The sйance began, as before, with the table-tipping trick, and as luck would have it I found myself standing unavoidably close beside Angier as he readied himself to begin.
"Don't I know you, sir?" he said softly and accusingly.
"I think not," I replied, trying to make light of it.
"Make a habit of these occasions, do you?"
"No more than you, sir," I said, as cuttingly as I could.
He responded with a disconcerting stare, but as everyone was waiting for him he had no alternative but to begin. I think he knew from that moment that I was there to expose him, but to do him credit he carried out his performance with the same flair I had seen before.
I was biding my time. It would have been pointless to uncover the secret of the table, but when he began the manifestations from within the cabinet it was tempting to dash across and throw open the door to reveal him inside. Without doubt we would then have seen that his hands were free of the ropes that were supposed to be restraining him, and the trumpet would be found held to his lips or the castanets clicking in his fingers. But I stayed my hand. I judged it best to wait until the emotional tension was at its greatest, when the supposed spirit messages were being sent to and fro. Angier performed this by using small scraps of paper, rolled up into little pellets. The family had earlier written names, objects, family secrets and the like on these scraps, and Angier pretended to read their "spirit" messages by pressing the tiny pellets to his forehead.
When he had but barely begun I seized my chance. I stepped away from the table, breaking the chain of hands that was supposed to set up a psychic field, and snatched the blind down from the nearest window. Daylight flooded in.
Angier said, "What the devil—?"
"Ladies and gentlemen!" I cried. "This man is an impostor!"
"Sit down, sir!" The male assistant was moving quickly towards me.
"He is using legerdemain upon you!" I said emphatically. "Look in the hand that hides beneath the table's surface! There is the secret of the messages he brings you!"
As the young man threw his arms around my shoulders I saw Angier moving quickly and guiltily to conceal the slip of paper he held, by which the trick was effected. The father of the family, his face contorted by rage and grief, rose from his seat and began to berate me loudly. First one of the children then the others began to wail with unhappiness.
As I struggled, the oldest boy said plaintively, "Where is Mama? She was here! She was here!"
"This man is a charlatan, a liar and a cheat!" I shouted.
I was by this time almost at the door, being forced backwards out of the room. I saw the young woman assistant hastening to the window to replace the blind. With a tremendous thrashing of elbows I managed to break free temporarily from my assailant, and lunged across the room at her. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly to one side. She sprawled across the floorboards.
"He cannot talk to the dead!" I cried. "Your mother is not here at all!"
The room was in an uproar.
"Hold him there!" Angier's voice was audible above the racket. The male assistant grabbed me a second time, and spun me around so that I was facing into the room. The young woman was still on the floor where she had fallen, and was staring up at me, her face contorted with spite. Angier, standing by the table, was erect and apparently calm. He was staring straight towards me.
"I know you, sir," he said. "I even know your damned name. I shall henceforward be following your career with the greatest attention." Then to his assistant: "Get him out of here!"
Moments later I was sprawling in the street. Mustering as much dignity as I could, and ignoring the gawping passers-by, I straightened my clothes and walked quickly away down the street.
For a few days afterwards I was sustained by the righteousness of my cause, the knowledge that the family were being robbed of their money, that the skills of the stage magician were being put to warped uses. Then, inevitably, I began to be assailed by doubts.
The comfort that Angier's clients gained from the sйances seemed genuine enough, no matter how derived. I remembered the faces of those children, who for a few minutes had been led to believe that their lost mother was sending consoling messages from the other side. I had seen their innocent expressions, their smiles, their happy glances at each other.
Was any of this so different from the pleasurable mystification a magician gives to his music hall audience? Indeed, was it not rather more? Was expecting payment for this any more reprehensible than expecting payment for a performance at a music hall?
Full of regrets I brooded unhappily for nearly a month, until my conscience reached such depths of guilty feelings that I had to act. I penned an abject note to Angier, begging forgiveness, apologizing unconditionally.
His response was immediate. He returned my note in shreds, with a note of his own challenging me sarcastically to restore the paper with my own superior form of magic.
Two nights later, while I was performing at the Lewisham Empire, he stood up from the front row of the circle and shouted for all to hear, "His female assistant is concealed behind the curtain at the left-hand side of the cabinet!"
It was of course true. Other than bringing down the main curtain and abandoning my act I had no alternative but to continue with the trick, produce my assistant with as much theatrical brio as possible, then wilt before the trickle of embarrassed applause. In the centre of the circle's front row an empty seat gaped like a missing tooth.
So was begun the feud that has continued over the years.
I can plead only youth and inexperience for starting the feud, a misguided professional zeal, an unfamiliarity with the ways of the world. Angier should shoulder some of the blame; my apology, although not swift enough, was sincerely meant and its rejection was mean-spirited. But then, Angier too was young. It is difficult to think back to that time, because the dispute between us has gone on so long, and has taken so many different forms.
If I committed both wrong and right at the outset, Angier must accept the blame for keeping the feud alive. Many times, sick of the whole thing, I have tried to get on with my life and career, only to find that some new attack was being mounted against me. Angier would often find a way of sabotaging my magical equipment, so that a production I was attempting on stage went subtly wrong; one night the water I was turning into red wine remained water; another time the string of flags I pulled flamboyantly from an opera hat appeared as string alone; at another performance the lady assistant who was supposed to levitate remained unmovably and mortifyingly on her bed.
On yet another occasion the placards announcing my act outside the theatre were defaced with "The sword he uses is a fake", "The card you will choose is the Queen of Spades’, "Watch his left hand during the mirror trick", and so on. All these graffiti were clearly visible to the audience as they trooped in.
I suppose these attacks might be dismissed as practical jokes, but they could damage my reputation as a magician, as Angier well knew.
How did I know he was behind them? Well, in some cases he clearly declared his involvement; if one of my productions had been sabotaged, he would be there in the auditorium to heckle me, leaping to his feet at the very moment things started going wrong. But more significantly the perpetrator of these attacks revealed an approach to magic that I had learned was symptomatic of Angier. He was almost exclusively concerned with the magical secret, what magicians call the "gimac" or "gimmick". If a trick depended on a concealed shelf behind the magician's table, that alone would be the focus of Angier's interest, not the imaginative use to which it might be put. No matter what else might cause strife between us, it was Angier's fundamentally flawed and limited understanding of magical technique that was at the heart of our dispute. The wonder of magic lies not in the technical secret, but in the skill with which it is performed.