Now let us return to my "Magic life".

The next event of outstanding importance was a challenge issued by Archdeacon Colley to all and sundry to reproduce an apparently miraculous happening he had witnessed in a house in Bloomsbury.

A medium had stood in the centre of a twilit room, and, after a few writhings and contortions, vapour was seen to issue from his side, when to the amazement of the onlookers a golden-haired spirit form emerged from the same part of his anatomy. This mysterious creature made her advent horizontally, and slowly came forth until her full length was visible. She then turned her feet to the ground and began to walk about, spoke a few words to the Archdeacon, and returned the way she came.

Archdeacon Colley offered £1,000 to anyone who could duplicate this mystery, using only natural means. Mr. Maskelyne had expressed his disbelief of the story, and the challenge was expressly sent to him. Nevil and myself had great difficulty in persuading Mr. Maskelyne to accept the challenge. He had fought bogus spiritualistic mediums for years, though none of his efforts had appeared to alter the credulity of the victims.

However, he finally consented to accept the task, and in due course reproduced the effect on the stage at St. George's Hall. The results were proclaimed by the Press and public as an exact duplication of the description given by the Archdeacon.

Mr. Maskelyne naturally applied for the thousand pounds, but the Archdeacon refused to pay up, and Mr. Maskelyne thereupon sued him for it in the High Court.

Archdeacon Colley put in a counter-claim for libellous statements, and also pleaded that, although Mr. Maskelyne had produced the ghost correctly, he had not caused it to return through the medium's side. On these counts Mr. Maskelyne lost the case, and he had to pay damages and costs. But it turned out the biggest draw to our entertainment that we had had for years, and "The Side Issue of the £1,000 Ghost", as we called it, packed the hall for months and months.

The mention of ghosts reminds me of a joke I once played on the "Magic Circle" during one of their annual banquets. After doing several tricks, I had a few ordinary screens brought out, and when the lights were lowered a ghost covered in silken gauze glided slowly in from the back end of the hall. Piloting it to the centre of the stage, I requested members of the audience to place a couple of screens around it. This I called the "inner circle". Then I made a ring of screens round the screens that hid the ghost, and invited twenty or so gentlemen to go within these outer screens and join hands round the inner structure. The waiters then removed the outer screens, and the committee, with their hands still joined, were requested to peep within the inner screens, when they found the ghost had evaporated.

The author about to "vanish" a ghost before the eyes of a critical audience

The great success of "The Side Issue" permitted me to consider another offer from Vienna. There was a hall there called the Sofien Sall, which was used as a dance-hall in the winter and a fashionable swimming-bath in the summer. The company that owned it desired to try another form of entertainment between the two seasons. They sent representatives to London, who approached me with tempting terms. What they required was two hours' entertainment ten times a week for six weeks.

The first question I asked them was about the language, and I was assured that English would be sufficient. But I had been to Vienna before, and knew better than to try and give a two hours' entertainment to a mixed audience in English. I set about seeking lessons in German, had my patter translated into that language, and eventually learned it off by heart. I was taught all this in six weeks, an hour a day being devoted to it by the Berlitz method. I also engaged a clever conjurer from America, named Germaine, temporarily to take my place.

I journeyed to Vienna with my sister, Gintaro, Mr. Bate, and another assistant. The latter took the part of Diogenes, whom I "produced" from a barrel. Gintaro opened the show with his graceful juggling, and this, with orchestra and intervals, made the show last two hours and a half. My wife was also with us, and she had the surprise of her life when I began my performance in high German. I had kept the fact that I was learning the language a complete secret from her.

In Vienna I produced a new illusion called "The Giant's Breakfast", in which I put the portrait of a giant's head in a frame hanging in mid-air, when it suddenly became a giant egg, from which emerged a woman dressed as a chicken. I advertised this by sending an egg of enormous proportions to perambulate the city on the roof of a cab. It caused much amusement.

Incidentally, soon after I returned to London, Rostand produced "Chanticleer" in Paris, so I turned "The Giant's Breakfast" into "Chanticleer", drawing a picture of Rostand's head to take the place of the giant's face.

