

"I know what I saw, my Lord. They were wearing different clothes, perhaps for reasons of subterfuge, but this fact made it possible for me to distinguish between them. They met, they passed on, they were identical."

My mind was sharply focused. I was thinking rapidly about the mechanics of mounting a theatrical magic performance. If it were true that they were twins then both brothers would have to be present in the theatre at each show. This would mean that the backstage staff would inevitably be in on the secret. I already knew that Borden did not box the stage, and there are always people hanging around in the wings during a show, seeing too much for their own good. All the time I was performing the switch illusion with a double I was conscious of this. But Borden's secret, if Koenig were to be believed, had stayed intact for many years. If Borden's act was based on identical twins, then surely the secret would have leaked out years ago?

Otherwise, what was the explanation? It could only be that the secrecy was maintained before and after the show. That Borden-1, so to speak, would arrive at the theatre with his apparatus and props, with Borden-2 already concealed in one of the pieces. Borden-2 would duly make his appearance during the performance, while Borden-1 went into hiding in the props on-stage.

It was admittedly feasible, and if that was all there was to it I might be able to accept it. But many years of touring from one venue to the next, burdened with the sheer practicalities of long train journeys, the employment of assistants, the finding of lodgings, and so on, made me wonder. Borden must have a team working with him: an ingйnieur of course, one or more assistants who appeared on stage, several carriers and shifters, an agent. If all these people were privy to his secret then their ability to keep quiet about it was remarkable.

On the other hand, and much more likely in view of human nature, if they were not to be trusted, Borden-1 and Borden-2 would have to engage in a comprehensive array of concealment.

Beyond this, there were the day-to-day realities of theatrical life. For example, on the days when there was a matinйe performance, what would Borden-2 (the one concealed in the apparatus) do between shows? Would he remain hidden while his brother relaxed in the green room with the other artistes? Would he let himself out secretly, then skulk alone in the dressing room until it was time for the next show?

How did the two of them get into and out of the theatres without being spotted? Stage door managers are jealous guardians of the way, and in some theatres the doorman is so notoriously punctilious about checking everyone's identity and business that, it is said, even famous actors tremble at the thought of arriving late or of trying to smuggle in a paramour. There are always alternative ways into the building, notably through the scenery bay or front of house, but again this bespeaks a need for constant secrecy and preparation, and a willingness to put up with not inconsiderable discomfort.

"I see I have given you something to ponder," Koenig said, interrupting my train of thought. He was holding out his empty whisky glass as if to ask for a refill, but because I wanted time to think this through I rather brusquely took the glass away from him.

"You're sure of your facts this time?" I said.

"Copper-bottomed certain, sir. Upon my very word."

"Last time you gave me some leads so I might check your claims myself. Are you proposing something similar now?"

"No — I offer you only my word. I have personally seen the two men together, and as far as I am concerned no further proof is necessary."

"Not to you, perhaps." I stood up, to indicate that the interview was at an end.

Koenig picked up his hat and coat, and went to the door, which I held open for him.

I said to him, as casually as I could contrive, "You show no curiosity about how I perform my own illusion."

"I take it that it's magic, sir."

"You don't then suspect me of having an identical twin?"

"I know you have not."

"So you did investigate me," I said. "And what about Borden? Is he wondering how I work the effect?"

Mr Koenig gave me a broad wink.

"I'm sure he and his brother would not like you to know that they're in a lather of curiosity about you, sir." He extended his hand, and we shook. "Once again, my congratulations. If I may say so, it has been reassuring to see you in such good health."

He was gone before I could respond to that, but I think I know what he meant.

7th September 1902

In London

My short season at Daly's being complete, I am able to tidy up my affairs in London for a while, and spend my long-anticipated month with Julia and the children in Derbyshire. Tomorrow I shall be heading north; Wilson has gone ahead of me to make the usual arrangements for the prestige materials.

This morning I have safely secured Tesla's apparatus in my workshop, paid off my assistants for the next few weeks, settled all my outstanding bills, and spoken at some length with Unwin about bookings for the autumn and winter. It already seems that I shall be busily engaged from the middle of October until March or April next year. My estimated income from these performances, even after all my overheads have been deducted, will make me rich beyond the wildest dreams of my youth. By the end of next year I shall, in all probability, need never work again.

Which brings me to an explanation of Koenig's parting remark.

A few months ago, when I was in the first rush of perfecting the presentation of In a Flash, I thought of a novel final twist to the illusion. What brought it to mind were those early dark feelings that I was somehow surviving beyond death. I arranged, by a combination of carefully positioned lights and use of make-up, that at the end of my act, after I had passed through the aether, I would look more haggard than before. I would seem worn by the rigours of the undertaking. I would be a man who had flirted with death, and who now showed the unmistakable traces.

This effect has become a routine part of my act. Throughout my show I move carefully, as if favouring my limbs so they should not hurt, I turn with a slight stiffness of the waist and back, I walk with my shoulders hunched. I make the best of my condition, acting as if I do not care. After I have performed In a Flash, and once I have been seen to have arrived miraculously intact, then I allow the lighting to do its gruesome work. As the final curtain falls I appear to most of the audience as if I am not long for this world.

Apart from the effect itself, I do have a long-term strategy in mind. Put plainly, I am planning and preparing for my own death. I am, after all, no stranger to the concept. For many years I acted the role of the dead man while Julia played the widow. And after so many transits through Tesla's infernal device, the idea that I could stage my own death comes easily.

Next year I wish to retire from the stage for good. I want to be free of the endless touring, of the long journeys, the overnight stays in theatrical lodgings, the endless tussles with theatre managements. I am sick of the need for secrecy about what I do, and I always fear another round of attacks from Borden.

Most of all, my children are growing up and I wish to be with them as they do so. Edward is soon to depart to university, and the girls will no doubt be married soon.

By this time next year I shall be, as I say, financially independent, and with prudent investment the Caldlow estate should be able to provide for my family for the rest of my life and theirs. As far as the world in general is concerned the life of The Great Danton, of Rupert Angier, shall come to a cancerous end, brought on by the rigours of his career, at some point in the autumn of 1903.

Meanwhile, without publicity or announcement, the 14th Earl of Colderdale will at much the same time take up the reins of his inheritance.

Thus the explanation of Koenig's remark about my "surprising" good health. He is a sharp man, who knows more about me than I wish he did.

On this subject, I have been reflecting a great deal about his theory that there is not one Borden but two. I remain unsure.

This is not because the premise itself is implausible — after all, my man Cutter had worked it out for himself — but because of the endless ramifications of living with the deception. I had already thought about a few of those when Koenig was in my dressing room.

What about everyday life? No artiste is constantly in work, however successful his or her career. There are periods of rest, both voluntary and involuntary. There are necessary delays between bookings. Shows and tours can be cancelled just before they are due to start. There are holidays, illnesses, family crises.

If Borden is not one man but two, and one of the men is always in hiding so that the other might seem to be the "only" Alfred Borden, where and how is the hiding going on? What happens in the life of the hidden man while he is hiding? How does he make contact with his brother? Do they ever meet, and if so how do they arrange not to be spotted by anyone?

How many other people know about the deception, and how can Borden be certain the secret is safe with them?

Speaking in particular of other people, what of Borden's wife? And what of his children?

If Borden is two men, they cannot both be husband to the wife, nor both be father to the children. Which of them is husband, which the father? Borden's wife is a woman of good background, and by all accounts no fool. What does she in fact know about Borden?

Is she being kept in the dark about his true identity?

Could concealment and deception extend successfully even to the marital home, the conjugal bed? Would she suspect nothing, discern no difference at all between the two men?

What about family lore, private jokes and observations, shared personal memories, matters of physical intimacy? Is it conceivable that the two men would collaborate to such an extent that even personal matters are dragged into the precautions and secrecy that surround a mere stage illusion?

The contrary is if anything harder to believe; that Borden's wife knows the truth of the matter and is prepared for some reason to put up with it.

If that were true, the arrangement would surely have gone wrong years ago.

One of the two brothers would inevitably become seen as the lesser partner in the arrangement; one of them (let me again call him Borden-2) would not be the one who actually went through the ceremony of marriage with her. He would therefore be in her eyes less of a husband than Borden-1, and what would follow then of matters concerning conjugality?

Further to the point, Borden-2 would not be the actual father to the children. (I assume for sake of normal propriety that the Borden-2 who did not marry is the same Borden-2 who did not sire the children.) Borden-2 would therefore be uncle to the children, at a stage removed from them, emotionally and physically. The wife, the mother, could not help but discriminate in some way against him.

It is a situation fraught with instability.

Both of these explanations are so unlikely that I am forced to believe in a third. The Borden brothers have deliberately not told the wife the truth, and have tried to deceive her, but she has herself made the deception unimportant. In other words, she has worked out what is going on (how could she not?), but for reasons of her own has decided to acquiesce in it.

In spite of the fact that this theory contains its own mysteries I find it the most plausible explanation, but even so the whole business beggars belief.

I would go, and do go, to considerable lengths to protect my secrets, but I would not let secrecy become an obsession. Could Borden, and Borden's supposed brother, be as obsessive as Koenig makes them out to be?

I am still in two minds about this!

In the end it does not matter, for a trick is a trick and everyone who sees it knows that a deception is being performed. But Julia suffered horribly because of the feud, and my own life came damnably close its end because of it. I believe Borden is such a man as to make a fetish of his secrets and it was my misfortune to tangle with him.

Also my luck, as a direct consequence of the feud, to hit upon the illusion that is making my fortune!

27th November 1902

Somewhere between Wakefield and Leeds

After a long and beneficial holiday in Derbyshire with Julia and the children I am back on tour. Tomorrow I open at the King William Theatre in Leeds, where I shall be performing twice nightly until the end of next week.

Thence to Dover, where I am top of the bill at the Overcliff Theatre. Thence to Portsmouth, for the week leading up to Christmas.

I am a tired but happy man.

