THE GUERIDON AND GOLDEN RAIN.
By the orders of Mr. Hanky Panky, his attendant brings out before the audience a small round table (guéridon), a more guileless means of mystification being impossible, with its thin, flat top, slender leg, and general simplicity of outline.
Half a dozen florins or half-crowns being borrowed from the audience, they are marked by one of them and placed in a pile upon the table, whence they disappear one by one.
This is, perhaps, not so very astounding, for no fellah ever yet clearly understood how money goes. But, to really make the deception a startling one, Mr. Panky puts a hat, a scarf, or a handkerchief on the table, and commands the money to return from its refuge of nothingness. The half-crowns—a great deal more eager to be restored to their owners than whole crowns now-a-days are—are heard to fall upon the table, without a trace of their passage through the hat or handkerchief.
On removing the cover, indeed, the attendant has but to go to the table to fill a salver with the money, and distribute among the rightful proprietors.
Explanation.—The table-leg is hollow and a rod works in it, on the head of which the bottom coin is placed; when the rod is lowered, which is done by simple mechanism (for which see “Grand Magic,” in The Secret Out), the coins gradually vanish. The reappearance is managed by the reverse action, and the rod may be fitted with a joint a few inches from the top, so that the pieces will fall off on one side, the more noisily the better.
When the coins are to drop audibly into a metal or glass vase set on the table, the rod may terminate in a tube to contain the money.
Fig. 19.
