Authors: Christopher Priest
As soon as I read this I hurried around to my workshop. I enquired of my neighbours there
if a large package might recently have been delivered from the USA, but they knew nothing
of it.
22nd November 1900
I showed Alley's letter to Julia this morning, quite forgetting that I had not yet told
her about my most recent trip to the USA, and what I had done there. Of course her
curiosity was aroused by it, and I then needed to explain.
“So this is where all your money has gone?” she said.
“Yes.”
“And Tesla has apparently absconded, and we have only this letter to show for it?”
I assured her that Alley was trustworthy, and pointed out that he had written his letter
without solicitation from me. For a while we discussed what might have happened to the
package while
en route
to me, where it might be, and how we might recover it.
Then Julia said, “What is so special about the illusion?”
“Not the illusion itself,” I replied. “It is the means by which it is achieved.”
“Is Mr Borden something to do with this?”
“You have not forgotten Mr Borden, I see.”
“My dear, it was Alfred Borden who drove the first wedge between us. I have had many years
to reflect, and I trace everything that went wrong back to that day when he attacked me.”
Tears had started in her eyes, making them gleam with grief, but she spoke in quiet rage
and without any trace of self-pity. “Had he not hurt me I should not have lost our first
child, and the aftermath, in which I felt a great divide opening between us, would not
have occurred. Your restlessness began then. Even the dear children who followed could not
compensate for the cruelty and stupidity of what Borden did that day, and that the feud
between you continues is proof of the outrage you too must still feel.”
“I have never spoken to you about that,” I said. “How do you know?”
“Because I am not a fool, Rupert, and I have seen occasional remarks in the magic
magazines.” I had not known she continued to subscribe to those. “You are still prime
amongst my concerns,” she said. 'I wonder only why you have never spoken to me of his
attacks."
“Because I am, I suppose, a little ashamed of the feud.”
“Surely he is the aggressor?”
“I have had to defend myself,” I said.
I told her about my investigations into his past, and my attempts to discover how he
worked the illusion. Then I described the hopes I had for Tesla's equipment.
“Borden relies on standard stage trickery,” I explained. “He uses cabinets and lights and
make-up, and when he transports himself across the stage he does so by concealment. He
enters one apparatus and emerges from another. It is brilliantly done, but the mystery is
not only concealed by his props it is also made banal by them. The beauty of the Tesla
device is that the trick can be carried out in the open, and the materialization uses no
props at all! If it works as planned I shall be transporting myself instantly to any
position I like: to an empty part of the stage, to the royal box, to the front of the
grand circle, even to an empty seat in the centre of the stalls! Anywhere, indeed, that
will produce the greatest impact on the audience.”
“You make it sound a little provisional,” Julia said. “You say this is still being
planned?”
"As Alley says in his letter, it has been despatched to me
… but I have yet to receive it!"
Julia was the perfect audience for my enthusiasms about Tesla's device, and for the next
hour or more we discussed all the possibilities it presented to me. Julia quickly
identified the instinct that had been at the heart of it; if I were to perform this
illusion on any public stage it would thwart Borden forever!
Were there any remaining doubts about what I should be doing, Julia dispelled them
forever. Indeed, so excited was she that we began our search for the shipment at once.
I proposed, gloomily, that it would take several weeks to tour around the many shipping
agents’ offices in London, trying to trace an undelivered crate. But Julia said, in her
familiar way of cutting through the Gordian Knot: “Why do we not begin our enquiries with
the Post Office?” So it was, two hours later, that we located two immense crates addressed
to me, waiting safely in the dead-letter section of the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.
15th December 1900
Most of the last three weeks have been an agony of frustration, because I have been
waiting for electricity to be supplied to my workshop. I have been like a small boy with a
toy I could not play with. The Tesla apparatus has been erected in my workshop ever since
I picked it up from Mount Pleasant, but without a supply of current it is useless. I have
read Mr Alley's lucid instructions a thousand times! However, after my increasingly
frequent reminders and urgings, the London Electricity Company has at last done the
necessary work.
I have been rehearsing ever since, wrapped up mentally and emotionally in the demands this
extraordinary device makes on me. Here, in no particular order, is a summary of what I
have learned.
It is in full working order, and has been ingeniously designed to work on all presently
known versions of electrical supply. This means I may travel with my show, even to Europe,
the USA and (Alley claims in his instructions) the Far East.
However, I cannot perform my show unless the theatre has electrical current supplied. In
future I will have to check this before I accept any new bookings, as well as many other
new matters (some of which follow).
Portability. I know Tesla has done his best, but the equipment is damnably heavy. From now
on, planning the delivery, unpacking and setting up of the apparatus is a priority. It
means, for instance, that the simple informality of a train-ride to one of my shows is a
thing of the past, at least if I wish to perform the Tesla illusion.
Technical rehearsals. The apparatus has to be erected twice. First for private testing on
the morning of the show, then, while the main curtain is down and another act is in
progress, it has to be re-erected for the performance. The admirable Alley has included
suggestions as to how it might be carried out speedily and silently, but even so this is
going to be hard work. Much rehearsal will be necessary, and I shall require extra
assistants.
Physical layout of the theatres. I or Adam Wilson will always need to reconnoitre
beforehand.
Boxing the stage. This is practicably straightforward, but in many theatres it antagonizes
the backstage staff, who for some reason think they have an automatic right to have
revealed to them what they consider to be trade secrets. In this case, allowing strangers
to see what I am actually doing on stage is out of the question. Again, more preparatory
work than usual will be necessary.
Post-performance sealing of the apparatus, and private disassembly, are also procedures
fraught with risk. I cannot accept any bookings until these procedures have been worked
out and ensuing problems resolved.
