On yet another occasion the placards announcing my act outside the theatre were defaced with "The sword he uses is a fake", "The card you will choose is the Queen of Spades’, "Watch his left hand during the mirror trick", and so on. All these graffiti were clearly visible to the audience as they trooped in.
I suppose these attacks might be dismissed as practical jokes, but they could damage my reputation as a magician, as Angier well knew.
How did I know he was behind them? Well, in some cases he clearly declared his involvement; if one of my productions had been sabotaged, he would be there in the auditorium to heckle me, leaping to his feet at the very moment things started going wrong. But more significantly the perpetrator of these attacks revealed an approach to magic that I had learned was symptomatic of Angier. He was almost exclusively concerned with the magical secret, what magicians call the "gimac" or "gimmick". If a trick depended on a concealed shelf behind the magician's table, that alone would be the focus of Angier's interest, not the imaginative use to which it might be put. No matter what else might cause strife between us, it was Angier's fundamentally flawed and limited understanding of magical technique that was at the heart of our dispute. The wonder of magic lies not in the technical secret, but in the skill with which it is performed.
And it was for this reason that The New Transported Man was the one illusion of mine he never publicly attacked. It was beyond him. He simply could not work out how it was done, partly because I have kept the secret secure, but mostly because of the way in which I perform it.
An illusion has three stages.
First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. Volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in the preparation. As the trick is being set up, the magician will make every possible use of misdirection.
The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, conjoin to produce the magical display.
The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.
The New Transported Man is fairly unusual among illusions in that the setup and performance are what most intrigue audiences, critics and my magical colleagues, while for me, the performer, the prestige is the main preoccupation.
Illusions fall into different categories or types, of which there are only six (setting aside the specialist field of mentalist illusion). Every trick that has ever been performed falls into one or more of the following categories.
1. Production : the magical creation of somebody or something out of nothing,
2. Disappearance : the magical vanishing of somebody or something into nothing,
3. Transformation : the apparent changing of one thing into another,
4. Transposition : the apparent changing of place of two or more objects,
5. Defiance of Natural Laws : for example, seeming to defeat gravity, making one solid object appear to pass through another, produce a large number of objects or people from a source apparently too small to have held them, and
6. Secret Motive Power : causing objects to appear to move of their own will, such as making a chosen playing card rise mysteriously out of the pack.
Again, The New Transported Man is not entirely typical, because it uses at least four of the above categories. Most stage illusions depend on only one or two. I once saw an elaborate effect on the Continent where five of the categories were employed.
Finally, there are the techniques of magic.
The methods available to magicians cannot be so neatly categorized as the other elements, because when it comes to technique a good magician will not disdain anything. Magical technique can be as simple as the placing of one object behind another so that it may no longer be seen by the audience, and it can be so complex that it requires advance setting up in the theatre and the collusion of a team of assistants and stooges.
The magician can choose from an inventory of traditional techniques. The playing cards that have been "gimmicked" so that one or more cards will be forced into use, the eye-dazzling backcloth that allows much necessary magical business to go on unnoticed, the black-painted table or prop that the audience cannot see properly, dummies and doubles and stooges and substitutes and blinds. And an inventive magician will embrace novelty. Any new device or toy or invention that comes into world should provoke the thought: "How could I make a new trick with that?" Thus, in the recent past we have seen new tricks that employ the reciprocating engine, the telephone, electricity, and one remarkable effect memorably created with Dr Warble's smoke-bomb toy.
Magic has no mystery to magicians. We work variations of standard methods. What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals. If an innovative new illusion is developed, it is only a matter of time before the effect is reproduced by others.
Every illusion can be explained, be it by the use of a concealed compartment, by an adroitly placed mirror, by an assistant planted in the audience to act as "volunteer", or by simple misdirection of the audience's attention.
Now I hold my hands before you, fingers spread so that you can see nothing is concealed within them, and say: The New Transported Man is an illusion like every other, and it can be explained. But by a combination of a simple secret that has been kept securely, many years of practice, a certain amount of audience misdirection, and the use of conventional magic techniques it has become the keystone of my act and my career. It has also defied Angier's best efforts to penetrate its mystery, as I shall soon record.
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Sarah and I have been with the children on a short holiday along the south coast, & I took my notebook with me.
We went first to Hastings, because it is years since I was there, but we did not stay long. The place has started a decline that I fear will prove irreversible. Father's yard, which was sold on his death, has been sold again. Now it is a bakery. A lot of houses have been built in the valley behind the house, & a railway line to Ashford is soon to run through.
After Hastings we went to Bexhill. Then to Eastbourne. Then to Brighton. Then to Bognor.
My first comment on the notebook is that it was I who tried to humiliate Angier, & I, in turn, who was humiliated by him. Other than this detail, which is after all not too important, I think my account of what happened is accurate, even in its other details.
I am putting in a lot of comments about the secret, & therefore making much of it. This strikes me as ironic, after I went to such pains to emphasize how trivial most magical secrets really are.
I do not think my secret is trivial. It is easily guessed, as Angier has apparently done, in spite of what I have written. Others have probably guessed too.
Anyone who reads this narrative will probably work it out for themselves.
What cannot be guessed is the effect the secret has had on my life. This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole mystery, unless I myself give him the answer. He would never credit the extent to which my life has been shaped towards holding the secret intact. That is what matters.