Authors: Christopher Priest
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.