The author presents "Chanticleer" at St. George's Hall

I saw a good deal of Vienna a day or two before I opened my performance. I was doing a trick called "The Point of View", and for this I required a couple of white rats. My friend Ottokar Fischer marched me from shop to shop all over the town, and we were almost giving up the quest, when we found them. I was thus able to do the trick as arranged.

When I returned to London I had to have a few weeks' rest, owing to a rheumatic affection of the eye.

It had long been an ambition of mine to reproduce the legendary Indian Rope Trick, and I believe we were the first to carry it. out on any stage in 1907. We issued a circular which ran as follows:

We have endeavoured to find out what truth there is in the old story about the Indian Rope Trick. The commonly accepted version of that story is as follows: The necromancer, standing in the open air, and surrounded by spectators, throws up one end of a rope, the other end of which rests on the ground. The rope becomes stiffened and stands without support, a boy climbs up the rope and disappears into space. We regard this story as simply an old legend, a traveller's tale which has grown up in repetition. It is true a few persons have written us to say that they have seen the trick, but, with all respect to these correspondents, we think they are confusing many partial memories into one general impression, largely erroneous. We have the more reason for suspecting this, as it so frequently happens in the case of our own productions. We have also received confirmation from an English conjurer who saw the Rope Trick in India, but it is quite different from that of the usual story. Several persons have written to say that they lived in India many years, but never saw the Indian Rope Trick, although they tried many times to find a conjurer who could do it. A newspaper correspondent who accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales on their Indian tour says that all the journalists tried, without success, to find anyone who had seen the trick, or who knew anyone who had seen it. This gentleman adds: "I fancy that, if there really were an exponent of this trick, he would have been produced for the entertainment of the Prince and Princess. But he wasn't!" That is precisely our own view of the matter. Furthermore, we know that people have gone out to India with the express purpose of bringing back conjurers who could do this trick, but such expeditions have always failed. The Indian conjurers are, in fact, very poor, and if any one of them could do the Rope Trick the large sums offered would have brought him to Europe. But such a performer has never yet been found, and an Indian conjurer lately in England publicly stated that the trick had never been done. Some people have suggested that the spectators of the trick are hypnotized, and though this might be possible with an audience of two or three persons, it could not be done with a crowd of spectators. This idea originated in an American work of fiction, and has no foundation in fact. We are prepared to pay a salary at the rate of £5,000 a year to any man who can perform the Rope Trick as described in the legend. Let it be clearly understood what he is to do. He is to stand out in the open air and he is to be surrounded by spectators. He is to throw one end of a rope into the air, and the other end is to be on the ground. The rope is to become stiffened: a boy is to climb up it and disappear into space. Pending the arrival of this miracle-maker, Mr. Devant, in the course of "The Magical Master", presents an illusion founded upon the story of the Indian Rope Trick. No conjurer has ever before attempted to produce this effect." Maskelyne and Devant.

The Indian Rope Trick: The author shows the limbs of the Indian The Indian Rope Trick: The Indian joined together again

This sketch contained many other illusions besides the Indian Rope Trick, in which I carried a portmanteau which I emptied in front of the audience, the contents consisting of the dismembered portions of a dummy Indian figure. The legs, arms, head and trunk of this figure were replaced in the bag and wrapped up in a piece of cloth; the cloth began to move, and gradually a living figure rose up underneath it. It was found to be the Indian of which the dummy was the prototype. The whole of it was done on a stool isolated from the ground. This seemed to astound the audience more than the same man disappearing on the rope. Another trick consisted in clothing a man in a lady's dress by smashing paper hoops over his head. By this means the astonished butler in the sketch was draped first in a skirt, then in a cape, then a feather boa, and finally in a gorgeous hat. The manager of the Folies-Bergères, Paris, saw this trick and took a fancy to it, and paid me a large sum to go over to Paris and show his comedians in the revue how it was done. They did not do it for long. Comedians are not conjurers:

