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The CHAPTER FOUR
The next principle we encounter is that of the secret compartment. Many applications of this idea are so crude that their only value seems to be to prove that the average human has the intelligence of a twelve-year-old child. And I'm quite certain that the statement is libelous to the child.
In its simplest form the secret compartment is usually built into a container of some kind—a box, a tube, a cabinet or something similar. Because the direct application is usually just what the spectator suspects anyway, I very definitely feel that it is too lacking in subtlety to be effective, except in cases where the spectator is almost entirely lacking in ingenuity or imagination.
This is the fundamental principle used exhaustively in the jumping-in-and-out-of-boxes school of illusions.
The object to be produced may be solid, in which case the secret hiding place is of sufficient size to accommodate it, in a manner similar to a fat woman in a drug store telephone booth. Or the object may be expansible. Then, naturally, the secret compartment is comparatively small.
In the earlier applications of this method, simply building a false bottom or back in the cabinet or box formed the secret compartment. When the interior is shown for the inspection of the audience, the entire space inside is not visible. Beneath or behind the false bottom or back is the load to be produced.
Frequently this secret space is secured by building the cover or lid with sufficient thickness to accommodate the load and by adding a false top. Building the secret compartment across a corner has varied this principle. Here, instead of the false bottom being parallel with the bottom or back, it is placed at an angle, cutting off a corner. Or it may come up to the top edge, tapering in from the edge of the opening, a gradually increasing side, to the bottom, or back.
Later variations of this principle have resulted in double sides being used. Actually, instead of the sides being solid wood or metal, one or more of them is hollow. The inside wall usually opens to allow access from the inside of the box.
Cylindrical tubes have been made which also use this built-in secret compartment. While the tube may give the general appearance of being a single thickness of metal when viewed from one end, actually the tube has a lining. This lining tapers in diameter from front—the audience side—to back. The gradually increasing space between the lining and outside supplies the necessary secret space to allow for the concealment of the object to be produced.
This principle has been used with square tubes as well.
In many cases this secret compartment is not in a fixed location. One type of secret compartment revolves on a panel in the back of the box. This allows the cabinet to be shown empty, when the container holding the load is rotated to the back. Yet, when the door is closed and the container is revolved within the box, the back may be exhibited as well.
Another type of moving container rocks back and forth on a panel at the rear, like the old-fashioned flour bin. It is used very much like the rotating container.
The well-known Jap Box is an example of the secret compartment being built in the sides. The Phantom Tube is a good illustration of the tapering inner shell used with a round tube. Both the rotating and tipping types of secret container have been utilized with production screens.
There are many common applications of the built-in secret compartment. These include The Magic Funnel, The Lota Bowl , the double bowl used with The Brahman Rice Bowls and other similar double-sided or double-bottomed devices. The Egg Bag is provided with a secret compartment in the double side. Such hiding places may be built into almost anything—tables, taborets, chairs—as in the familiar Okito production—even in trays.
A mirror that reflects one side as the back or bottom supplies a deceptive secret compartment. One example is The Mah Jongg Production Box .
But two mirrors may be used. These mirrors bisect the angles made by each side and the back. They are placed one on each side and meet in the center of the box. Viewed from the front, with something to mask the edges of the mirrors, the box appears to be quite empty.
Many livestock productions use this principle of a secret compartment. One pigeon frame uses the space within the width of the frame, at the top, for concealment. The bottom of this compartment drops to release the pigeons into the frame proper.
Doc Nixon's Bamboo Frame makes use of the secret compartment. It is a container secured to the back of one of the paper-covered frames used to form the front and back.
Even the hollow space within a billiard ball shell is a secret compartment. It conceals a solid ball. The shell coin, used in the old Passé Passé Coins Trick is a secret compartment to conceal another coin. This, then, reminds us of dice, eggs, bottles, cups and other objects that, in shell form, conceal other similar objects.
