In presenting the trick the pyramid, with its sections duly threaded and placed one upon another, is brought in on a wooden board similar to an ordinary drawing-board, measuring twenty-four inches by sixteen, and like the pyramid itself, stained black. It is essential to the satisfactory working of the trick that the “base” section of the pyramid shall not shift when the thread is pulled. This is ensured by having two L shaped “stops” of thin wood glued or screwed to the board near the left hand corner nearest to the performer when in use.
The trick may be introduced as follows:
“I don’t know whether any of you ladies and gentlemen are well up in Egyptology. I can’t say I am, myself. I know a camel when I see one, but that is about as far as I have got. There is, however, one point about it which has always interested me very much. It is a point which has puzzled not only the Egyptologists, but all the other ologists; namely, how the pyramids were built. They consist, as no doubt you know, of enormous masses of stone; so large that the cleverest engineers of our day cannot tell us how they were placed one upon another. If you can imagine the lifting of the Royal Exchange in one lump and dumping it down on the top of the Bank of England, you will have some idea of the sort of job the Egyptian builders had to tackle.[13] Anyhow, the work was done, and as it is clear that it could not have been done by any known mechanical means, we are compelled to seek some other solution of the problem.
“I don’t know whether any of you read novels. If you do, you must often have noticed the curious way in which fiction constantly anticipates fact. The novelist describes some utterly impossible thing, and a few years later some other fellow goes and does it. Jules Verne described a voyage under the sea long before the submarine was invented, and Mr. Wells wrote ‘The War in the Air’ while the aeroplane and the Zeppelin were still in their infancy. But there is one conception of the novelist which has not till now been made an accomplished fact. That is the force called ‘Vril,’ described by Lord Lytton in his novel, ‘The Coming Race.’ He describes Vril as a sort of hyper-electricity capable in the hands of those who know how to gather and use it, of producing all sorts of wonders, even to removing mountains. Imprisoned in a wand and directed by a strong will, it will shrivel up an enemy or a wild beast as by a flash of lighting.
“I have always had an idea that this must have been the force used by the Egyptians to build the pyramids. I have managed to collect a small quantity of an unknown force which answers very closely to Lord Lytton’s description of Vril, and I have charged this wand with it. As regards killing things, I have only tested it so far on a black beetle. The experiment was a success. He was blown to atoms, all but one hind leg. I should like to try it on a tiger; if I could get one cheap. Does any gentleman present know of a secondhand tiger in a good strong cage going cheap? No? I was afraid you wouldn’t. I am hoping however for a chance of trying it some night on a burglar. If a gentleman of the Bill Sykes persuasion should steal into my chamber at dead of night with felonious designs upon my Waterbury and my collarstud, he will be as a dead man. I shall just point this wand at him and say ‘Die,’ and he will be merely a little heap of ashes to be swept up by the housemaid in the morning.
“I can however give you an example of the power of my Vril as a motive force. I shall do so by using it to build or rather rebuild this little pyramid in your presence.
“This is a correct copy of the real thing. It takes to pieces, as you see. One, two, three, four, five!”
As he pronounces the last few words, the performer, standing behind his table, picks up the pyramid, and holding it aloft in his right hand draws away the base from the other sections, sliding it along the thread, and “bedding” it between the “stops” at the left hand bottom corner of the board. He then slides the other portions, one by one, along the thread in the same way, laying them in a row diagonally across the board. This will have taken up a considerable portion of the thread, but there will still be a loop some inches in length hanging down near the left hand corner of the table.
“Now please watch carefully. This wand, you will remember, has been carefully charged with my imitation Vril.”
While speaking these last words the performer gets one finger of his left hand within the loop. He now turns on the light at the end of the wand, and with it makes a quick sweep from right to left over the severed parts of the pyramid, making at the same time a half-turn away from the table, and quickly drawing away the thread. If this is done neatly the severed parts of the pyramid run together one upon the other in a single instant.