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The sequel to the above conversation came a week later, when on February 5th, 1907, I found a stylograph pen which had been previously hidden by the reporter in the axle of one of the old Russian guns on Brandon Hill. Of course the affair was well boomed beforehand—I saw to that—and fully three thousand people (according to the report in the Evening Times of the above date) were on the hill when I made the discovery, while a crowd of at least two thousand watched my start from the Prince’s Theatre, after my eyes had been tightly bandaged with a dark blue silk handkerchief folded in ten thicknesses, and stitched together to prevent any slipping. The width of this bandage was about four inches, completely covering my eyes, and, in order to make assurance doubly sure, I had each eye covered under the bandage with a separate pad of cotton-wool, pressed well down into the sockets.
Thus blindfolded I groped and blundered my way along several streets. Once I ran into a tramcar. Four times I fell down. But—I found the pen. And so delighted were the crowd at my success, that they seized me and carried me shoulder high to the Prince’s Theatre. The full report of the affair, as published in the newspaper, occupied over a column; and the reporter professed himself completely puzzled as to how I accomplished the feat, as indeed doubtless he was.
Yet the whole business was a spoof from start to finish, so far, that is to say, as regards there being any question of telepathy or thought-transference. But it was a spoof engineered entirely by myself, and off my own bat, so to speak. In other words, there was no collusion, direct or indirect, between me and anybody else connected with the affair. Nor, as a matter of fact had I the remotest idea, when I set out on my quest, whereabouts the pen was hidden, nor indeed in what quarter of the city. In the circumstances, therefore, I think the reader will admit that the feat was, on the face of it, a sufficiently marvellous one.
I was blindfolded. I was in a strange city, where the streets and turnings I had to traverse and take were necessarily totally unfamiliar to me. Let the reader turn the problem about in his own mind, and try if he can reach any plausible solution of the mystery. I make bold to say that he will fail, as the good people of Bristol failed, and as many thousands of other people failed before whom I was presently to give other similar exhibitions in various parts of the world.
PORTION OF FRONT PAGE OF THE “OAKLAND TRIBUNE” WITH REPORT OF CARLTON’S TREASURE HUNT IN THAT CITY
Telepathy was the explanation most generally tendered, both then and afterwards, and I have in my possession letters from members of the Psychical Research Society warning me against repeating the experiment on account of the strain on my “psychic personality,” which might, so they averred, have unlooked-for and dangerous results. That the ordeal I voluntarily underwent was a trying, not to say nerve-racking, one was perfectly true. I felt it mentally and physically for weeks afterwards. Nevertheless, as I have already intimated, telepathy did not enter into the matter at all. Exactly how the trick was worked I shall take occasion to explain later on. Suffice it to say here that I afterwards spoofed the Press and public on the same lines over and over again, and never once did I fail in my quest, nor was the secret of how it was done ever elucidated by anybody.
I have performed the feat in Italian cities, and puzzled university professors, and before committees of professional magicians in India, Egypt, and other Oriental and Near-Eastern countries, and these were deceived as completely as were the shrewd, hard-headed Yankees.
Some of my hardest tests, however, have been undergone in England, in connection with certain of the big English newspapers. In several instances editors whom I have approached have been frankly incredulous in the beginning; so much so, indeed, that they have at first refused to sanction a public test under their auspices. This was the case in connection with the Bath Chronicle, whereupon I offered to give a preliminary exhibition there and then in the office before the members of the staff.