Sometimes people notice my appearance and comment in a well-intended way on how unwell I might be. I am brave about this.

1st January 1903

So I reach the year in which Rupert Angier is to forsake this life. I have not yet chosen an exact date for my demise, but it will not be until well after the conclusion of my American tour.

We depart from Liverpool for New York three weeks from tomorrow, and shall be away until April. The problem of disposal of prestige materials has only partially been solved, but helping to alleviate it is the fact that I shall be performing In a Flash on average only once a week. If necessary I shall do what I did before, but Wilson declares that he has found a solution. Whatever the case, the show will go on.

Julia and the children will be with me during what will no doubt later become known as my farewell tour.

30th April 1903

I have told Unwin to continue accepting bookings through to the end of the year, and for the early months of 1904. However, I shall be dead by the end of September. Probably it will occur on Saturday, 19th September.

15th May 1903

In Lowestoft

After the dizzy experiences of New York, Washington DC, Baltimore, Richmond, St Louis, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles… I am in Lowestoft, Suffolk. In the USA I might make my fortune, but in places like the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft I earn my living.

I open tomorrow for a week.

20th May 1903

I have cancelled both my performances tonight, tomorrow's are in jeopardy, and as I draft these words I am anxiously awaiting Julia's arrival.

I am a fool, a damned, bloody fool !

Last night, second performance, halfway through. (I can barely bring myself to set this down in writing.) I have recently added a new card trick to my repertoire. In this, a member of the audience is invited up to the stage. He takes a card and writes his name on the face of it. I tear off a corner of the card, and give it to the volunteer to hold. The rest of the card is placed inside a paper envelope, which is ignited. When the flames have gone out I produce a large orange. I cut it in half and it is found to contain the signed card, and the torn-off corner still of course fits.

Last night my volunteer was what I thought must be a local man; he was tall and burly, had a florid complexion, and when he spoke I heard a Suffolk accent. I had spotted him earlier in the show, sitting in the centre of the front row, and as soon as I noticed his amiable, unintelligent face I had picked him out as a likely volunteer. He did in fact offer himself as soon as I called for someone to come up on stage, something which should have alerted me to likely trouble. However, while I was doing the trick he was the perfect foil, even drawing a laugh or two from the audience with his homely sense of humour and commonplace observations. ("Take a card," said I. "What, you want me to take it home, sor?" said the man, all wide-eyed and seemingly eager to please.)

How could I not have guessed it was Borden?! He even gave me a clue, because the name he wrote on the playing card was Alf Redbone , a transparent near-anagram, yet in my preoccupations I took it to be his real name.

With the card trick completed I shook his hand, thanked him by name, and added my applause to that of the audience as he was led by Hester, my present female assistant, towards the stalls ramp.

I did not notice that Redbone's seat was still empty a few minutes later, as I moved towards the start of In a Flash.

In the tensions leading up to this performance, his absence registered only at the back of my mind; I knew there was something wrong, but because of the moment I could not think exactly what it might be. As the current started to flow through the Tesla apparatus, and the long tendrils of high-voltage discharge snaked around me, and the anticipation from the audience was at its greatest, I noticed his absence at last. The significance of it came at me like a thunderbolt.

By then it was too late; the apparatus was in operation and I was committed to completing the trick.

At this point in the show nothing can be modified. Even my chosen target area is fixed; setting the coordinates is too intricate and time-consuming to be done at any time other than before a performance. The previous night I had set the apparatus for both of yesterday's performances so that I would arrive in the highest loge at stage left, which by arrangement with the management was kept empty for both shows. The loge was at the same approximate height as the main balcony, and could be seen from almost every other part of the auditorium.

I had arranged it so that I should materialize on the very rail of the box itself, picked out by the follow-spot, facing down into the stalls a long way below, apparently struggling to keep my balance, arms windmilling, body jerking wildly, and so on. Everything had gone exactly to plan during the first performance, and my magical transformation brought screams, roars of warnings and shouts of alarm from the audience, followed by thunderous applause as I swung down to the stage on the rope thrown up to me by Hester.

To arrive on the rail of the loge facing down to the audience, I have to stand inside the Tesla apparatus with my back towards the loge. The audience cannot know it, of course, but the position in which I arrange my body is exactly recreated at the instant of arrival. From my place inside the apparatus I could not therefore see where I was about to arrive.

With Borden somewhere around, a terrible certainty struck me that he was about to sabotage me yet again! What if he was lurking inside the loge, and gave me a shove as I arrived on the ledge? I felt the electrical tension mounting ineluctably around me. I could not prevent myself turning anxiously around to look up at the box. I could just make it out through the deadly blue-white electrical sparks. All seemed well; there was nothing there to block my arrival, and although I couldn't see into the box itself, where the seats are placed, it did not look as if anyone was there.

Borden's intent was much more sinister, and a moment later I found out what it was. In the very instant that I turned to look up at the loge, two things happened simultaneously.

The first was that the transmission of my body actually began.

The second was that electrical power to the apparatus cut out, disconnecting the current instantly. The blue fires vanished, the electrical field died.

I remained on the stage, standing within the wooden cage of the apparatus in full view of the audience. I was staring over my shoulder at the loge.

The transmission had been interrupted! But it had begun before it was stopped, and now I could see an image of myself on the rail; there was my ghost, my doppelgдnger , momentarily frozen in the stance I had adopted when I turned to look, half twisted, half crouching, looking away and up. It was a thin, insubstantial copy of myself, a partial prestige. Even as I looked, this image of myself straightened in alarm, threw out his arms, and collapsed backwards and out of sight into the loge itself!

Appalled at what I had seen I stepped forward out of the coils of the Tesla cage. On cue, the spotlight came on, illuminating the whole loge to pick out my intended materialization. The people in the audience looked up at the loge, already half anticipating the trick. They started to applaud, but just as quickly the noise faded away to nothing. There was nothing to see.

I stood alone on the stage. My illusion was ruined.

"Curtain!" I yelled into the wings. "Bring down the curtain!"

It seemed to take an eternity but at last the technician heard me and the curtain came down, separating me from the audience. Hester appeared at a run; her cue for a return to the stage was when I was taking my applause from the loge rail, and not before. Now duty and confusion brought her out of her place in the wings.

"What happened?" she cried.

"That man who came up from the audience! Where is he?"

"I don't know! I thought he went back to his seat."

"He got backstage somehow! You are supposed to make sure these people leave the stage!"

I pushed her aside angrily and lifted up the reinforced fabric of the curtain. At a crouch I stepped beneath it and went forward to the footlights. The house lights were now on, and the audience was moving into the aisles and slowly up to the exits. The people were obviously puzzled and disgruntled, but they were paying no more attention to the stage.

I looked up at the box. The spotlight had been turned off, and in the bland house lights I could still see nothing.

A woman screamed once, then again. She was somewhere in the building behind the loges.

I walked quickly into the wings and met Wilson as he was hurrying to the stage to find me. Breathlessly, because now I found my lungs inexplicably labouring, I instructed him to dismantle and crate up the apparatus as quickly as possible. I dashed past him and gained access to the stairs to the balcony and loges. Members of the audience were walking down, and as I started up the stairs, weaving between them, they grumbled at me for lack of manners, and apparently not because they identified me as the performer who had just so spectacularly failed before them. The anonymity of failure is sudden.

Every step I took was harder to complete. My breath was rattling in my throat, and I could feel my heart pounding as if I had just run a mile uphill. I have always kept myself fit, and physical exercise has never been much of a strain for me, but suddenly I felt as if I were lame and overweight. By the time I was at the top of only the first short flight of steps I could go no further, and the crowd walking down the stairs was forced to step past me as I leaned on the wrought-iron banisters to catch my breath. I rested for a few seconds, then launched myself up the next flight of steps.

I had taken no more than two steps when I was racked with a terrifying cough, one of such violence that it astounded me. I was at the end of my physical tether. My heart was hammering, blood was thumping rhythmically in my ears, sweat was bursting from me, and the dry, painful cough was one that seemed to evacuate and collapse my chest. It weakened me so greatly that I could barely inhale again, and when I did manage to suck in a little air I coughed again at once, wheezing and racking horribly. I was unable to stay upright, and I slumped forward across the stone steps, while the last few of the theatregoers went past, their boots only inches from my pathetic head. I neither knew nor cared what they thought of me as I lay there.

Wilson eventually found me. He raised me into his arms, and held me like a child while I struggled to regain my breath.

At long last my heart and breathing steadied, and a great chill descended on me. My chest felt like a swollen pustule of pain, and although I was able to prevent myself coughing again each breath was tentatively taken and expelled.

Finally, I managed to say, "Did you see what happened?"

"Alfred Borden must have got backstage, sir."

"Not that! I mean what happened when the power failed?"

"I was manning the switching board, Mr Angier. As usual."

Wilson's place during In a Flash is at the back of the stage, invisible to the audience because he is concealed by the backcloth of the screening box. Although he is in touch at every moment with what I am doing he cannot actually see me for most of the illusion.

I gasped out a description of the spectral prestige of myself that I had briefly seen. Wilson seemed puzzled, but immediately offered to run up to the loge itself. He did so, while I lay helplessly and uncomfortably on the cold bare steps. When he returned a minute or two later Wilson told me he had seen nothing untoward up there. He said the seats in the top loge had been scattered across the carpeted floor, but otherwise there was nothing unusual about it. I had to accept what he said; I have learned that Wilson is a sharp and reliable assistant.

He got me back down the stairs, and on the stage again. By this time I had recovered sufficiently that I could stand unsupported. I scanned the top loge and the rest of the now empty auditorium, but there was no sign of the prestige.

I had to put the matter out of my mind. Of much more pressing concern was the fact that I had suddenly become physically incapacitated. Every move was a strain, and the cough felt explosively coiled in my chest, ready to burst out again at any moment. Dreading a return of it I deliberately cramped and confined my movements, trying to calm my breathing.

