“Well then, you can invent some excuse to go down in the audience. Work one of the simple card tricks, or something like that.” For Joe was becoming adept in manipulating cards, allowing persons to choose cards, thrust them back into the pack without his seeing them, and picking them out again. Of course, this was all done either by “forcing” certain cards, known in advance, or by clever cutting, shuffling the cards falsely, or by prepared trick cards.
“Well, that might do,” agreed Joe. “We’ll just have to trust to luck.”
The curtain went up, and the usual procedure was gone through with. Joe noticed that the professor was paying more attention than usual to the audience, carefully scrutinizing every section of the hall. But if he saw the two suspicious men he gave no sign to Joe.
There were two new tricks to be performed that evening. One was the production of two doves in a seemingly empty cage, causing them to materialize from guinea pigs.
Another illusion was to seemingly burn up a canary bird, and bring it to life again.
The first trick went off well. A large bird cage was shown on a table. There was nothing in it, as far as could be seen. Professor Rosello took two small, live guinea pigs, which he said he would put into a tin cylinder on a second table, and at the firing of a pistol the guinea pigs would disappear, being changed into doves in the empty cage.
He did just as he said he would do. The guinea pigs were put in the tin cylinder and the cover clapped on. The performer aimed a stage pistol at the tin, fired, and with the flash and report two white doves were seen fluttering in the cage. The tin cylinder, being opened, was seen to be empty.
The trick was mechanical, of course. As soon as the guinea pigs were put in the cylinder, they slipped down through a false bottom, and through a trap in the table, to a little box made to receive them. That left the cylinder empty.
The bird cage was a trick one. As the audience looked at it while it stood on the table, it seemed to be an ordinary cage. But behind it was a black velvet curtain which concealed from view the fact that the back of the cage was double. It was as if the bottom of the cage had been folded up against the rear, and in between the false bottom and the back, was a place large enough to hold two white doves.
When the pistol was fired Joe, behind the scenes, pulled a black silk thread that let the false side fall down, and become a second bottom of the cage. The falling away of the side allowed the doves to flutter from their concealed hiding place into the cage, where they seemed to appear so miraculously.