He also writes down answers to questions, tells the time to a second, the age of the inquirer, and all without the least vestige or sound of hidden mechanism.
At the end, Mr. Panky takes the figure up bodily from his little chair, and pops him into a hat, whence he mysteriously vanished.
Explanation.—A pantograph is required, and upon that a preliminary description is given.
Four rules are mounted as a square, so as to move freely on the nails D, E, F, G; when the instrument is fastened on a table at the point C, and a pin at B traces the lines of a picture, the pencil placed at A duplicates the marks double that size. By shifting the slide attached to the fixed point C and the slide carrying the pencil along their respective arms, the proportion will be varied.
Fig. 155.
A fixed arm from F to G would conduce to the steadiness and reliability of the apparatus.
However, it suffices for Mr. Hanky Panky’s experiment.
The puppet seems to be completely isolated from any underhand management, because it can be detached from its seat and the table; but a real communication exists between its right arm and that of a confederate in the room beneath.
When the automaton is in his seat, the needle A B is thrust up through the floor, carpet, and table, E F, to enter the cylinder, C D, concealed in the chair at the part of the pantograph B.