Authors: Christopher Priest
Rupert Angier's name was already familiar to me. Writing from an address in North London
he was an opinionated and long-winded correspondent to the letter columns of two or three
of the private-circulation magic journals. His purpose was invariably to pour scorn on the
people he described as the “establishment” of older magicians, who with their secretive
ways and courteous traditions were held up as tiresome relics of a former age. Although I
worked within those traditions I did not allow myself to be drawn into Angier's various
controversies, but some of the magicians I knew were greatly provoked by him.
One of his theories, to take a fairly typical example, was that if magicians were as
skilful as they claimed to be, then they should be prepared to perform magic “in the
round”. That is to say, the magician would be surrounded on all sides by the audience, and
would therefore have to create illusions that did not depend on the framing,
audience-excluding effect of the proscenium arch. One of my distinguished colleagues, by
way of reply, gently pointed out the self-evident fact that no matter how well the
magician prepared his act, there would always be a segment of the audience who could see
the trick being worked. Angier's response was to deride the other correspondent. First, he
said, the magical effect would be increased if the illusion could be viewed from all
angles. Secondly, if it could not, and a small segment of the audience had to glimpse the
secret,
it did not matter
! If five hundred people are baffled, he said, it was of no importance that five others
should see the secret.
Such theories were almost heretical to the majority of professionals, not because they
held secrets to be inviolable (which Angier seemed to imply), but because Angier's
attitude to magic was radical and careless of the traditions which had held good for so
long.
Rupert Angier was therefore making a name for himself, but perhaps not the one he had
planned. One observation I often heard was the mock surprise that Angier rarely if ever
performed on the public stage. His colleagues were therefore unable to admire his no doubt
brilliant and innovative magic.
As I say, I did not involve myself, and he was of not great interest to me. However,
destiny was soon to take a hand.
It happened that one of my father's sisters, living in London, had recently been bereaved
and in her grief was intending to consult a spiritist. She had accordingly arranged a
séance at her house. I heard about it in one of my mother's regular letters, passed to me
as family chitchat, but at once my professional curiosity was aroused. I promptly made
contact with my aunt, offered her belated condolences on the loss of her husband, and
volunteered to be with her in her search for solace.
When the day came I was lucky that my aunt had invited me to lunch beforehand, because the
spiritist arrived at the house at least an hour before he was expected. This threw the
household into some confusion. I imagine it was part of his design, and enabled him to
take certain preparations in the room where the séance was to be conducted. He and his two
young assistants, one male and one female, darkened the room with black blinds, moved
unwanted furniture to the side while importing some of their own which they had brought
with them, rolled back the carpet to bare the floorboards, and erected a certain wooden
cabinet whose size and appearance was enough to convince me that conventional stage magic
was about to be performed. I stayed discreetly but attentively in the background while
these preparations were put in place. I did not wish to make myself at all interesting to
the spiritist, because if he was alert he might have recognized me. The previous week my
stage act had drawn a favourable press notice or two.
The spiritist himself was a young man of about my own age, slight of build, dark of hair
and narrow of forehead. He had a wary look to him, almost like that of a foraging animal
going about its business. He made quick precise movements with his hands, a sure sign of a
long-practising prestidigitator. The young woman who worked with him had a slender, agile
body (because of her physique I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that she would be
employed in his illusions), and a strong, attractive face. She wore dark and modest
clothes, and rarely spoke. The other assistant, a burly young man not long in his
majority, had a broad thatch of fair hair and a churlish face, and he jibed and complained
as he hauled in the heavy pieces of furniture.
By the time my aunt's other guests arrived (she had invited some eight or nine of her
friends to be present, presumably to help amortize the cost a little), the spiritist's
preparations were complete and he and his assistants were sitting patiently in the
prepared room, waiting for the time appointed. It was therefore impossible for me to
examine their apparatus.
The presentation, which with all the preamble and atmospheric pauses lasted for well over
an hour, broke down into three main illusions, carefully arranged so as to create feelings
of apprehension, excitement and suggestibility.
First the spiritist performed a table-tipping illusion with a dramatic physical
manifestation; the table spun around of its own accord, then reared up terrifyingly into
the air, causing most of us to sprawl uncomfortably on the bare floor. After this the
attendees were shaking with excited agitations and ready for anything that might follow.
What did follow was that with the aid of his female accomplice the spiritist appeared to
fall into a Mesmeric trance. He was then blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot by
his assistants, and placed helpless within his cabinet, whence emanated, soon enough,
numerous noisy, startling and inexplicable paranormal effects: strange lights flashed
brilliantly, trumpets, cymbals and castanets sounded, and eerie “ectoplasmic matter” rose
of its own accord from the heart of the cabinet, and floated into the room illuminated by
a mysterious light.
Released from the cabinet and his bonds (when the cabinet was opened he was found as
efficiently tied up as when he went inside), and miraculously restored from his Mesmerized
state, the spiritist then got down to his main business. After a short but colourful
warning about the dangers of “crossing over” to the spirit world, and a hint that the
results justified the risk, the spiritist fell into another trance and soon was in touch
with the other side. Before too long he was able to identify the spirit presence of
certain departed relatives and close friends of the people gathered in the room, and
comforting messages were conveyed from one group to the other.
How did the young spiritist achieve all this?
As I have already said, professional ethics constrain me. I could not then, and cannot
now, reveal more than the barest outline of the secrets of what were without question
straightforward magical effects.
