“Oh, just by making the action of my hands quicker than your eyes,” was the answer. “I made a couple of false motions, and you followed them with your eyes instead of watching the stone. That’s how I managed to substitute the paper with my figures on for the one Tom thought you boys had prepared. It’s very simple.”
“Yes, to hear you tell it,” came from Henry. “But say, Joe, how did the professor do that trick with the live rabbit? I was close to him when he came down off the platform, and I couldn’t see where he had the bunny. And yet, in plain view, he pulled it out of somebody’s inside coat pocket. How in the world did he do it?”
“It was easy—for him,” Joe stated. “When he finished the hat and egg trick he went behind the scenes for a second and slipped the live rabbit in a secret pocket in his coat.
“After some hocus-pocus work, and a lot of ‘patter,’ or talk made up to keep you from watching him too sharply, he went close to the man from whose pocket he was going to produce the rabbit. He held the lapel of the man’s coat close against his own for a second, and with his other hand he reached in the secret pocket and got hold of the rabbit’s ears. Then, when he lifted the bunny up, it looked just as if the animal came out of the man’s pocket, but, all the while, it came from the professor’s.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Tom. “It all sounds very easy.”
“It is, and again it isn’t,” explained Joe. “It takes lots of practice, and one’s got to have his nerve with him all the while, to know how to act in case anything goes wrong.”
“Then you ought to be a good wizard,” declared Henry, “for you sure have nerve!”
“That’s right,” added Harry Martin. “But say now, Joe, in that trick where the professor took——”
Harry did not finish his sentence. His words were cut short by an explosion which came from a group of buildings located near a railroad siding about a quarter of a mile away. Following the explosion a cloud of black smoke billowed up to the sky.
“Look, fellows!” cried Tom. “It’s the fireworks factory!”