PART FOUR

Rupert Angier

21st September 1866

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 £2 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 £11 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: £3 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 séances 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 séances 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 séances, 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 séance 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 séance 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 séances; 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 séance 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 séance 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 séance, 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 séance 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 séance, 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 séance, 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 séances 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: £326 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 séance 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 séance 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 séance 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 séance 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 séance 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 ingénieur 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 séances 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 ingénieur 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: £637 12s 6d. Before expenses.

31st December 1880

Total Income from Magic for 1880: £1,142 7s 9d. Before expenses.

31st December 1881

Total Income from Magic for 1881: £4,777 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 ingénieur 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 coryphée 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 matinée), 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 ingénieur ,” 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 théâtre ?)

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 £18 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 fiancée 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 façade 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 ingénieur , 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.”