Wilson hired a cab and returned me safely to my hotel, and at once arranged for a message to be sent to Julia. A doctor was summoned, and when he belatedly arrived he carried out a perfunctory examination of me. He declared he could find nothing amiss, so I paid him off and resolved to find another doctor in the morning. I had great trouble falling asleep, but I did so in the end.

I awoke this morning feeling stronger, and walked downstairs unaided. Wilson was waiting for me in the hotel foyer, with the news that Julia would be arriving at noon. Meanwhile, he declared that I looked unwell, but I insisted I had started to recover. After breakfast, though, I realized I had little strength in me.

Reluctantly, I have cancelled both of tonight's performances, and while Wilson has been at the theatre I have penned this account of what happened.

22nd May 1903

In London

At Julia's urging, and on Wilson's advice, I have cancelled the remainder of the Lowestoft booking. Next week's has also gone — this was to be a short season at the Court Theatre in Highgate. I am still undecided what to do about the show at the Astoria in Derby, scheduled for the first week in June.

I am trying to put as good a face as possible on the matter, but in the deepest recess of my heart I am harbouring a secret fear. In short, it is that my ill health might mean I shall never again be able to perform. After Borden's attack on me I have become a semi-invalid.

Counting the man who came to see me in the hotel in Lowestoft, and my own here in London, I have been examined by three doctors. All of them pronounce me well and showing no obvious symptoms of illness. I complain about my breathing, so they listen to my chest and prescribe fresh air. I tell them my heart races when I walk up a flight of stairs, and they listen to my heart and they tell me to be careful about what I eat, and to take things easier. I say that I tire easily, and they advise me to rest and to take plenty of early nights.

My regular doctor in London took a sample of my blood, because I demanded that he should make some objective test, if only to quieten my fears. He duly reported that my blood was unusually "thin", that such a condition was not unusual in a man of my age, and he prescribed an iron tonic.

After the doctor had left I took the simple step of weighing myself, with an astonishing result. I appear to have lost nearly thirty pounds in weight! I have weighed more or less exactly twelve stone, one hundred and sixty-eight pounds, for most of my adult years. It is just one of those things in life that has remained constant. This morning I found that I weigh just over one hundred and thirty-nine pounds, or a fraction under ten stone!

In the mirror I look the same as ever: my face is no thinner, my eyes are not bloodshot, my cheekbones do not jut, my jaw is not angular. I look tired, indeed, and there is a sallow quality to my skin that is not customary, but I do not look like someone who cannot climb a short flight of stairs without gasping for breath halfway up. Nor do I look like someone who has just lost nearly a sixth of his normal weight.

There being no normal or logical reason for this, it must have been caused by the incomplete Tesla transmission. The first shock of it had taken place. Following this, the electrical information was only partially sent. Borden's interruption came before the second shock occurred, preventing full reassembly at either end.

Once again his intervention has taken me to the edge of death!

Later

Julia has declared herself to be on a mission to restore my strength by fattening me up, and lunch today was substantial. However, halfway through I felt tired and nauseated, and was unable to finish. I have just been taking a short nap.

On walking, I was seized by an idea, whose consequences I am still thinking through.

In the confidentiality of these pages let me disclose that whenever I have used the Tesla apparatus, whether it be in performance or rehearsal, I have always made sure to secrete two or three gold coins in my pocket. Why I should do so must be self-evident; my recent acquisition of a financial fortune is not solely attributable to performance fees!

Tesla, I should in all conscience report, warned me against such an act. He is a highly moral man, and he lectured me long on the subject of forgery. He said he also had scientific reasons, that the apparatus was calibrated for my known body-weight (with certain margins of safety), and that the presence about my person of small but massy objects, such as gold coins, could make the projection inaccurate over longer distances.

Because I trust Tesla's scientific knowledge, at first I decided to take only paper money through with me, but in doing so I created the inevitable difficulty of duplicate serial numbers. I still carry a few high denomination notes at every performance, but in most cases I have preferred to carry gold. I have never encountered any of the problems of inaccuracy of which Tesla warned, perhaps because the distances I travel are so short.

This afternoon, after my nap, I searched for the three coins I had been carrying in my pocket on Tuesday evening. As soon as I held them I felt certain they weighed less than they did before, and when I placed them on my office balance, comparing them with otherwise identical coins that had not been through the transmitter, I discovered they were indeed lighter.

I calculate that they too have lost about seventeen per cent of their mass. They look the same, they have the same dimensions as ordinary coins, they even make the same ringing sound when dropped on a stone floor, but somehow or other they have lost some of their weight .

29th May 1903

The week has shown no improvement. I remain debilitated. Although I am well , in that I have no fever, no apparent wounds, no pain, no sickness, in spite of all this as soon as I make any physical effort I am overtaken with fatigue. Julia continues to try to feed me back to health, but I have made only a marginal gain in weight. We both pretend I am improving, but in doing so we are denying what is obvious to us both — I shall never recover the part of me that has gone.

In this enforced physical languor my mind continues to work normally, which adds to the frustration.

Reluctantly, but on the advice of everyone close to me, I have cancelled all future bookings. To distract myself I have been running the Tesla apparatus, and passing through it a quantity of gold. I am not greedy, and I do not wish to draw unwelcome attention to myself by becoming excessively wealthy. I need only enough money to ensure the long term wellbeing of myself and my family. At the end of each session I weigh each coin carefully, but all is well.

Tomorrow, we return to Caldlow House.

18th July 1903

In Derbyshire

The Great Danton is dead. The demise of the illusionist Rupert Angier came as a result of injuries sustained when a trick went wrong during a performance at the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft. He died at his home in Highgate, London, and leaves a widow and three children.

The 14th Earl of Colderdale remains alive, if not in the rudest of health. He has had the mixed pleasure of reading his own obituary in The Times , a privilege not granted to many. Of course the obituary was unsigned, but I was able to deduce that it had not been written by Borden. The assessment of my career is naturally shown in a fair and positive light, but in addition I detect no jealousy, no undercurrent of subtle resentment, usually perceptible on these occasions when a rival is invited to record the passing of one of his colleagues. I am relieved that Borden was not involved in this at least.

Angier's affairs are now in the hands of a firm of lawyers. He is of course really dead, and his body was really placed inside the coffin. This I saw as Angier's last illusion; the provision of his own corpse for burial. Julia is officially his widow, and his children are orphans. They were all present at Highgate Cemetery for his funeral, a ceremony kept strictly to his immediate family. The press stayed away at the personal request of the widow, and no fans or admirers were seen on the day.

On that same day I was myself travelling back anonymously to Derbyshire with Adam Wilson and his family. He and Gertrude have agreed to remain with me as paid companions. I am able to reward them well.

Julia and the children arrived back here three days later. For the time being she is the widow Angier, but as we fade from people's recollections she will quietly become, as is her right, Lady Colderdale.

I thought I had grown familiar with surviving my own death, but this time I have done it in a way that I can never repeat. Because I can not go back to the stage, and because I am now in the role that my elder brother had previously denied me, I find myself wondering how I am to fill the days that lie ahead.

After the disagreeable shock of what happened to me in Lowestoft, I have settled down to what has become my new existence. I am not in decline, and my condition remains stable. I have little physical energy or strength, but I do not seem likely to drop dead suddenly. The doctor here repeats what I was told in London: there is nothing apparently the matter with me that good food, exercise and a positive outlook will not cure in time.

So I find myself taking up the life I had briefly planned after I returned from Colorado. There is much to attend to in the house and around the estate, and because nothing has been run properly for years much of it is in decay. Fortunately, for once my family has the financial wherewithal to tackle some of the most serious problems.

I have had Wilson erect the Tesla apparatus in the basement, telling him that from time to time I shall be rehearsing In a Flash in preparation for my return to the stage. Its real use is, of course, otherwise.

19th September 1903

Merely to record that today is the day I had originally planned for the death of Rupert Angier. It has passed like all the others, quietly and (given my continuing restlessness about my health) peacefully.

3rd November 1903

I am recovering from an attack of pneumonia. It nearly got me! I have been in Sheffield Royal Infirmary since the end of September, and I survived only by a miracle. Today is the first day at home where I have been able to sit up long enough to write. The moors look splendid through my window.

30th November 1903

Recovering. I am almost back to the condition I was in when I returned here from London. That is to say, officially well, unofficially not too good.

15th December 1903

Adam Wilson came to my reading room at half past ten this morning, and informed me a visitor was waiting downstairs to see me. It was Arthur Koenig! I stared at his calling card in surprise, wondering what he wanted. "Tell him I'm not available for the moment," I said to Adam, and I went to my study to think.

Could his visit be something to do with my funeral? The faking of my own death had a deceptive side to it that I suspect could be construed as illegal, even though I can't imagine what harm might befall anyone else as a consequence. But the fact that Koenig was here at all meant he knew the funeral had been a sham. Was he going to try to blackmail me in some way? I still do not fully trust Mr Koenig, nor do I understand his motives.

I let him sweat downstairs for fifteen minutes, then asked Adam to bring him up.

Koenig appeared to be in a serious mood. After we had greeted each other, I sat him down in one of the easy chairs facing my desk. The first thing he said was to assure me that his visit was unconnected with his job on the newspaper.

"I'm here as an emissary, my Lord," he said. "I'm acting in my private capacity for a third party who knows of my interest in the world of magic, and who has asked me to approach your wife."

"Approach Julia?" I said, in genuine surprise. "Why should you have anything to say to her?"

Koenig was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Your wife, my Lord, is the widow of Rupert Angier. It is in that guise that I have been commissioned to approach her. But I thought, bearing in mind what has happened in the past, it would be wisest to come to you first."

"What's going on, Koenig?"

He had brought with him a small leather case, and he now picked this up and laid it on his lap.

