At this time the “hidden treasure” craze was at its height, and the idea struck me that I might as well utilise it for my show.
So I used to announce, prior to opening, that instead of paying £50 for “turns” on my bill, I proposed to give away this sum amongst my audiences during the ensuing week.
To this end I had a number of vouchers printed announcing that “the finder will receive £1 on presenting this paper to Carlton at the Palace Theatre during the evening performance.” These I would take out secretly at dead of night, and hide in various likely and unlikely spots, my usual method being to fold them up into quite a small compass, and run a drawing-pin through them. By these means I was able to pin them underneath a seat where I happened to be sitting, say in a park, for instance, or any other public place, without attracting attention. At other times I would pretend to hide the vouchers in various places where I knew people were watching me and then watch them vainly searching for the thing that was not there. It was great fun.
Of course I did not invariably pin them under seats. I hid them here, there, and everywhere, all over the place. People used to follow me about in the day-time, in order to try and spot where I put them. But, needless to say, they were never successful. I saw to that. Still, it was all good advertisement, and it was fun for me to watch them digging and searching for my vouchers miles away from where I had hidden them.
I used to give out clues from the stage at each performance, giving very easy ones the first night or two, and making them more obscure and difficult as the week wore on. Whenever a voucher was found, I used to have the finder up on the stage, and get him to sign it with his name and address, and these were afterwards pinned up outside the theatre, so that the public could see that my offer was a genuine one.
Well, it so happened that at Lincoln, while I was working this stunt, the late B. C. Hucks, the famous Daily Mail flying man, who, it will be remembered, was the first Englishman to loop the loop, was holding an aviation meeting there. I invited him to the theatre, and suggested that I should have him up on the stage and introduce him to the audience. “It will be a good ‘advert.’ for you,” I told him.
Hucks willingly agreed. But he did not know what was in my mind. Otherwise, perhaps, he might not have fallen in with the suggestion so readily. For when I got him on the stage, and after introducing him to the people in front, where needless to say he received an enormous ovation, I went on to say that “Mr. Hucks had very kindly consented to take me up in his aeroplane on the day following, and that I would throw down ten £1 vouchers for the crowd to scramble for.”
“That’s so, isn’t it, Mr. Hucks?” I said at the conclusion of my speech, turning to him and shaking him by the hand; and poor Hucks, taken off his guard, could do no more than nod a smiling assent. But all the while, under his breath, he was addressing remarks the reverse of complimentary to me.
Next day I was at the aerodrome to time. Hucks was there. I half hoped that he wouldn’t have been. I had had time to reflect overnight, and I didn’t at all relish the experience I was up against. For flying in those days, the reader must remember, was not by any means the safe and easy thing it has since become. Nor were the aeroplanes then what they are now. In fact the early types were just big, power-driven box-kites.
However, I was in for it, and up we went. I was in a blue funk, and when Hucks, after circling round two or three times, asked me if I had dropped the vouchers, I replied that I had forgotten all about them. Which was the fact.