There is an excellent variation of the mirror principle. Instead of a mirror a piece of transparent glass is used. As long as the illumination comes from the front of the glass, it reflects as a mirror, revealing the image of the sides of the box. But when the light comes from behind the plate it becomes transparent and anything behind it is visible.
By controlling the lighting, with the illumination coming from the front of the plate, at first the sides of the box are revealed as the back. In this condition the box appears to be empty. Then, as the lights in front are gradually dimmed and those behind the plate are increased in intensity, the object to be produced seems first to become visible in spectre-like lines. As the lights behind increase in intensity, with a corresponding decrease in front, the object becomes mote and more concrete in appearance. Finally, with all light coming from behind the plate, the object is substantial and real.
This transparent glass principle is called The Pepper's Ghost principle. In illusion work the plate glass is set at an angle to reflect something or someone offstage or below the stage level. This is not always the case. Some cabinets are built in such a manner that there is room within the sides or at the bottom for concealment of the object to be produced.
The principle is usually used with a cabinet or a box because of the utter necessity of completely controlling all light. The least amount of spilled or reflected light behind the plate will ruin the illusion.
Of course the real background and that reflected by the glass plate are identical.
While this method is particularly effective for transformations, at this time I am considering it only as an appearance. Its use for other purposes will appear in the proper divisions.
Many illusions are based wholly or partially upon this idea. But it seems curious that it has not been applied to smaller objects to any great extent.
Among the more important tricks in which this transparent mirror principle appears is The Princess of Bahhten illusion, originally suggested by a writer in THE MAGIC WAND . It is also important as the basis of Kellar's famous Blue Room .
Ray Gamble of Tacoma, Washington, well known to magicians of the Pacific Coast, is the possessor of a notable collection of elephants. These are not the hay-burning variety, but a nice quiet herd of figures made of practically any material that can be formed into the shape, from precious and semi-precious stones on down the list.
It has always seemed to me that he should do an elephant trick.
He could use a cabinet made in the form of a miniature tent. The glass plate could be made large enough to give a wide line of sight from the audience. The elephant to be produced should be a couple of feet high at least—larger, if possible. Since it would be his job to carry it around, I would suggest that it be made of solid bronze.
Provision should be made for lighting control behind the glass as well as in front of the background eventually to be reflected. This reflection could come from beneath the stand upon which the tent is erected. The elephant is actually behind the glass. But at the beginning the lights are illuminating the reflected background, giving the appearance of an empty tent.
Through dimmer control the lights lower on the reflected background and come up on the cast iron Jumbo. He first appears like a wraith, taking on more and more substance until he presents the solidity that only an elephant, particularly one of foundry ancestry, could present. Meanwhile, through an electrically amplified phonograph record, gradually increasing in volume as the elephant increases in materiality, comes the theme of Rimsky-Korsakow's Song of India .
It is but a short step from the use of a secret compartment, as such, and the utilizing of the principle of TWO compartments, either of which may become secret. In this case, the object to be produced is secreted in one of the compartments. But the empty duplicate compartment is exhibited to the audience. Afterwards the compartment containing the object is substituted in place of the originally shown space.
This principle is an ancient one. Probably the most familiar application is in the old flap card box. The flap separates the box into two compartments. These sections utilize common sides, it is true, but they are nevertheless two separate spaces. When the box is shown empty, with the flap hiding the card to be produced, one compartment is shown. The lid is closed and the box is reversed. This automatically reveals the second section—and the card therein.
Any doubt of this principle of the two compartments is dispelled in examining a metal card box of the Roterberg type. This box consists of two compartments. The upper, and shallower, section is shown first. When the lid is closed, it unites with the upper section in such a manner that the first-shown part becomes a part of the lid. When this "lid", is lifted, the lower and previously unseen compartment is revealed.
