The Prestige

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I did not know how the trick was done! I had seen it with my own eyes, and I had watched in the knowledge of how to watch a magician at work, and I had looked in all the places from which a magician traditionally misdirects his audience. I left the Hackney Empire in a boiling rage. I was angry that my best illusion had been copied; I was even angrier that it had been bettered. Worst of all, though, was the fact that I could not work out how it was done.

He was one man. He was in one place. He appeared in another. He could not have a double, or a stooge; equally he could not have travelled so quickly from one position to the other.

Jealousy made my rage worse. In a Flash, Angier's catchpenny title for his version of, his damnable improvement on, The New Transported Man, was unmistakably a major illusion, one which introduced a new standard into our often derided and usually misunderstood performing art. For this I had to admire him, no matter what my other feelings about him might be. Along with, I suspect, most of my fellow members of the audience, I felt that I had been privileged to witness the illusion for myself. As I walked away from the front of the theatre I passed the narrow alley that led down to the stage door, and I even momentarily wished it were possible for me to send up my card to Angier's dressing room, so that I might visit him there and congratulate him in person.

I suppressed these instincts. After so many years of bitter rivalry I could not allow one polished presentation of a stage illusion to make me humiliate myself before him.

I returned to my flat in Hornsey, where at that time I happened to be staying, and underwent a sleepless night, tossing restlessly beside Olive.

The next day I settled down to some hard and practical thinking about his version of my trick, to see what I could make of it.

I confess yet again: I do not know how he did it. I could not work out the secret when I saw the performance, and afterwards, no matter what principles of magic I applied, I could not think of the solution.

At the heart of the mystery were three, possibly four, of the six fundamental categories of illusion: he had made himself Disappear , he had then Produced himself elsewhere, somehow there seemed to be an element of Transposition , and all had been achieved in apparent Defiance of Natural Laws .

A disappearance on stage is relatively easy to arrange, placement of mirrors or half-mirrors, use of lighting, use of magician's "black art" or blinds, use of distraction, use of stage trapdoors, and so on. Production elsewhere is usually a question of planting in advance the object, or a close copy of it… or if it is a person, planting a convincing double of the person. Working these two effects together then produces a third; in their bafflement the audience believes it has seen natural laws defied.

Laws that I felt I had seen defied that evening in Hackney.

All my attempts to solve the mystery on conventional magical principles were unsuccessful, and although I thought and worked obsessively I did not come even close to a solution that satisfied me.

I was constantly distracted by the knowledge that this magnificent illusion would have at its heart a secret of infuriating simplicity. The central rule of magic always holds good — what is seen is not what is actually being done .

This secret continued to elude me. I had only two minor compensations.

The first was that no matter how brilliant his effect, my own secret was still intact from Angier. He did not carry out the illusion my way, as indeed he could never have done.

The second was that of speed. No matter what his secret, Angier's performance effect was still not as quick as mine. My body is made to transport from one cabinet to the other in an instant. Not, I emphasize, that it happens quickly; the illusion is worked in an instant . There is no delay of any kind. Angier's effect was measurably slower. On the evening I witnessed the illusion I estimated one or at most two seconds had elapsed, which meant to me that he was one or at most two seconds slower than me.

In one approach towards a solution I tried checking the times and distances involved. On the night, because I had had no idea what was about to happen, and I had no scientific means of measurement, all my estimates were subjective.

This is part of the illusionist's method; by not preparing his audience, the performer can use surprise to cover his tracks. Most people, having seen a trick performed, and asked how quickly it was carried out, will be unable to give an accurate estimate. Many tricks are based on the principle that the illusionist will do something so quickly that an unprepared audience will afterwards swear that it could not have happened, because there was insufficient time .