CHAPTER XIV
JOE’S DISAPPEARANCE
“You’re not afraid to be made to vanish into thin air, are you?” asked Professor Rosello of Joe, that being part of the “patter” of this trick. “You don’t mind being made to vanish?”
“No,” answered Joe, “not if it doesn’t hurt.” The audience laughed. Joe was getting on surprisingly well. He had feared he would be stricken with stage fright on this, his first appearance in public. But there was not the least sign of it, though there was a packed house. One reason was that, of course, the magician occupied the center of the stage most of the time, and all eyes were focused on him. Joe had only a minor part as yet.
But, also, there must have been something inherited by him from his parents, who fairly lived in the public eye. Joe took to it naturally.
“You see he doesn’t mind in the least,” the professor said to the audience. “He’ll never be missed, and if I used some boy from the audience this might not be the case.”
“For this trick,” went on the professor, “I need a young man. I have this—er—useless specimen——” and he tapped Joe on the shoulder. There was more laughter from the audience. “I also need,” proceeded Professor Rosello, “a chair, a sheet and a piece of paper. They are here,” and he brought forward a chair, a black cloth and a sheet of a newspaper. “There is nothing extraordinary about any of these articles except about my young assistant. And he will feel most extraordinary when he starts to vanish into thin air.
“The paper, as you can see, is the front page of your local publication, The Herald,” and the performer held up a sheet of paper. Every one in the audience could see that it was what it purported to be—at least on one side, and that was the only side held up to the crowd in the Opera House.
“This sheet of paper I will place on the stage,” went on the professor, and he suited the action to the words. “On top of the paper I will place this chair, on which my young assistant is going to sit,” and seemingly without any special preparation the magician set the chair on the paper, one leg being near each of the four corners of the sheet.
“Now if you will kindly take your seat in the chair, we shall proceed,” said Mr. Crabb, otherwise Professor Rosello. Joe sat down, his heart beating a little faster than usual, for he wanted the trick to work perfectly, and much depended on him.
“Good-bye,” said the professor with mock solicitude, as he shook hands with Joe. “This is the last we shall see of you,” and he pretended to be distressed. Several boys in the gallery shouted their farewells to Joe in laughing tones. He waved his hands to the audience, which was curiously expectant.
“I will now cover my assistant, chair and all with this sheet,” said the professor. “I do that because the disappearance of a person sometimes is attended by painful scenes, and I do not wish to make you suffer. This sheet was once white,” he went on, as he shook out a black cloth, turning it about so that both sides could be seen. There was nothing tricky about that, it was evident.
“It used to be white, but in traveling about the sheet lost its original color, and, as I do not carry a laundress with me, it has never been washed.”
As a matter of fact the cloth had always been black. It had to be, so the audience could not see through it to witness the details of the trick.
“I will now cover my assistant in the chair with this white-black sheet,” continued Professor Rosello, “and when I raise it he will be—gone!”
He draped the cloth over Joe’s head and shoulders, letting it fall to the floor of the stage on all sides of the chair. He then took up his “pistol” wand, which fired a blank shot.
“Are you ready?” he called to Joe, after a dramatic pause.
“Ready,” was the muffled reply.
“Then go!” cried the professor. He pointed his wand at the covered chair, there was a loud report, and a moment later, when the professor whisked the black sheet off the chair was empty. The professor lifted the sheet of paper from under the chair. Apparently there was not a break in it.
There was a gasp of astonishment from the crowd.
“You see,” said the professor, bowing and smiling when the applause had subsided, “he has disappeared—vanished into thin air. I am glad it happened to none of you, though of course I might be able to reincarnate you again, as——”
He appeared greatly astonished at the sight of some one in the back of the theatre.
“Why, look who’s here!” he cried, pointing with his wand. “My young assistant has not waited for me to call him back to life. He came of himself.”
The audience turned to behold Joe calmly walking down the middle aisle, and up the stage by means of the temporary steps which the professor used to descend and ascend.
There was more applause at Joe’s unexpected appearance in this fashion, and the trick made a big hit.
And now to let you into the secret.