The tipping table is actually not a conjuring trick at all (although it can be presented
as one, as on this occasion). It is a little-known physical phenomenon that if ten or a
dozen people cluster around a circular wooden table, press the palms of their hands on the
surface, and are then told that soon the table will start to rotate, it is only a matter
of a minute or two before that starts to happen! Once the motion is felt, the table almost
invariably begins to tip to one side or the other. An adroitly placed foot suddenly
lifting the appropriate table leg will dramatically unbalance the table, causing it to
rear up and crash excitingly to the floor. With luck, it will take with it many of the
participants, causing surprise and excitement but not physical harm.
I need not emphasize that the table being used at my aunt's was one of the spiritist's own
props. It was constructed so that the four wooden legs connected to the central pillar in
such a way that there was room for a foot to be slipped underneath.
The cabinet manifestations can only be adumbrated here; a skilled magician may easily
escape from what appear to be irresistible bonds, especially if the ropes and knots have
been tied by two assistants. Once inside the cabinet it would be the work of a few seconds
to release himself sufficiently to make happen the otherwise perplexing display of
paranormal effects.
As for the “psychic” contacts which were the main purpose of the meeting, here too there
are standard techniques of forcing and substitution which any good magician can readily
perform.
I had gone to my aunt's house to satisfy professional curiosity, but instead, to my
eventual shame and regret, I came away with a case of righteous indignation. Standard
stage illusions had been used to gull a group of suggestible and vulnerable people. My
aunt, believing that she had heard words of comfort from her beloved husband, was so
overcome by grief that she retired immediately to her chamber. Several of the others were
almost as deeply moved by messages they had heard. Yet I knew, I alone knew, that it was
all a sham.
I felt an exhilarating sense that I could and should expose him as a charlatan, before he
did any more harm. I was tempted to confront him then and there, but I was a little
intimidated by the assured way he had performed his illusions. While he and his female
assistant were putting away their apparatus I spoke briefly to the thatch-haired young man
and was given the spiritist's business card.
Thus it was that I learned the name and style of the man who was to dog my professional
career:
Rupert Angier
Clairvoyant, Spirit Medium, Séantist
Strictest Confidence Observed
45 Idmiston Villas, London N
I was young, inexperienced, heady with what I saw as high principles, and these, to my
later chagrin, blinded me to the hypocrisy of my position. I set out to hound Mr Angier,
intent on exposing his swindles. Soon enough, by methods I need not record here, I was
able to establish where and when his next séance was to take place.
Once again it was a meeting in a private house in a suburb of London, although this time
my connection with the family (bereaved by the sudden death of the mother) was contrived.
I was able to attend only by presenting myself at the house the day before and claiming to
be an associate of Angier's whose presence had been requested by the “medium” himself. In
their all-too-evident grief the remaining family seemed hardly to care.
The next day I made sure I was in the street outside the house well before the
appointment, and thus was able to confirm that Angier's own early arrival at my aunt's
house had been no accident, and indeed was a necessary part of the preparations. I watched
covertly as he and his assistants unpacked their paraphernalia from a cart and carried it
into the house. When I finally presented myself at the house an hour later, close to the
appointed time, the room had been arranged and was in semi-darkness.
The séance began, as before, with the table-tipping trick, and as luck would have it I
found myself standing unavoidably close beside Angier as he readied himself to begin.
“Don't I know you, sir?” he said softly and accusingly.
“I think not,” I replied, trying to make light of it.
“Make a habit of these occasions, do you?”
“No more than you, sir,” I said, as cuttingly as I could.
He responded with a disconcerting stare, but as everyone was waiting for him he had no
alternative but to begin. I think he knew from that moment that I was there to expose him,
but to do him credit he carried out his performance with the same flair I had seen before.
I was biding my time. It would have been pointless to uncover the secret of the table, but
when he began the manifestations from within the cabinet it was tempting to dash across
and throw open the door to reveal him inside. Without doubt we would then have seen that
his hands were free of the ropes that were supposed to be restraining him, and the trumpet
would be found held to his lips or the castanets clicking in his fingers. But I stayed my
hand. I judged it best to wait until the emotional tension was at its greatest, when the
supposed spirit messages were being sent to and fro. Angier performed this by using small
scraps of paper, rolled up into little pellets. The family had earlier written names,
objects, family secrets and the like on these scraps, and Angier pretended to read their
“spirit” messages by pressing the tiny pellets to his forehead.
When he had but barely begun I seized my chance. I stepped away from the table, breaking
the chain of hands that was supposed to set up a psychic field, and snatched the blind
down from the nearest window. Daylight flooded in.
Angier said, “What the devil—?”
“Ladies and gentlemen!” I cried. “This man is an impostor!”
“Sit down, sir!” The male assistant was moving quickly towards me.
“He is using legerdemain upon you!” I said emphatically. “Look in the hand that hides
beneath the table's surface! There is the secret of the messages he brings you!”
As the young man threw his arms around my shoulders I saw Angier moving quickly and
guiltily to conceal the slip of paper he held, by which the trick was effected. The father
of the family, his face contorted by rage and grief, rose from his seat and began to
berate me loudly. First one of the children then the others began to wail with unhappiness.
As I struggled, the oldest boy said plaintively, “Where is Mama? She was here! She was
here!”
“This man is a charlatan, a liar and a cheat!” I shouted.
I was by this time almost at the door, being forced backwards out of the room. I saw the
young woman assistant hastening to the window to replace the blind. With a tremendous
thrashing of elbows I managed to break free temporarily from my assailant, and lunged
across the room at her. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly to one side.
She sprawled across the floorboards.
“He cannot talk to the dead!” I cried. “Your mother is not here at all!”