“Do about it?” I exclaimed. “Why go whacks with me in the £35, and well fix up the turn between us.”
“But,” he objected, somewhat doubtfully, “the ordinary stock card tricks, etc., won’t do, except perhaps as a stop-gap. We must have at least one really slap-up, first-class illusion.”
“Right ho!” I replied, struck by a sudden happy thought. “I know! We’ll run the great Maskelyne and Cooke box trick. I know all about how it is done, and what’s more I’ve got at home a facsimile of the box that was used in the great £500 prize case.”
There was some further talk, but in the end we came to terms as I had suggested, share and share alike.
Then, however, a new difficulty arose. Neither of us was able to muster the fares to Newcastle. Eventually, however, struck by another happy thought, I journeyed down to Ratcliffe Docks, and there I found a captain of a tramp coasting steamer, who happened to be bound for Newcastle, and who agreed to take the pair of us for fifteen shillings. These we managed to scrape together, and in due course arrived at our destination, penniless but hopeful. Our sole luggage consisted of my precious box, in which was packed our wardrobes.
The show was to open on December 21st, and I spent most of the intervening time coaching my partner in the part he was to take in our “Great £1,000 box trick.”
I had christened it this because it sounded well to offer a good, big, thumping reward. Those world-famous wizards, Maskelyne and Cooke, had offered £500 to anyone who guessed the secret of their trick. We doubled the prize, making the winning of it, however, conditional on the winner escaping from the box.
CARLTON AND ONE OF HIS SATELLITES AT THE THEATRICAL GARDEN PARTY, LONDON, 1919
My partner demurred somewhat to this; but, as I pointed out to him, we might as well offer a reward of one thousand pounds as one thousand shillings. We hadn’t, as a matter of fact, got one thousand pence. So what did it matter? “Besides,” I added consolingly, “no one in the audience will ever succeed in getting out of my box. The thing is impossible.”