"The… third party for whom I'm acting has come across a notebook, a private memoir, in which it is felt your wife would have an interest. In particular, it is hoped that Lady Colderdale, that is, Mrs Angier, might wish to purchase it. This, er, third party is not aware that you, my Lord, are still alive, and so I find myself not only betraying the person who is sending me on this task, but also the person to whom I should be speaking. But I really felt, under the circumstances—"

"Whose notebook is it?"

"Alfred Borden’s."

"Do you have it with you?"

"Of course I do."

Koenig reached down into the case, and produced a cloth-bound notebook of the sort that comes equipped with a lockable clasp. He handed it to me so that I might examine it, but because it was locked I could not see what was inside. When I looked back at Koenig he was holding the key.

"My… client requires five hundred pounds, sir."

"Is it genuine?"

"Most assuredly. You would have to read only a few lines to be convinced of that."

"But is it worth five hundred pounds?"

"I suspect you will think it worth rather more. It is written in Borden's own hand, and deals directly with the secrets of his magic. He elaborates his theory of magic, and explains how many of his tricks are done. The concealment of life as twins is alluded to. I found it a most interesting read, and I can guarantee you will too."

I turned the book in my hand, wondering about it.

"Who is your client, Koenig? Who wants the money?" He looked uneasy, clearly not practised in this sort of thing. "You say you have already betrayed your client. Do you suddenly have scruples?"

"There's a lot to this, my Lord. From your manner I suspect you have not already heard the main news I am bringing. Are you aware that Borden has recently died?" No doubt my startled expression gave him the answer he required. "To be precise, I believe one of the two brothers is dead."

"You sound unsure," I said. "Why?"

"Because there's no conclusive proof. You and I both know how obsessively the Bordens concealed their lives, so it's no surprise that the survivor would do the same when the other dies. The trail has been hard to follow."

"Then how do you know about it at all? Oh, I see this third party who has commissioned you."

"And there is circumstantial evidence."

‘such as?" I prompted.

"The famous illusion is no longer included in Le Professeur's act. I have been to his shows several times in the last six weeks, and not once has he performed it."

"There could be many reasons for that," I observed. "I've been to his show several times, and he does not always include that trick."

"Indeed not. But it would most likely be because both brothers are required to perform it."

"I think you should tell me the name of your client, Koenig."

"My Lord, I believe you once knew an American woman by the name of Olive Wenscombe?"

I have written the name here as I now realize he said it, but in the surprise of the moment I thought he said Olivia Svenson. Because of this a misunderstanding arose between us. At first I thought we were both speaking of the same person, then when he clarified the name I thought that he was talking about someone else. Finally I remember that Olivia had taken her mother's maiden name when she approached Borden.

"For reasons you surely appreciate," I said when all this had been cleared up, "I never speak of Miss Svenson."

"Yes, yes. And I apologize for mentioning her. However, she is deeply bound up in the matter of the notebook. I understand that Miss Wenscombe, or Svenson as you knew her, was in your employ some years ago, but she defected to the Borden camp. For a while she worked as Borden's stage assistant, but not for long. You lost contact with her, I think, around this time."

I confirmed that that was so.

"It turns out," Koenig continued, "that the Borden twins own a secret hideout in North London. To be precise it is a suite of rooms in a well-to-do part of Hornsey, and it is here that one of the brothers lived incognito while the other enjoyed the comforts of home in St Johns Wood. They alternated regularly. After her… defection, Miss Wenscombe was installed in the Hornsey flat, and has been living there ever since. And will go on doing so if the court proceedings against her fail."

"Proceedings?"

I was having trouble taking in all this information at once.

Koenig went on, "She has been served with notice to quit for non-payment of rent, and is due to be evicted next week. As a foreign national with no permanent abode she would then be faced with deportation. It was for these reasons that she approached me, knowing my interest in Mr Borden. She thought I might be able to help her."

"By approaching me for money."

Koenig grimaced unhappily. "Not exactly, but—"

"Continue."

"You'll be interested to learn that Miss Wenscombe was not aware that there were two brothers, and to this day refuses to believe that she was deceived."

"I asked her myself once," I said, remembering the grim interview with her in the theatre in Richmond. "She said then that Borden was just one man. She knew my suspicions. But I can hardly believe that now."

"The Borden brother who died was taken ill while in the Hornsey flat. It sounds as if he had a heart attack. Miss Wenscombe summoned Borden's doctor, and after the body had been taken away the police came round. When she told them who the dead man was they left to make further enquiries, but never returned. She later contacted the doctor, to discover that he was not available. His assistant told her that Mr Borden had been taken ill, but had recovered quickly and had just been discharged from hospital! As Miss Wenscombe had been with him when he died, she could not believe it! She went to the police again, but to her amazement they too confirmed it.

"I heard all this from Miss Wenscombe herself. Now, from what she told me, she has no idea that Borden was maintaining a second household. He completely pulled the wool over her eyes. As far as she was concerned, Borden was with her most days and nights, and she always knew where he was at other times." Koenig was leaning forward intently in his chair as he regaled me with his story. "So then Borden died suddenly, and she was shocked and upset as anyone in her position would be, but she had no reason to believe there was going to be anything unusual about it! And he did most certainly die, according to her. She says she was with the body for more than an hour before the doctor arrived, and it had gone cold by then. The doctor examined the body enough to confirm death, and said that he would sign a death certificate on his return to his surgery. Yet now she is faced not only with denials from everyone involved, but also with the incontrovertible fact that Alfred Borden appears on the public stage, performing his magic, and is manifestly not dead."

"If she thinks that Borden was only one man, how on earth does she account for that?" I interjected.

"I asked her, of course. As you know, she is no stranger to the world of illusions. She told me that after much thought she came to the sorrowful conclusion that Borden had used magical techniques to fake his death, for instance swallowing some kind of medication, and that it was all an elaborate charade to enable him to walk out on her."

"Did you tell her that the Bordens were twins?"

"Yes. She scoffed at the idea, and assured me that if a woman lives with a man for five years she knows everything there is to know about him. She absolutely rejected the notion that there might have been two of them."

(I had earlier raised my own questions about the Borden twins’ relationship with his/their wife and children. These now take on an added level of enquiry. It seems the mistress was also deceived, but is unwilling to admit that she was, or simply never knew.)

"So this notebook has suddenly appeared, to solve all her problems," I said.

Koenig stared at me thoughtfully, then said, "Not all of them, but her most immediate ones. My Lord, I think that as a gesture of my good faith, I should let you examine the notebook without promise of payment."

He passed the key across to me, and sat back in his chair while I opened the lock.

The notebook was written in a tiny hand, neatly inscribed in regular and even lines, but not at first glance legible. After I had looked at the opening pages I began to riffle through the rest as if running my fingers across the edges of a deck of cards. My magician's instinct was telling me to be on my guard against Borden's trickery. All those years of feuding had revealed the extent of his willingness to hurt or harm me. I had turned through about half the thickness of the notebook, when I halted. I stared at it, deep in thought.

It was more than possible that this was Borden's most elaborate attack on me yet. Koenig's story about Olivia, the death of Borden in her flat, the conveniently revealed existence of a notebook containing Borden's most valuable professional secrets, all these could be fabricated.

I had only Koenig's word to go on. What would the notebook actually contain, if it were another trick? An intricate maze of deceits which would manipulate me into some misguided response? Could there be something here that would, through the person of Olivia Svenson, threaten my one remaining area of stability, namely my miraculously restored marriage to Julia?

It seemed to me that I was putting myself in hazard, even to hold the notebook.

Koenig's voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Dare I presume, my Lord, that I can guess what is going through your mind?"

"No, you may not so presume," I said.

"You are doubting me," Koenig persisted. "You think that Borden has paid me, or coerced me in some way, to bring this to you. Is that so?" I made no answer, still holding the notebook half open, my eyes staring down at it.

"There are ways you could investigate what I am telling you," Koenig went on. "A court action against Miss Wenscombe by the landlord of the apartment in Hornsey was heard at Hampstead Assizes a month ago. You could examine the court records for yourself. There are almoner's records at the Whittington Hospital, where an unidentified victim of a heart attack, with age and physical appearance matching that of Borden, was brought in on the day Miss Wenscombe says he died. There is also a record that that corpse was removed by a local doctor on the same day."

"Koenig, you sent me on a trail of false evidence ten years ago," I said.

"I did indeed. I have never ceased to regret it, and have already told you that my dedication to your cause is the result of that error. I give you my word that the notebook is genuine, that the circumstances of it coming into my possession are as I have described, and that furthermore the surviving Borden brother is desperate to regain it."

"How has it escaped him?" I said.

"Miss Wenscombe realized its potential value, perhaps as something that might be published as a book. When her need for money became urgent, she thought it might be more valuable to you or, as she understood recent events, to your widow. Naturally, she kept the notebook hidden. Borden himself can not of course approach her for it, but it surely is not a coincidence that ten days ago her flat was forcibly entered and the place ransacked? Nothing was taken. This notebook, which she had secreted elsewhere, remained in her possession."

I opened the notebook where my finger had come to rest, reflecting that the act of ruffling my fingers along the gilt-edged pages had been identical to one of the classic moves a conjuror makes when forcing a playing-card on a subject. This thought was reinforced when I looked at a line halfway down the right-hand page, and saw my own name written there. It was as if Borden had forced the page on me.

I peered closely at the handwriting, and soon deciphered what the rest of the sentence said: "This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole mystery, unless I myself give him the answer."

"She wants five hundred pounds, you say?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"She shall have it."

19th December 1903

Koenig's visit exhausted me, and soon after he left (with six hundred pounds, the surplus being partly for his trouble to date, and partly for his silence and absence henceforth) I took to my bed where I remained until the evening. I wrote up my account of it then, but the next day and the day after I was too debilitated to attempt more than a little eating and a lot of sleeping.

Yesterday I was able at last to read some of Borden's notebook. As Koenig had predicted, I found it an engrossing read.

