Twenty Years of Spoof and Bluff

by Carlton

The real root secret of the trick, or rather series of tricks, described in the previous chapter may be summed up in four words—muscular training and development.

Not the ordinary muscular training of the gymnasiums, however, be it noted; but muscular training developed along novel and unsuspected lines.

I have always been fond of experimenting in these directions, with the result that I have, in the course of years, achieved what I think I may fairly describe as some rather startling results. I can, for example, as I have already explained elsewhere, increase or decrease my height at will by expanding or contracting the muscles of my legs, thighs, chest, and abdomen. I have taught myself also to move my ears backwards and forwards, a feat performed constantly and naturally by all the lower animals, but the practice of which, as regards man, has become dormant owing to long disuse.

The particular set of muscles I used in my blindfold experiment were those in front of the forehead, and which ordinarily come into play whenever the eyes are shut or opened. These are quite unusually powerful in their action, as the reader can test for himself if he will take the trouble to close his eyes, cover them tightly with the palm of his left hand, and then suddenly open them wide to their fullest extent. He will find that the whole lower portion of the skin of the forehead is pushed up under his hand by the expansion of the frontal muscles, no matter how tightly he presses against it.

Now it is, of course, well known that as a result of long or repeated use all muscles increase in size, and consequently in strength, through the formation of new fibre. Taking advantage of this fact, I set to work to train and develop my frontal muscles, in much the same way as the professional boxer, say, trains and develops his biceps, or the runner his leg muscles.

I spent an hour or more every day for many months on end practising shutting and opening my eyes, rolling them from side to side, moving the scalp up and down, and so on. The result was that I was able presently to so contract and expand the muscles of my forehead and to move the skin up and down in such a way that, no matter how closely my eyes were bound, I could relax the bandage or change its position up or down in relation to my sight, and this, of course, without touching it in any way with my hands.

Nor was it possible for anyone to detect the change, for not only was it quite slight—although always sufficient for my purpose—but if anyone wanted to examine the bandage while the test was in progress, as indeed frequently happened, I had only to close my eyes, throw back my head, and at the same time relax my frontal muscles, when the bandage would at once fall into its proper position, and even the most critical examiner would be fain to confess that in his opinion the wearer of it—that is to say myself—could not possibly see anything whatever, either through it, over it, or under it.

This much as regards the training preliminary to the trick! The intelligent reader will no doubt be struck by the fact that in its inception it bears a certain sort of analogy to that first practised by the Davenports and their imitators. These people allowed themselves to be tightly bound about the body, arms, and legs with ropes, while their muscles were purposely kept by them in a state of extreme tension, and then when lights were lowered they were able to free themselves from their bonds by muscular contraction. Substitute “bandage” for “ropes,” and it will be apparent that I worked my blindfold trick on similar lines.

“But,” exclaims the reader, “this does not explain how you found articles previously hidden in places unknown to you, and in localities miles away from your starting-point. Even if you were able to loosen your bandage at will in such a way as to permit of your peeping under it, that would not help you greatly in this respect, seeing that you had to find your way unaided, and according to your theory, unguided, through the maze of streets and thoroughfares of a strange city.”

Wait a minute—I am coming to that. But first let me say something about the preliminary test which I usually insisted on undergoing at the office of the particular newspaper I had selected to spoof. This, it will be remembered, consisted in my walking along a chalk line that had been drawn by a member of the staff from the centre of the floor in the editorial sanctum to some distant point on the premises. This line, which was, of course, started and completed after I had been—so the onlookers were convinced—securely blindfolded, was carried at my instigation all over the place in a series of zigzags and curves, in and out and across, up stairs and down, so that it not infrequently resembled very closely the ground pattern of some new and abnormally intricate species of maze.