For a target there is brought in a stand with an ornamental pillar, on the summit of which is a golden ball. At the signal, the miniature marksman fires, the globular casket splits open, and the glove appears on the top of the pillar, as if containing a hidden hand, and with the rings on the fingers.
Explanation.—When the rings and glove are borrowed, others are instantly substituted for them, which are put into the gun. The real ones are taken out of the room and arranged, the rings on the glove inside the ball on the pillar. This pillar is hollow, and is in connection with a gutta percha tube leading down within the table into the confederate’s room. At the proper signal, the piston-rods work, and the sportsman discharges the gun, and a strong current of air forces the ball to open and inflates the glove. For the table, see The Secret Out.
VI.—SIMPLE TRICKS WITH KNIVES.
THE OBEDIENT KNIFE.
In a former work (The Secret Out) the secret spring literally to make a knife leap out of a cup at the conjuror’s call, was revealed. We give here several other modes of compassing the same end, that the performer may have several strings to his bow.
1. “You have objected,” says Panki-pan-ki, the Fakir of Hanki, “that I have executed this trick by hidden mechanism. Very well. At present I lay these three knives on the edge of the mouth of the cup, and yet at the instant named, that one which is chosen shall leap off in obedience,” and it does so.
It is answered, truly, that a magnet under the table is made to attract the knife, which is delicately poised on the rim, thanks to an unseen confederate.
2. “As you please,” proceeds the magician, taking the table up and setting it down in the centre of the room, to make it manifest that there was no wire of complicity attached. I now repeat the experiment with the same result. This being done, only the readers of our works—being the most intelligent body of perusers existent—could have seen that in lifting the table a thread of communication was snapped asunder, and that this second obedience of the knife was owing to the magnet again, set in motion by a wire acted on by a treadle.