I have been showing extracts to Julia, who finds it equally interesting. She reacts more against his self-satisfied tone than I do, and urges me not to burn up any of my precious energy by getting angry with him again.

Anger, in fact, is not being kindled in me, although the way he distorts some of the events of which I have a knowledge is both pitiable and irritating. What is most fascinating to me is that at last I have proof that Alfred Borden was the product of a conspiracy between twins. Nowhere do they admit it, but the notebook is clearly the work of two hands.

They address each other in the first person singular. I found this confusing at first, as perhaps was intended, but when I pointed it out to Julia she observed that the notebook was apparently not intended to be read by anyone else.

It suggests that they call each other "me" by habit, and this in turn implies they have done it for most of their lives. Reading between the lines of the notebook, as I must, I realize that every event or happening in their lives has been subsumed into one collective experience. It is as if they spent their lives from childhood preparing for the illusion where one would secretly take the place of the other. It fooled me, and fooled most of the audiences who saw them in performance, but surely in the end it is Borden who is the fool?

Two lives made into one means a halving of those lives. While one lives in the world, the other hides in a nether world, literally non-existent, a lurking spirit, a doppelgдnger , a prestige.

More tomorrow, if I have the energy.

25th December 1903

The house and grounds are cut off by the heavy falls of snow that have swept through the Pennines for the last two days. We are however warm and provisioned, and not in need of going anywhere. We have taken our Christmas dinner, and now the children are playing with their new possessions, and Julia and I have been relaxing together.

I have not told her yet of a worrying ailment, newly arrived on my poor body. Several purplish sores have broken out on my chest, upper arms and thighs, and although I have spread them with antiseptic ointment they are as yet showing no sign of recession. As soon as the thaw sets in I shall have to summon the physician again.

31st December 1903

The doctor has advised me to continue with the antiseptic medication, which at last shows some indication of being effective. He observed to Julia before he left that these unpleasant and painful eruptions on the skin might be a symptom of a more serious organic or blood-related problem. Julia gently bathes the sores every night before we go to bed. I have been continuing to lose weight, although in recent days the trend has been slowing.

A Happy New Year!

1st January 1904

I mark the turning of the new year with the grim reflection that I doubt if I shall last to the end of it.

I have been distracting myself from my own troubles by reading the Borden notebook. I have read it through to the end, and I confess I have been absorbed by it. I find it impossible not to make notes about his methods, views, omissions, errors, self-deceptions, etc.

Much as I hate and fear Borden (and I cannot forget that he is alive and active somewhere in the world outside), I find his views on magic provocative and stimulating.

I have mentioned this to Julia, who agrees. She does not say as much but I sense she feels, as I am beginning to, that Borden and I might have made better collaborators than adversaries.

26th March 1904

I have been seriously ill, and for at least two weeks believed myself to be on the point of death. The symptoms have been horrific: persistent nausea and vomiting, a further spread of the sores, paralysis of my right leg, a comprehensively ulcerated mouth, and an almost uncontainable pain from my lower back. Needless to say, I have been confined in a nursing home in Sheffield for much of the time.

Now, though, a minor miracle has occurred and I find myself apparently on the mend. The sores and ulcers have cleared up leaving no trace, I am getting some feeling and therefore movement in my leg, and the general sense of pain and malaise is receding. I have been at home for the last week, and although I have been bedridden my spirits have risen a little more every day.

Today I am out of bed and using a reclining chair in the conservatory. I have a view of the grounds, with trees in the distance; beyond those rises the rocky crag of Curbar Edge, where patches of snow still linger. I am in the best of spirits, and I am re-reading Borden's notebook. These last two facts are not unconnected.

6th April 1904

I have read Borden's notes a total of three times, and have annotated and cross-referenced them in detail. Julia is about to prepare a fair copy of my amended and greatly expanded text.

Although the remission from my ailments continues, and for the last few days I have continued to feel better, I must face up to the fact that overall my health is declining. I therefore confess that in these terminal months of my life I am intending to take a last revenge on my enemy. He it was who caused this condition, he it is who must pay. Acquisition of his notebook has given me a way. I am planning to arrange for it to be published.

The literature of magic is not widely available. Many books are written and published, but with the exception of simple books for children, and a few volumes on legerdemain or sleight of hand, these books are not produced by general publishers. They are rarely if ever found in ordinary bookshops. Instead, they are printed by a number of specialist publishers, for distribution only within the magic community. They often appear in editions as short as four or five dozen copies, and are commensurately expensive. Acquiring a collection of such books is difficult and costly, and many magicians can only obtain copies when one of their colleagues dies and his collection is sold off by his family. Over the years I have amassed a small library of my own, and I have referred to these books constantly so that I might use or adapt existing illusions. In this I am no different from other magicians. The readership of such books is small, but it is one of the most concentrated and informed audiences imaginable.

While I was reading Borden's notebook it frequently occurred to me that it deserved to be published for the benefit of his fellow magicians. It contains much sensible comment on the art and technique of magic. Whatever his intentions might once have been (he declares unconvincingly that his words are intended only for his immediate family, and a "posterity" he fondly imagines for himself) he cannot ever publish the notebook himself. How careless of him to have mislaid it!

I see it as my last act to arrange publication on his behalf, and when I have completed my annotated edition I shall see to it.

If he survives me, which is likely, he will discover that my revenge is subtle and many-layered.

For a start Borden will be appalled to discover, as he soon will, that what he sees as his greatest professional secrets have been published without his permission. His chagrin will be the deeper when he realizes that I was responsible. He will be further confounded when he works out that somehow I was able to do this from beyond the grave. (He believes me already dead, a fact I elicited from the notebook itself.) Finally, should he read the annotated text he will discover the true subtlety of my final revenge.

In short, I have improved his text by making it less obscure, by expanding on many of the interesting general topics which he merely adumbrates, by illustrating his absorbing theory of acquiescence with numerous examples, by describing the methods of many of the great illusionists. I have added detailed descriptions of every trick I know him to have invented, as well as those others I know him to be capable of performing, and in each case have seemed to explain each one without actually revealing the central secret.

Above all, I have heightened the mystery surrounding the illusion he calls The New Transported Man, but have given nothing away. The fact that the Bordens were identical twins is not even hinted at. The secret that obsessed these two men's lives remains a secret.

The surviving Borden will therefore realize that I had the last word, that the feud is over and that I triumphed. While invading his privacy I showed I could respect it. From this I hope he will learn that the enmity he fostered between us was futile and destructive, that while we sniped at each other we were squandering the talents in us both. We should have been friends.

I will leave him this so that he may reflect on it for the remainder of his life.

And there is one extra revenge, by omission; he will never discover the secret of Tesla's apparatus.

25th April 1904

Work on the Borden text goes well.

Last week I wrote to three specialist magic publishers, two in London, one in Worcester. Describing myself as an amateur of magic, and suggesting in an unspecified sort of way that over the years I had used my position and wealth to support or sponsor various stage magicians, I explained that I was editing the memoirs of one of our leading illusionists (no name mentioned, at this stage). I asked if, in principle, they would be interested in publishing the book.

Two of them have so far replied. Both letters are non-committal, but encourage me to submit the material. These replies also remind me that I shouldn't have admitted to personal wealth, no matter how elliptically; each letter implies that the book would be more likely to find favour should I be able to contribute to the publisher's production expenses.

Naturally, this does not these days present me with a problem, but even so Julia and I are awaiting the third response before making any decisions.

18th May 1904

With the work complete, we have submitted the manuscript to the publisher of first choice.

2nd July 1904

I have agreed a publishing deal with Messrs Goodwin & Andrewson, of Old Bailey, London EC.

They will publish Borden's book before the end of this year, in an initial edition of seventy-five copies, at a price of three guineas each. They promise abundant illustration, and intensive advertisement by personal letter to their regular clientele. I have acceded to the defrayment of one hundred pounds towards printing costs. Now that Mr Goodwin has read the manuscript he has put forward several novel ideas for presentation.

4th July 1904

Over the last four weeks my remission has ended, and the earlier illness has returned in force. First came the purplish weals, then a day or two later the ulceration of mouth and throat. Three weeks ago I became blind in one eye; the other followed a day or two later. For the last week I have been unable to keep down solid food, but Julia brings me a mild broth three times a day and that is keeping me alive. I am in such pain that I cannot raise my head from the pillow. The doctor calls twice daily, but says that I am too weak to be transferred to hospital. My symptoms are so distressing that I am unable describe them in detail, but the doctor explains that for some reason all my body's natural immunity to infection has been damaged. He has confided in Julia (and she subsequently in me) that if my chest becomes infected again I will not have the strength to resist.

5th July 1904

I had an uncomfortable night, and as dawn broke this morning I believed that I had reached my last day on this earth. It is, however, now approaching midnight and I am clinging on.

I started to cough early this evening, and the doctor came directly to see me. He suggested bathing with cool towels, and they have helped make me more comfortable. I am unable to move any part of my body.

6th July 1904

At a quarter to three this morning my life was brought to its end by a sudden seizure of the heart, following a spasm of coughing and consequent internal bleeding.

My dying was protracted, painful, messy and profoundly distressing to Julia and my children, as well as to myself. We were all shocked by the wretchedness of dying, and have been greatly subdued by the event.

Death uniquely surrounds my life!

Once, in harmless deception, I pretended to die so that Julia might live without scandal as a widow. Every use of the Tesla apparatus later brought death to my experience, several times a week. When Rupert Angier was laid falsely to rest I was alive to bear witness to it.

I have cheated death many times. Death has therefore acquired a sense of unreality for me. It has come to be a commonplace event that by some paradox, it seems, I can always survive.

Now I have seen myself on my deathbed, dying of multiple cancers, and afterwards, after that vile and painful death, I am here to report it in my diary. Wednesday, 6th July 1904: the day I died.

No man should be so wretched as to have to see what I have beheld.