The author performing The Indian Rope Trick

His request was by no means an unusual one, for we had a good many applications from theatrical managers to help in their productions for some illusionary effects. Personally, I produced the tricks that Oscar Asche performed in "Kismet". H. B. Irving also commissioned me to produce the effects of his version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". These were simple, and mostly arranged over a luncheon at the Garrick Club. Then Sir Gerald Du Maurier and Sir J. M. Barrie consulted me about the play they produced with a mysterious voice they wanted heard without the audience being able to trace the source of its origin. In Mr. Arthur Bourchier's "Macbeth" I was responsible for making the ghost of Banquo appear at the back of the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. This effect was afterwards used by Sir Beerbohm Tree in his production. Sir Thomas Beecham also consulted me for opera effects. All these, and sundry other producers, expected me to work miracles. They themselves took months to produce their plays, but expected the illusionary effects to be contrived and made in a few days.

Meanwhile Oswald Williams and Julian Wylie were making great headway on the music-halls. I understood they had formed a sort of alliance, Julian Wylie acting as agent for conjuring acts staged by Williams. This was a great success, but Wylie, having booked up Williams for considerable periods, set about getting other acts, and made a wonderful talking head of his own. This head was carried into the audience on a sheet of glass, and it carried on a conversation with the surrounding spectators.

Then Wylie came to me with a proposal that I should go on the halls. At first I scoffed at the idea. I had had enough of the halls in the early days, but he was very persistent. He had got into the habit of coming into Pagani's, so that we used to meet almost every day. At last he persuaded me to accept a week at Brighton Hippodrome at a salary of £200. This was arranged for a week in our usual vacation, so I was able to take my regular assistants with me. A few months before this we produced a fairy play at the Hall, by Mrs. Nesbit. This was called "The Magician's Heart". I was the wicked magician, and had to boil my hard heart to soften it.

In this play the foolish apprentice dreamed of a fairy princess, and I, the wicked magician, had to vanish his dream. This really was the same vanish I had previously used in "The Mascot Moth", but in this case the dress was a sort of galatea or Grecian robe. Wylie here showed his cleverness as a producer, for he asked me to include in the programme "The Artist's Dream", and, to make it more sensational, proposed that I should add to it my vanishing the "Spirit of Mercy" concluding the sketch by falling prone upon the stage, apparently dead.

As the day approached for this trial week at Brighton I put on the act that I intended to do at St. George's Hall, so that when I faced the huge audience that had assembled for my first night I did so with the utmost confidence. It was a very different situation from my previous attempts at vaudeville, for I was now well known to the public. I was "top of the bill", and, most important of all, I had fifty minutes instead of eight in which to get my atmosphere and prove myself. The result was very satisfactory, and immediately I was offered some years' engagement at a salary of £325 per week.

We had by this time formed Maskelyne and Devant's Mysteries as a private company, of which I held half the shares and was managing director. We had gone on from one thing to another in the illusionary way, and had had several outstanding successes. Amongst them "Selbit's Spirit Paintings", "Walking Through a Wall", and "The Disappearing Donkey" were particularly well known.

The latter illusion I found in a very curious way. I was playing at the Hippodrome, Newcastle, and I motored over to Hexham to see an old employee who had taken an hotel there. In the course of conversation he told me there was a conjurer in the town.

"What name?" said I.

"Charles Morritt," he replied. This rather surprised me, because we all thought Charles Morritt was dead. No one had heard of him for years. They took me to a shop at which the show was being given, and there, sure enough, was Charles Morritt's name, and, above, the words "The Disappearing Donkey".

I knocked at the door, and there was Morritt in person, wearing his usual top hat. After greetings and congratulations, I asked to see the donkey disappear, and then offered him an engagement. I at once saw the drawing power of the title. By arrangement with Morritt, I presented it myself in some of my vaudeville engagements, and in so doing I used to tell the tale of an Irish priest who came upon a man sitting on a stile watching a donkey in a field.

"Hallo, Pat," said the priest; "are you watching your brother?"

"Yes, Father," replied Pat.