Triumph of the Triumvirate

Here's an effect of strange occurances that all performers who feature a stage show will find effective. Effect: On your platform are two chairs, back to back and about two feet apart. Resting across the backs of the two chairs is a sheet of glass and on it is a dummy rapping hand.

A side table holds a plate of ten padlocks, another plate of ten keys, and a pack of ordinary playing cards. To his audience the magician says something like this by way of introduction:

“My life of magic has been a much more interesting one because of an intimate acquaintance with orthodox magicians, we magicians do classify ourselves, you know, but after many years of travel and continuous effort to entertain, I've only lately established contact with those contemporary friends who have passed beyond.”

Houdini? A lifetime spent in an effort to subjugate locks and restraining devices to his will. Thurston? One who made the art of stage card manipulation something to be attained by his followers. Carter? An illusionist who sought the bridge between here and the hereafter. Tonight I want to show you how I have made up my own little bridge between where I am and where they are.

“The wonder worker asks a spectator to step forward. The plate of padlocks is dumped loudly onto another container. The performer picks up one, hands it to the spectator, and says,”

You can open it? No! Not without a key.

“He takes it back, tosses it into the pile, and picks out another which he hands the volunteer.” Try that one.

Can you open it, without a key, any faster than you could the first?

“The magician accepts the negative reply in stride and turns to the audience, requesting and getting a second assistant. For the while he apparently forgets about the lock being held by the first man.”

Here is a pack of playing cards. Thurston made a long-to-be-remembered reputation with his smart handling of them. I want you to shuffle them as much as you please.

“The performer turns back to his first helper. He picks up the plate of keys. They are dumped into the cupped hands of this man and he is told to lay them out in a row upon the floor in front of himself.”

You are holding one of the ten locks. Now you lay out ten keys in any order you please. Only one of those keys fits the lock you hold.

I'll show you that the other masters of magic control this experiment and await my joining them.” The magician turns to the second spectator holding the shuffled deck. He takes it, lays it on the floor, has the spectator cut it at any spot, and the cut is held by placing one half crosswise upon the other.

The performer now steps back and shows the dummy hand which has been resting upon the glass plate between the chairs. “Before Charles Carter passed away,” he says, “this very close friend of mine studied the possibilities of life after death. He was a famous trickster and knew all about the chicaneries of magical performers. Carter was my mentor.” The performer picks up the hand and gestures with it.

“Charles Carter led me to believe that there was something far beyond trickery, and I want to show you now that he may be helping me to make contact with that world in which he is living with his closest friends, Thurston and Houdini.”

The hand is placed on the glass inter-chair plate. It raps out a number. The “lock-ke y” spectator counts to that key - it opens the lock which he holds. Then the hand taps out the name of the card cut at by the second person.

And then either of the two helpers may pick up the hand and look it over, as well as the plate of glass and two chairs. There is nothing to find, materially, for the shade of Carter has gone. With him has gone Thurston and Houdini. Only Blackstone remains.