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

Later

I have borrowed a technique from Borden, so that I am I as well as myself. I who write this am not the same as the I who died. We became two entities that night in Lowestoft, when Borden caused the malfunctioning of the Tesla apparatus. We went our separate ways. We have been together again since I returned to Caldlow House at the end of March, just as my temporary remission from the cancers began.

While I yet lived, I maintained the illusion that I was one. One of me lay dying, while the other of me recorded my final concerns. All entries in this journal since 26th March have been written by me.

We are each the prestige of the other.

My dead prestige lies downstairs in his open casket, and will be placed in the family vault in two days’ time. I, his living prestige, continue onward.

I am the Right Honourable Rupert David Angier, 14th Earl of Colderdale, husband to Julia, father to Edward, Lydia and Florence, Lord of Caldlow House in the County of Derbyshire, England.

I shall narrate my story tomorrow. The events of the day have left me, like everyone else in the household, too forlorn for anything but sadness.

7th July 1904

The remainder of my life begins on this day. What hopes can be entertained by one such as I! The following is my story.

I came into being on the evening of 19th May 1903, in an unoccupied loge in the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft. My life began as I balanced on the wooden rail, from which I promptly fell backwards. I crashed to the floor of the loge, scattering the chairs.

My preoccupation was the terrified thought which had sprung into my mind an instant before; that Borden had somehow found his way up to the loge and was waiting for me. Clearly not! As I floundered between the loge chairs, trying to orientate myself physically, I realized that although Borden had sabotaged the apparatus in some way, it had worked sufficiently for the transportation to have been completed. Borden was not here.

Bright light flooded into the loge, as the spot was turned on it. No more than two or three seconds had elapsed. I thought: there is still a chance to save the illusion! I can crawl back to the rail, make something of it!

I rolled over, got to my hands and knees, and was about to clamber up to the rail when to my amazement I heard a voice on the stage calling for the curtain to be rung down. I moved forward, keeping my head down, and peered down at the stage. The tabs were already dropping, but before they blocked my view I briefly saw myself, my prestige!, immobile on the stage.

Built into the base of the Tesla apparatus is a compartment into which the prestige automatically falls as the transformation takes place. My old body, the prestige, is therefore concealed from the audience so as to give maximum impact to the illusion.

This time, Borden's intervention must have prevented the compartment from functioning, leaving the prestige in full view!

I thought quickly. Adam Wilson and Hester were both backstage, and would have to deal with the emergency there behind the curtain. I was alive, strong and in full possession of my senses. I realized it was my responsibility to get to the backstage area, and confront Borden once and for all.

I let myself out of the loge, hurried along the corridor, then took the stairs at a run. I passed one of the female attendants. I skidded to a halt in front of her, and said as urgently as I could, "Have you seen anyone trying to leave the theatre?"

My voice came out as a harsh whisper!

The woman, staring straight at me, screamed in horror. I stood there helplessly for a moment, deafened by the terrible yell she was emitting. She drew breath, her eyes popping and rolling, then she screamed again! I realized I was wasting time, so I laid my hand on her arm to push her gently to one side. My hand sank into the flesh of her arm!

She had collapsed on the steps, shuddering and moaning, as I reached the bottom of the stairs and found the door to the backstage area. I shoved it open, recoiling as once again I felt my hands and arms pushing into the wood. I was preoccupied with the urgent need to find Borden, and had no time to pay much attention.

Without noticing me, Adam Wilson ran past from his position at the back of the set; I called after him but he heard me no more than he had seen me. I paused for a moment, trying to think clearly about where Borden was most likely to have been. He had somehow interrupted the supply of electricity to the apparatus, and this could only mean that he had gained access to the sub-stage mezzanine. Wilson and I had connected everything up to the terminal the management had newly installed in the basement.

I found the stairs leading down, but as I went on to the top step I heard the sound of feet running heavily towards me, and in a moment Borden himself appeared. He was still wearing his ridiculous country-bumpkin clothes and greasepaint. He took the steps two at a time. I froze. When he was no more than five feet away from me he looked up to see where he was going. He saw me instead! Once again, I witnessed the look of terror that had distorted the features of the female attendant. Borden's momentum carried him towards me, but his face was contorted with shock and he stretched out his arms defensively in front of him. Almost at once we collided.

We sprawled together, and fell heavily on the stone floor of the corridor. He was briefly on top of me, but I was able to slide out. I reached towards him.

"Stay away from me!" he cried, and crouching forward, stumbling and tripping, he scrambled away.

I dived at him, got my hand around his ankle, but he slipped it from my grasp. He was bellowing wordlessly with fear.

I shouted at him, "Borden, we must stop this dangerous feud!", but once again my voice came out hoarsely and inaudibly, more breath than tone.

"I didn't mean it!" he cried.

He was on his feet now and getting away from me, still looking back at me with an expression of dread. I gave up the struggle, and let him flee.

After that night I returned to London, where I lived for the next ten months, by my own choice and decision, in a half-world.

The accident in the Tesla apparatus had fundamentally affected my body and soul by placing them in opposition to each other. Physically, I had been rendered into a ghost of my former self. I lived, breathed, ate, passed bodily waste, heard and saw, felt warm and cold, but I was physically a wraith. In a bright light, if you did not look too closely at me, I appeared more or less normal, if somewhat wan of aspect. When the weather was overcast, or I was in an artificially lit room after nightfall, I took on the appearance of a spectre. I could be seen but also seen through . My outline remained, and if people looked hard enough at me they could make out my face, my clothes, and so on, but I was to most people a hideous vision of the ghostly underworld. The female attendant and Borden had both reacted as if they had seen a ghost, and indeed they had. I quickly learned that if I let myself be noticed in these circumstances, I not only terrorized most of the people whom I encountered, but I put myself in some danger too. People react unpredictably when frightened, and once or twice strangers hurled objects at me, as if to ward me off. One of these missiles was a lighted oil-lamp, and it nearly caught me. As a rule I therefore stayed out of sight when I could.

But against this my mind suddenly felt liberated from the constraints of the body. I was always alert, fast-thinking, positive, in ways I had only ever glimpsed in myself before. One of the paradoxes this produced was that I usually felt strong and capable, whereas the reality was that I was unable to tackle most physical tasks. I had to learn to hold objects like pens and utensils, for example, because a careless grip on something would usually make it slip away from me.

It was a frustrating and morbid situation in which to find myself, and for much of the time my new mental energy was directed as pure loathing and fear at whichever of the two Bordens had attacked me. He continued to sap my mental energy, just as his action had sapped my physical being. I had become to all intents and purposes invisible to the world, as good as dead.

It did not take me long to discover that I could be visible or invisible as I chose.

If I moved after dusk, and I wore the stage clothes I had been in during the performance, I could go almost anywhere unseen. If I wanted to move normally then I wore other clothes, and used greasepaint to give my features some solidity. It was not a perfect simulation; my eyes had a disconcertingly hollow look, and once a man in a dimly lit omnibus loudly drew attention to the gap that had inexplicably appeared between my sleeve and my glove, and I had to make a quick departure.

Money, food, accommodation presented no problems to me. Either I took what I wanted when in the invisible state, or I paid for what I needed. Such concerns were trivial.

My real consideration was the well-being of my prestige.

I learned from a newspaper report that my fleeting glimpse of the stage had completely misled me. The report stated that The Great Danton had suffered injuries during a performance in Lowestoft, that he had been forced to cancel future engagements, but was resting at home and expected to return to the stage in due course.

I was relieved to hear it, but greatly surprised! What I had glimpsed as the curtains came down was what I assumed was my own prestige, frozen in the half-dead, half-live condition I called "prestigious’. The prestige is the source body in the transportation, left behind in the Tesla apparatus, as if dead. Concealing and disposing of these prestigious bodies was the single greatest problem I had had to solve before I could present the illusion to the public.

With this news about ill-health and cancelled engagements I realized something different had happened that night. The transportation had been only partial, and I was the sorry result. Most of me had remained behind.

Both I and my prestige were much reduced by Borden's intervention. We each had problems to cope with. I was in a wraithlike condition, my prestige was in debilitated health. While he had corporeality and freedom of movement in the world, from the moment of the accident he was doomed to die; meanwhile, I had been condemned to a life in the shadows, but my health was intact.

In July, two months after Lowestoft, and while I was still coming to terms with the disaster, my prestige apparently decided of his own accord to bring forward the death of Rupert Angier. It was exactly what I would have done in his position; the moment I thought this I realized that he was me. It was the first time we had reached an identical decision separately, and my first intimation that although we existed separately we were emotionally but one person.

Soon after, my prestige returned to Caldlow House to take up the inheritance; again, this is what I would have done.

I, though, remained in London for the time being. I had macabre business to attend to, and I wanted to conduct it in secret with no risk of what I intended to do attaching itself to the Colderdale name.

In short, I had decided that Borden, finally, must be dealt with. I planned to murder him, or, more exactly, to murder one of the two. His secret double life made murder a practicable revenge: he had interfered with the official records that revealed the existence of twins, and had lived his life with one half of himself concealed. Killing one of the brothers would put an end to his deception, and would for my purposes be as satisfying and effective as killing them both. I also reasoned that in my wraithlike state, and with my only known identity publicly buried and mourned, I, Rupert Angier, could never be caught or even suspected of the crime.

In London, I set my plans in progress. I was able to use my virtual invisibility to follow Borden as he went about his life and affairs. I saw him in his family home, I saw him preparing and rehearsing his stage show in his workshop, I stood unseen in the wings of a theatre as he performed his illusions, I tracked him to the secret lair he shared in north London with Olivia Svenson… and once, even, I glimpsed Borden with his twin brother, briefly, furtively meeting in a darkened street, a hurried exchange of information, some desperate business that had to be concluded at once and in person.

It was when I saw him with Olivia that I decided, finally, he must die. Enough feelings remained about that old betrayal to add hurt to the outrage.