All this special preparation! However, careful planning and rehearsal are in the essence
of successful stage magic, and I am no stranger to any of them.
One small step forward. All stage illusions are given names by their inventors, and it is
by these that they become known in the profession. The Three Graces, Decapitation,
Cassadaga Propaganda, are examples of three illusions at present popular in the halls.
Borden, stodgily, calls his second-rate version of the trick The New Transported Man (a
name I have never used, even when I was employing his methods). After some thought I have
decided to call the Tesla invention In a Flash, and by this it will become known.
I also use this entry to note that as of last Monday, 10th December, Julia and the
children have returned and are living with me at Idmiston Villas. They will see Caldlow
House for the first time when we spend the Christmas holiday there.
29th December 1900
In Caldlow House
I am a happy man, given this, my second chance. I cannot bear to think of past Christmases
when I was estranged from my family, nor the thought that somehow I might again lose this
happiness.
I am therefore busily preparing for what must follow, all in order to avert that which
might otherwise follow. I say this with deliberate obscurity, because now that I have
rehearsed In a Flash a couple of times, and I have learned its true working, I must be
circumspect about its secret, even here.
"When the children are asleep, and Julia encourages me to attend to business, I have been
concentrating on the affairs of the estate. I am determined to put right the neglect my
brother allowed.
31st December 1900
I write these words as the nineteenth century draws to a close. In an hour from now I
shall descend to our drawing room, where Julia and the children are waiting for me, and
together we shall see in the New Year and the New Century. It is a night resonant with
auguries for the future, also with unavoidable reminders from the past.
Because secrecy again has a hold on me, I must say that what Hutton and I did earlier this
evening had to be done.
What I am about to write will be written with a hand that still trembles from the
primaeval fears that were aroused in me. I have been thinking hard about what I can record
of the experience, and have decided that a straightforward, even bald, description of what
happened is the only way.
This evening, soon after nightfall, while the children were taking an early nap so that
they could be awake later to see in the new century, I told Julia what I was about to do,
and left her waiting in her sitting room.
I found Hutton, and we left the house and went together across the East Lawn towards the
family vault. We transported the prestige materials on a handcart sometimes used by the
gardeners.
Hutton and I had only storm lanterns to guide us, and unlocking the padlocked gate in near
darkness took several minutes. The old lock had grown stiff with disuse.
As the wooden portal swung open, Hutton declared his unease. I felt terrific sympathy for
him.
I said, “Hutton, I don't expect you to go through with this. You may wait for me here if
you like. Or you could return to the house, and I'll continue alone.”
“No, my Lord,” he replied in his honest way. “I have agreed to this. To be frank I would
not go in there alone, and neither, I dare say, would you. But apart from our imaginings
there is nothing to fear.”
Leaving the cart by the entrance, we ventured inside. We held the storm lanterns raised at
arm's length. The beams ahead did not reveal much, but our large shadows fell on the walls
beside us. My memory of the vault was vague, because the only other time I had been inside
I was still just a boy. The shallow flight of roughly cut stone steps led down into the
hillside, and at the bottom, where there was a second door, the cavern widened a little.
The inner door was unlocked, but it was stiff and heavy to move aside. We grated it open,
then went through into the abysmally dark space beyond. We could sense rather than see the
cavern spreading before us. Our lanterns barely penetrated the gloom.
There was an acrid smell in the air, so sharp that it was almost a taste in the mouth. I
lowered my lantern and adjusted the wick, hoping to tease a little more light from it. Our
irruption into the place had set free a million motes of dust, swirling around us.
Hutton spoke beside me, his voice muted in the stifling acoustics of the underground
chamber.
“Sir, should I collect the prestige materials?”
I could just make out his features in the lantern's glow.
“Yes, I think so. Do you need me to help you?”
“If you would wait at the bottom of the steps, sir.”
He walked quickly up the flight of steps, and I knew he wanted to be done as soon as
possible. As his light receded I felt more keenly alone, vulnerable to childish fears of
the dark, and of the dead.
Here in this place were most of my forebears, laid out ritually on shelves and slabs,
rendered down to bones or fragments of bones, lying in boxes and shrouds, wreathed in dust
and flaking garments. When I cast the lantern about I could make out dim shapes on some of
the nearer slabs. Somewhere, down the vault, out of the range of my lamp, I heard the
scuttling of a large rodent. I moved to the right, reaching out with my hand, and felt a
stone slab at about the height of my waist and I groped across it. I felt small sharp
objects, loose to the touch. The stink immediately intensified in my nose, and I felt
myself beginning to gag. I recoiled away, glimpsing the horrid fragments of that old life
as my beam swung around. All the rest were invisible to me, yet with no difficulty I could
imagine the scene that lay before me just beyond the feeble reach of the lamp. In spite of
this I held the lamp high, and swung it around, hoping for a sight of what was there. I
knew the reality could hardly be as unpleasant as my imaginings! I sensed that these
long-dead ancestors were being roused by my arrival, and were shifting from their
positions, raising a grisly head or a skeletal hand, croaking out their own obscure
terrors that my presence was arousing in them.
One of these rocky shelves bore the casket of my own father.
I was torn by my fears. I wanted to follow Hutton up to the outside air, yet I knew I had
to plunge further on into the depths of the vault. I could make neither move, because
dread held me to where I stood. I am a rational man who seeks explanations and welcomes
the scientific method, yet for those few seconds Hutton was away from me I was tormented
by the easy rush of the illogical.
Then at last I heard him again on the steps, dragging the first of the large sacks
containing the prestige materials. I was only too glad to turn and give him a hand, even
though he seemed able to shift the weight on his own. I had to put down my lantern while
we got the sack through the door, and because Hutton had left his own light with the
handcart we were working in almost total darkness.