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?"