Making a decision to commit premeditated murder is the hardest part of the terrible deed, I can reliably say. Often provoked, I believe myself even so to be a mild and reticent man. Although I never want to hurt others, all through my adult life I have frequently found myself swearing I would "kill" or "do in" Borden. These oaths, uttered in private, and often in silence, are the common impotent ravings of the wronged victim, into which position Borden so often forced me.

In those days I had never seriously intended to kill him, but the Lowestoft attack had changed everything. I was reduced to wraithdom, and my other self was wasting away. Borden had in a real way killed us both that night, and I burned for revenge.

The mere thought of killing gave me such satisfaction and excitement that my personality changed. I, who was beyond death, lived to kill.

Once I had taken the decision, commission of the crime could not be made to wait. I saw the death of one of the Borden twins as the key to my own freedom.

But I had no experience of violence, and before I could do anything I had to decide how best to go about it. I wanted a modus operandi that would be immediate and personal, one in which Borden, as he helplessly died, would realize who was killing him and why. By a simple process of elimination I decided I would have to stab him. Again, imagining the prospect of such a terrible act raised a heady thrill of anticipation in me.

I rationalized stabbing thus: poison was too slow, dangerous to administer and impersonal, a shooting was noisy, and again it lacked close personal contact. I was more or less incapable of acts of physical strength, so anything that involved this, such as clubbing or strangling, was not possible. I found, by experiment, that if I held a long-bladed knife in both hands, firmly but not tightly, then I could slide it with sufficient force to penetrate flesh.

Two days after I had completed my preparations I followed Borden to the Queen's Theatre in Baiham, where he was top of a variety bill running all week. The day was a Wednesday, when there was a matinйe performance as well as one in the evening. I knew it was Borden's habit to retire to his dressing-room between shows for a nap on his couch.

I watched his performance from the darkened wings, then afterwards followed him along the gloomy corridors and staircases to his dressing-room. When he was inside with the door closed, and the general backstage turmoil had quietened down a little, I went to where I had secreted my murder weapon and returned cautiously to the corridor outside Borden's room, moving from one darkened corner to the next only when I was certain no one was about.

I was wearing the stage clothes from Lowestoft, my habitual apparel when I wished to move unobserved, but the knife was a normal one. If I had been seen by anyone it would have looked as if the knife were floating along unsupported in the air; I could not risk having attention drawn to me.

Outside Borden's room, I made myself stand quietly in a shadowy alcove opposite, calming my breathing, trying to control the racing of my heart. I counted slowly to two hundred.

After another check that no one was approaching I went to the door and leaned against it, pressing my face gently but firmly into the wood. in a few seconds the front part of my head had passed through, and I was able to see into the room. Only one lamp was alight, casting a dim glow through the small, untidy room. Borden was lying on his couch, his eyes closed, his hands clasped together on his chest.

I withdrew my face.

Clasping the knife I opened the door and went inside. Borden stirred, and looked towards me. I closed the door, and pushed home the bolt.

"Who's that?" Borden said, narrowing his eyes.

I was not there to bandy words with him. I took two steps across the narrow floor, then leaped up on to the couch and crawled on top of him. I squatted on his stomach, and raised the knife in both hands.

Borden saw the knife, then focused on me. In the dim light I was just visible. I could see my arms outlined as I sat over him, the blade trembling above his chest. I must have been a wild and dreadful sight; I had been unable to shave or cut my hair for more than two months, and my face was gaunt. I was terrified and desperate. I was sitting on his abdomen. I was holding a knife, preparing for the deadly thrust.

"What are you?" Borden gasped. He had taken hold of my spectral wrists, trying to hold me back, but it was a simple matter to work myself free of him. "Who—?"

"Prepare to die, Borden!" I shouted, knowing that what he would hear was the hoarse and horrifying whisper that was all I was capable of producing.

"Angier? Please! I had no idea what I was doing! I meant no harm!"

"Was it you who did it? Or was it the other?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was it you or your twin brother?"

"I have no brother!"

"You are about to die! Admit the truth!"

"I am alone!"

"Too late!" I shouted, and I deliberately set my hands in the grip I had learned would give me the strongest grasp on the knife. I would lose the hold if I stabbed too savagely, so I brought the blade down to a place above his heart and began the steady pressure I knew would take the blade through to its target. I felt the fabric of his shirt slit open, and the knife point pressed down into his flesh.

Then I saw the expression on Borden's face. He was transfixed with fear of me. His hands were somewhere above my head, trying to get a grip on me. His jaw had fallen open, his tongue was jutting forward, saliva was running out of each corner of his mouth and down his jowls. His chest was convulsing with his frantic breathing.

No words came out of his mouth, but he was trying to speak. I heard the hiss and splutter of a man drowning in his own terror.

I realized that he was not a strong man any more. His hair was streaked with grey. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled with fatigue. His neck was lined. He lay beneath me, fighting for his life against an insubstantial daemon who had come to squat on his body with a knife ready to slay him.

The thought repulsed me. I could not take murder through to its conclusion. I could not kill like this.

All the fear, anger and tension poured away from me.

I threw the knife aside, and rolled adroitly off. I backed away from him, now defenceless and in my turn petrified of what he might do.

He remained on the couch, where he continued to rasp his breath painfully, shuddering with horror and relief. I stood there submissively, mortified by the effect I had had on this man.

Finally, he steadied.

"Who are you?" he said, his frightened voice uneven, breaking into falsetto on the last word.

"I am Rupert Angier," I replied hoarsely.

"But you are dead!"

"Yes."

"Then how—?"

I said, "We should never have started this, Borden. But killing you is not the way to end it."

I was humbled by the awfulness what I had been trying to do, and the basic sense of decency that had ruled my life until this point was reasserting itself in force. How could I ever have imagined that I could kill a man in cold blood? I turned away from Borden sorrowfully, and forced myself against the wooden door. As I passed through slowly I heard him make his yelping rasp of horror once again.

I was thrown into a fit of despair and self-disgust by my attempt on Borden's life. I knew I had betrayed myself, betrayed my prestige (who was aware of none of my actions), betrayed Julia, my children, my father's name, every friend I had known. If ever I needed proof that my feud with Borden was an appalling mistake, at last I had it. Nothing we had done to each other in the past could justify such a descent into brutality.

In a state of wretchedness and apathy I returned to the room I had rented, thinking there was no more I could do with my life. I had nothing more for which to live.

I planned to waste away and die, but there is a spirit of life, even in one such as myself, that stands in the way of such decisions. I thought that if I did not eat and drink then death would simply follow, but in practice I found that thirst becomes such a frantic obsession that it takes a greater resolve than mine to resist it. Every time I took a few drops to slake it, I postponed my demise a little more. The same was true with food; hunger is a monster.

After a while I came to an accommodation with this and stayed alive, a pathetic denizen of a half-world that was as much of my own making as it had been of Borden’s, or so I came to believe.

I went through most of the winter in this miserable state, a failure even at self-destruction.

During February I felt something profound growing in me. At first I thought it was an intensification of the loss I had felt since Lowestoft; the fact that I was never able to see Julia or the children. I had denied myself this, believing that on balance my need to be with them was outweighed by the horrific effect my appearance would have on them. As the months slipped by, this sadness had become a horrible ache in me, but I could detect nothing around me that made it suddenly grow in the way it had.

It was when I thought of the life of my other self, the prestige left behind me after Lowestoft, that I felt a sense of sharp focus. I knew at once he was in trouble. There had been an accident to him of some kind, or he was being threatened (perhaps by one of the Bordens?), or even that his health had deteriorated more quickly than I had expected.

Once again, when I thought specifically about his health, I knew at once I had identified what was happening. He was ill, dying even. I had to be with him, help him in whatever way I could.

By this time I was myself no great figure of physical strength. In addition to the attenuated body the accident had given me, my poor diet and lack of exercise had made me into a virtual skeleton. I rarely moved from my sordid room, and did so only at night when no one could see me. I knew that I had become hideous to behold, a veritable ghoul in every sense. The prospect of the long journey to Derbyshire seemed fraught with dangerous possibilities.

I therefore embarked on a conscious effort to improve my appearance. I began to take food and drink in reasonable quantities, I hacked at my long and dishevelled hair, and stole a new set of clothes. Several weeks of care would be necessary to restore me even to my appearance after Lowestoft, but I did start feeling better almost at once, and my spirits rose.

Against this was the knowledge that the pain being suffered by my prestige was almost unendurable.

Everything was heading ineluctably towards my return to the family home, and in the last week of March I bought a ticket for the overnight train to Sheffield.

I knew only one thing about the impact of my return home. My sudden appearance would not surprise the part of me that I called my prestige.

I arrived at Caldlow House in mid-morning, a bright Spring day, and in the unwavering sunlight my physical appearance was at its most substantial. Even so, I knew I cut a surprising figure, because during my short daytime journey from Sheffield station by cab, omnibus and then cab again I had drawn many an inquisitive look from passers-by. I had grown used to this in London, but Londoners are themselves accustomed to seeing the city's stranger denizens. Here in the provinces a skeletal man in dark clothes and large hat, with unnatural complexion, raggedly cut hair and weirdly hollow eyes, was an object of curiosity and alarm.

At the house I went and hammered on the door. I could have let myself in, but I had no idea what I should expect to find. I felt it best to take my unheralded return one step at a time.

Hutton opened the door. I removed my hat, and stood plainly before him. He had begun to speak before he looked properly at me, but he was silenced as he saw me. He stared wordlessly, his face impassive. I knew him well enough to realize that his silence revealed his consternation.

When I had given him time to accept who I might be, I said, "Hutton, I'm pleased to see you again."

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came.

"You must know what occurred in Lowestoft, Hutton," I said. "I am the unfortunate consequence of that."

"Yes, sir," he said at last.

"May I come in?"

"Should I advise Lady Colderdale you are here, sir?"

"I should like to speak to you quietly before I see her, Hutton. I know my arrival here is likely to cause alarm."

