Last night my volunteer was what I thought must be a local man; he was tall and burly, had a florid complexion, and when he spoke I heard a Suffolk accent. I had spotted him earlier in the show, sitting in the centre of the front row, and as soon as I noticed his amiable, unintelligent face I had picked him out as a likely volunteer. He did in fact offer himself as soon as I called for someone to come up on stage, something which should have alerted me to likely trouble. However, while I was doing the trick he was the perfect foil, even drawing a laugh or two from the audience with his homely sense of humour and commonplace observations. ('Take a card,' said I. 'What, you want me to take it home, sor?' said the man, all wide-eyed and seemingly eager to please.)
How could I not have guessed it was Borden?! He even gave me a clue, because the name he wrote on the playing card was
With the card trick completed I shook his hand, thanked him by name, and added my applause to that of the audience as he was led by Hester, my present female assistant, towards the stalls ramp.
I did not notice that Redbone's seat was still empty a few minutes later, as I moved towards the start of In a Flash.
In the tensions leading up to this performance, his absence registered only at the back of my mind; I knew there was something wrong, but because of the moment I could not think exactly what it might be. As the current started to flow through the Tesla apparatus, and the long tendrils of high-voltage discharge snaked around me, and the anticipation from the audience was at its greatest, I noticed his absence at last. The significance of it came at me like a thunderbolt.
By then it was too late; the apparatus was in operation and I was committed to completing the trick.
At this point in the show nothing can be modified. Even my chosen target area is fixed; setting the coordinates is too intricate and time-consuming to be done at any time other than before a performance. The previous night I had set the apparatus for both of yesterday's performances so that I would arrive in the highest loge at stage left, which by arrangement with the management was kept empty for both shows. The loge was at the same approximate height as the main balcony, and could be seen from almost every other part of the auditorium.
I had arranged it so that I should materialize on the very rail of the box itself, picked out by the follow-spot, facing down into the stalls a long way below, apparently struggling to keep my balance, arms windmilling, body jerking wildly, and so on. Everything had gone exactly to plan during the first performance, and my magical transformation brought screams, roars of warnings and shouts of alarm from the audience, followed by thunderous applause as I swung down to the stage on the rope thrown up to me by Hester.
To arrive on the rail of the loge facing down to the audience, I have to stand inside the Tesla apparatus with my back towards the loge. The audience cannot know it, of course, but the position in which I arrange my body is exactly recreated at the instant of arrival. From my place inside the apparatus I could not therefore see where I was about to arrive.
With Borden somewhere around, a terrible certainty struck me that he was about to sabotage me yet again! What if he was lurking inside the loge, and gave me a shove as I arrived on the ledge? I felt the electrical tension mounting ineluctably around me. I could not prevent myself turning anxiously around to look up at the box. I could just make it out through the deadly blue-white electrical sparks. All seemed well; there was nothing there to block my arrival, and although I couldn't see into the box itself, where the seats are placed, it did not look as if anyone was there.
Borden's intent was much more sinister, and a moment later I found out what it was. In the very instant that I turned to look up at the loge, two things happened simultaneously.
The first was that the transmission of my body actually began.
The second was that electrical power to the apparatus cut out, disconnecting the current instantly. The blue fires vanished, the electrical field died.
I remained on the stage, standing within the wooden cage of the apparatus in full view of the audience. I was staring over my shoulder at the loge.
The transmission had been interrupted! But it had begun before it was stopped, and now I could see an image of myself on the rail; there was my ghost, my
Appalled at what I had seen I stepped forward out of the coils of the Tesla cage. On cue, the spotlight came on, illuminating the whole loge to pick out my intended materialization. The people in the audience looked up at the loge, already half anticipating the trick. They started to applaud, but just as quickly the noise faded away to nothing. There was nothing to see.
I stood alone on the stage. My illusion was ruined.
'Curtain!' I yelled into the wings. 'Bring down the curtain!'
It seemed to take an eternity but at last the technician heard me and the curtain came down, separating me from the audience. Hester appeared at a run; her cue for a return to the stage was when I was taking my applause from the loge rail, and not before. Now duty and confusion brought her out of her place in the wings.
'What happened?' she cried.
'That man who came up from the audience! Where is he?'
'I don't know! I thought he went back to his seat.'
'He got backstage somehow! You are supposed to make sure these people leave the stage!'
I pushed her aside angrily and lifted up the reinforced fabric of the curtain. At a crouch I stepped beneath it and went forward to the footlights. The house lights were now on, and the audience was moving into the aisles and slowly up to the exits. The people were obviously puzzled and disgruntled, but they were paying no more attention to the stage.
I looked up at the box. The spotlight had been turned off, and in the bland house lights I could still see nothing.
A woman screamed once, then again. She was somewhere in the building behind the loges.
I walked quickly into the wings and met Wilson as he was hurrying to the stage to find me. Breathlessly, because now I found my lungs inexplicably labouring, I instructed him to dismantle and crate up the apparatus as quickly as possible. I dashed past him and gained access to the stairs to the balcony and loges. Members of the audience were walking down, and as I started up the stairs, weaving between them, they grumbled at me for lack of manners, and apparently not because they identified me as the performer who had just so spectacularly failed before them. The anonymity of failure is sudden.
Every step I took was harder to complete. My breath was rattling in my throat, and I could feel my heart pounding as if I had just run a mile uphill. I have always kept myself fit, and physical exercise has never been much of a strain for me, but suddenly I felt as if I were lame and overweight. By the time I was at the top of only the first short flight of steps I could go no further, and the crowd walking down the stairs was forced to step past me as I leaned on the wrought-iron banisters to catch my breath. I rested for a few seconds, then launched myself up the next flight of steps.
I had taken no more than two steps when I was racked with a terrifying cough, one of such violence that it astounded me. I was at the end of my physical tether. My heart was hammering, blood was thumping rhythmically in my ears, sweat was bursting from me, and the dry, painful cough was one that seemed to evacuate and collapse my chest. It weakened me so greatly that I could barely inhale again, and when I did manage to suck in a little air I coughed again at once, wheezing and racking horribly. I was unable to stay upright, and I slumped forward across the stone steps, while the last few of the theatregoers went past, their boots only inches from my pathetic head. I neither knew nor cared what they thought of me as I lay there.
Wilson eventually found me. He raised me into his arms, and held me like a child while I struggled to regain my breath.
At long last my heart and breathing steadied, and a great chill descended on me. My chest felt like a swollen pustule of pain, and although I was able to prevent myself coughing again each breath was tentatively taken and expelled.