The trick consisted of several parts. A trap-door was in the stage through which Joe could disappear. This trap, directly under the chair and paper, was operated by a theatre employee, who of course would not tell, at least beforehand, how the trick was done. After Joe had gone down through the trap, into the room that exists under all theatrical stages, it was an easy matter for him to slip out through the stage door, run around an alley, and enter the front of the theatre, to walk calmly down the aisle.
But how could he disappear through the seat of the chair, and through the sheet of paper, without making a break, at least in the paper?
There was a trick about the paper, although it seemed to be perfectly ordinary. It was a sheet from the local paper, but it had been prepared in advance by the professor. On the back was pasted a square of cardboard, a quarter of an inch smaller each way than the trap-door in the stage. This paper trap, for such it was, was divided in the middle, the two flaps being hinged to the sheet of newspaper. The reason the cardboard did not show when held up to the audience was that the whole sheet of newspaper was double, one half being folded over the cardboard trap.
When Professor Rosello laid the paper down in the stage he was guided by certain small marks, so that it went exactly over the trap in the floor. This trap was hinged at the back, opening downward, but kept in place when not in use by a strong iron bar underneath. Next he placed the chair over the piece of paper, the legs going into exact positions previously marked on the paper, but the marks were too small to be seen by the audience.
The object in placing the paper on the stage was to get the audience to believe that there was no hole in the wooden floor through which Joe could disappear, it being the natural inference that such was the method used. But when the crowd saw what they thought was the unbroken sheet of paper, they would not suppose Joe had gone down through that, as he really had.
The chair was also a trick one. The seat of it was on hidden hinges so it could be lifted up and folded back. There were also secret springs on it which, when released, shot out and extended certain thin steel projections, which distended the black sheet into such shape that they made the rough outline of a person sitting on the chair.
When Joe took his seat on the chair, under cover of the black cloth, he pressed the secret springs, and a ring appeared above his head to support the black cloth, exactly as if it were supported by his head. Other projections appeared at his knees, and as the bottom of the cloth was arranged by the professor some distance away from the legs of the chair, Joe was as if he were under a sort of tent, held out and away from him, so he could move about a little without being seen.
As soon as he was covered, and had worked the secret springs, he lifted up the false seat of the chair, supporting himself by his hands on the framework, into which the seat fitted.
This seat Joe carefully folded back, taking care to make no noise and not to disturb the black cloth all around him. Meanwhile the professor had with his foot given a rap on the floor of the stage. This was a signal to the man below to open the trap in the floor.
Joe, hidden under the black cloth, felt for the opening in the floor with his feet. A stepladder was hurriedly put into place by the stage-hand, and Joe lowered himself down through the chair, the prepared hole in the paper and the hole cut in the stage, to the ladder.
The ladder was quickly taken away, the stage-hand reached up and lowered the seat of the chair back in place. Also, when this had been done he closed the trap-door in the stage, and the newspaper with its trap was in place above it, seemingly unbroken.
Then the professor fired the shot and whisked off the black cloth, as he did so touching the secret springs, so that the projections snapped back out of sight, and when the cloth was lifted off the chair looked as it did at first, only Joe was not on it.
Then he came running down the aisle, and persons who suspected that he had gone down through the stage did not know what to make of the piece of newspaper. It did not fit their theory.
That paper, appeared to be an ordinary sheet, and no one, or at least very few, would have thought of a trap being cut in that.
And thus was the “disappearing” trick worked.
“Very good! You did splendidly!” said the professor in a low voice as Joe came up on the stage. “It went off to perfection!”
After Joe made his bow in acknowledgment of the applause he received for his part in the trick, he prepared for the next “experiment,” as the professor often called his acts.
That first night of Joe’s assistance went off well, a number of acts being done after the “disappearance,” all being well received.
“A very satisfactory evening,” remarked Professor Rosello, as he and Joe went to their boarding house, after having put away their apparatus. “I hope we shall do as well the two remaining nights.”
“So do I,” agreed Joe.
He was very tired, for he had not rested well in the freight car, but a good night’s sleep made him feel like a new person.