He took me to his sitting room beside the kitchen, and he gave me a cup of tea from a pot he had just been making. I sipped it while I stood before him, not knowing how to explain. Hutton, a man I had always admired for his presence of mind, soon took control of the situation.

"I think it best, sir," he said, "if you would wait here while I take it upon myself to announce your arrival to her ladyship. She will then, I believe, come to see you. You may best decide how to proceed together."

"Hutton, tell me. How is my—? I mean, how is the health of—?'

"His lordship has been gravely ill, sir. However, the prognosis is excellent and he has returned this week from hospital. He is convalescing in the garden room, where we have moved his bed. I believe her ladyship is with him at this moment."

"This is an impossible situation, Hutton," I ventured.

"It is, sir."

"For you in particular, I mean."

"For me and for you, and for everyone, sir. I understand what happened in that theatre in Lowestoft. His lordship, that is, you, sir, took me into his confidence. You will remember, no doubt, that I have been much involved with the disposal of the prestige materials. There are of course no secrets in this house, my Lord, as you directed."

"Is Adam Wilson here?"

"Yes, he is."

"I'm glad to know that."

A few moments later, Hutton left and after a delay of about five minutes returned with Julia. She looked tired, and her hair was drawn back into a bun. She came straight to me and we embraced warmly enough, but we were both so nervous. I could feel her tensing as we held each other.

Hutton excused himself, and when we were alone together Julia and I assured each other I was not some kind of gruesome impostor. Even I had sometimes doubted my own identity during those long winter months. There is a kind of madness where delusion replaces reality, and many times such a malaise seemed to explain everything; that I had once been Rupert Angier but I was now dispossessed of my own life and only memories remained, or alternatively that I was some other soul who in madness had come to believe he was Angier.

When I got a chance I explained to Julia the limits of my bodily existence; how I would fade from sight without bright light, how I could slip inadvertently through solid objects.

Then she told me of the cancers from which I, my prestige, had been suffering, and how by some miracle they had seemed to recede on their own, allowing me, him, to return home.

"Will he recover completely?" I asked anxiously.

"The surgeon said that recovery sometimes occurs spontaneously, but in most cases a remission is only for a short while. He believes in this case, you, he—" She looked ready to cry, so I took her hand in mine. She steadied herself and spoke sombrely. "He believes that this is just a temporary reprieve. The cancers are malignant, widespread and multifarious."

Then she told me the matters that most surprised me: that Borden, or more accurately one of the Borden twins, had died, and that his notebook had come into my, our, possession.

I was astounded to hear these things. For instance, I learned that Borden had died only three days after my failed attempt on his life; the two events seemed to me inevitably connected. Julia said it was thought he had suffered a heart attack; I wondered if this could have been brought on by the fear I instilled in him? I remembered his terrible noises of anguish, his laboured breathing, and his general appearance of fatigue and ill-health. I knew that heart seizures could be caused by stress, but until this moment I had supposed that after my departure Borden regained his senses and would eventually have returned to normal.

I confessed my story to Julia, but she seemed to think the two events were unconnected.

Even more of interest was the news about Borden's notebook. Julia told me she had read some of it, and that most of Borden's magic was described within its pages. I asked her if I, my prestige, had any plans about what to do with it, but she said that the illness had interrupted everything. She mentioned that she shared some of the contrition I felt towards Borden, and that my prestige was of much the same mind.

I said, "Where is he? We must be together."

"He will be waking soon," Julia replied.

My reunion with myself must be one of the most unusual in history! He and I were perfect complements to each other. Everything I lacked was in him; everything I had he had lost. Of course we were the same, closer to each other than identical twins.

When either of us spoke, the other could easily finish the sentence. We moved in the same way, had the same gestures and mannerisms, came to the same thought in the same moment. I knew everything about him, and he knew the same of me. All we lacked between ourselves was our separate experiences of the last few months, but once we had described these to each other even that difference was eliminated. He trembled at my description of my attempt on Borden's life, and I suffered at second hand some of the pain and wretchedness of his disease.

Once we were together there was nothing that would make us separate again. I asked Hutton to make up a second bed in the garden room, so that the two halves of myself could be together the whole time.

None of this could be kept from the rest of the household, and soon I was reunited with my children, with Adam and Gertrude Wilson, as well as Mrs Hutton, the housekeeper. Everyone exclaimed about the uncanny double effect we created. I dread to think what effect this revelation of their father will have on my children in the future, but both parts of me, and Julia, agreed that the truth was better than yet another lie.

It was not long before the chilling fact of the cancers lent an urgency to the time we spent together, and we realized that if there was anything remaining to be done, now was the time.

From the beginning of April until the middle of May we worked together on the revision of Borden's notebook, preparing it for the publisher. My twin brother (for so it became convenient to think of my prestige) was soon ill again, and although he had done much of the initial work on the book it was I who completed the work, and negotiated with the publisher.

And I, using his identity, maintained the journal for him until his demise. So it was, yesterday, that our double life came to an end, and with it comes the end of my own short life story. Now there is only me, and I live beyond death once more.

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

8th July 1904

This morning I went with Wilson down to the cellar, where we inspected the Tesla apparatus. It was in full working order, but because it was a long time since I had used it I went through Mr Alley's notes to check that everything was in place. I had always enjoyed the sense of collaborating with the far distant Mr Alley. His meticulous notes were a pleasure to work with.

Wilson asked me if we should dismantle the device.

I thought briefly, then said, "Let's leave it until after the funeral."

The ceremony is planned for tomorrow at midday.

After Wilson had left, and I had locked the access door to the cellar, I powered up the device and used it to transmit more gold coins. I was thinking of the future, of my son the 15th Earl, of my wife the dowager lady. All these were responsibilities I could not fully address. Once again I felt the crushing weight of my own ineffectuality holding back not only me but my innocent family.

I had not counted the wealth we had created with the device, but my prestige had shown me the hoard he had made, kept in a closed and locked compartment in the darkest recess of the cellar. I removed what I estimated to be two thousand pounds’ worth, for Julia's immediate requirements, then I added my few new coins to what was left, thinking that no matter how much we forged there would never be enough.

However, I would see to it that the Tesla device remained intact. Alley's instructions would be kept with it. One day, Edward will find this journal and realize what the apparatus can best be used for.

Later

I have only a few hours left before the funeral, and cannot spend too much of that time writing in these pages. Therefore let me note the following.

It is eight in the evening, and I am in the garden room I shared with my prestige before he died. A beautiful sunset is making gold the heights of Curbar Edge, and although this room faces away from the setting sun I can see amber tendrils of cloud overhead. A few minutes ago I walked softly around the grounds of the house, breathing the summer scents, listening to the quiet sounds of this moorland country I loved so much during my childhood.

It is a fine warm evening in which to plan the end, the very end.

I am a vestige of myself. Life has become literally not worth living. All that I love is forbidden to me by the state I am in. My family accepts me. They know who I am and what I am, and that my circumstances are not of my own making. Even so, the man they loved is dead, and I cannot replace him. Better for them that I depart, so that they might at last start to grieve fully and freely for the man who died. In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself.

Nor have I any legal existence: Rupert Angier the magician is dead and buried, the 14th Earl of Colderdale will be interred tomorrow.

I have no practical being. I cannot live except in squalid half life. I cannot travel safely without either assuming an unconvincing disguise, or scaring people half to death and putting myself in peril. My only expectation of life is as a ghost of myself, forever hovering on the fringes of my family's real lives, forever haunting my own past and their future.

So now it must end, and I shall die.

But the curse of life also clings to me! I have already found how fierce the spirit of life burns in me, and that not only is murder ethically beyond me but suicide too is an impossibility for me. When once before I wished myself dead, the wish was not strong enough. I can make myself die only by convincing myself that there is also a hope I shall not succeed.

As soon as I have completed these notes I will conceal this journal, and the earlier volumes of it, somewhere amongst the prestiges which lie in the vault. Then I will unlock the compartment in the cellar, leaving the gold for my son or his son eventually to find. This journal must not be discovered while the gold is yet to be spent, for it amounts to a confession of the forgery I have committed.

With all this completed I will charge up the Tesla device again and use it for the last time.

Alone, in secret, I will transmit myself across the aether for the most sensational manifestation of my career.

I have spent the last hour measuring and checking the coordinates, preparing myself, rehearsing as if an audience of thousands will be watching. But this act of magic must take place while I am alone, because I shall project myself into the deceased body of my prestige, and there my end will come!

I shall arrive there; of this there is no doubt, because the Tesla apparatus has never faltered yet in its accuracy. But what will be the result of this morbid union?

If it is a failure, I shall materialize inside my prestige's poor, cancer-ridden body, dead for two days, stiff with rigor mortis . I too will be instantly dead, and will know nothing about it. Tomorrow, as they lay the body to rest they will lay me with it.

But I believe there is a chance of another outcome, one that acknowledges my desperation to live. This materialization might not succeed in killing me!

I am certain, almost certain, that my arrival in the body of my prestige will return life to it. It will be a reunion, a final joining. What remains of me will fuse with what remains of him, and we will become whole once more. I have the spirit that he never had. I will reanimate his body with my spirit. I have the will to live that was taken from him; I will restore it to him. I have the vital spark that now he lacks. I will heal his lesions and sores and tumours with my purity of health, will pump blood once more through his arteries and veins, will soften the rigid muscles and joints, give bloom to his pale skin, and he and I will join once again to make wholeness of my own body.

Is it madness to think such a thing might be possible?

If madness it be, then I am content to be mad because I shall live.

I am mad enough, while I yet plan, to believe there is hope. That hope allows me to press ahead.

The mad reanimated body of my prestige will rise from its open casket, and be quickly gone from this house. Everything that has become forbidden to me will be left behind. I have loved this life, and have loved others while in it, but because my only remaining hope of life is an act that every sane person would find reprehensible, I must become an outcast, leave behind all those I have loved, go out into the world, make what I can of what I find.

Now I shall do it!

I will go alone to the end.