The old Changing Canister , more recently converted to use as a cocktail shaker by Dr. Douglas Kelley, is another example. The canister has a top on both ends. It is round and it fits within a round cylinder, which appears to be the sides of the container, The double portion slides up and down inside the cylinder. This permits either "top" to be revealed as the top, as the corresponding "top" is hidden within the walls of the cylinder. The sliding section is partitioned into two compartments, one for each "top".
For a production, the load is concealed in one compartment. This is pushed within the cylinder and the opposite "top" is brought into view. In use, this empty section is shown. The lid is replaced and the ends are reversed. Simultaneously, the sliding section is pushed, bringing the loaded compartment into view. This time, when the top is removed the load is produced.
The Changing Bag is another example. This has two pockets, either of which may become secret. The Changing Tray is similar. So also is the so-called Master Top as explained in Brunel White's books.
Probably one of the most complex applications of this principle of the alternating compartments is embodied in Doc Nixon's Checker Cabinet , although in this form it is not applied to production. This was adapted from a three-compartment caddie explained in MODERN MAGIC .
Another type of secret compartment is that which is carried within or behind some accessory. In its simplest form it may be merely a bag, containing the load, which is suspended behind one section of a built-up type of production box. During the assembly of the box the load is concealed behind this section, usually the top, and eventually conveyed within the box.
When the load is within the box, both sides of the section that previously concealed it may be shown.
A similar application is a production from a cylinder. With the cylinder, which is perhaps six inches in diameter and eight inches long, is a thin wooden panel about twelve inches square. The load is wrapped in a bundle that is suspended from the top edge of the panel by means of a short length of black thread. Normally the load hangs out of sight behind the panel.
But in the beginning the load is inside the cylinder and the board is lying across the top opening. The panel is picked up with its top edge downwards which allows the load to remain inside the cylinder. The panel is shown both sides, resting on its edges on the top of the cylinder. Finally the free edge of the panel is brought downwards and forward in such a manner that the load may be lifted out of the cylinder behind it. Then the tube is shown empty.
The tube is placed on the surface of the board from behind and over the load, the whole rotating forward immediately, until the panel is flat and the tube is resting upright upon it. Then the production is made from the tube.
This load may be carried from one accessory to another in the manner familiar in connection with The Organ Pipes . In the act of sliding one tube inside of another, the load is transferred to the tube just exhibited as empty. Usually six tubes are used. Hanging on hooks inside of five of them are the respective loads. The first cylinder is shown empty. Then, in further proof of this emptiness, this first tube is slid over the second tube, from the bottom, picking up the "load", automatically from the second tube. The second cylinder is then exhibited and loaded in a similar manner. And so on until the last empty tube is shown.
In connection with this secret compartment principle—and it must be borne in mind that the compartment need not be rigid as a container—we encounter the idea of a secret compartment near the place of production but not necessarily in or attached to it. All that is important is that it can be reached, for this hidden supply, apparently through it.
The first example of this principle comes to mind in connection with a silk production invented within the past few years. The silks apparently are produced from a small five-sided box that rests on a light folding stand, similar to those used in cafes and hotels upon which the waiters deposit serving trays. Actually the load comes from the hollow legs of the folding stand. It is reached through the box.
In QUALITY MAGIC , Theodore Bamberg explains an excellent example of this idea in connection with the trick called Multum in Parvo . This trick is a complex combination of principles. It includes a secret compartment that is transferable to either of two boxes. In addition, there is a secret compartment built into the chair upon which the boxes stand. This second secret compartment is tilted so as to be on the back of the chair, out of sight until needed. When this load is desired, it is tilted forward, flour bin fashion, and passes into the box through the rear side.
Other examples of this remote secret compartment may be seen in the hat production, which is many years old, in which the objects are secured from a secret compartment in the table top, reached through a trap in the top of the hat. Or in a silk production, manufactured by Percy Abbott some years ago, in which silks are apparently produced from a glass of water screened by a folding square tube. Actually the load comes from the tray.
Just a step removed from the adjacent secret compartment is the "load" which moves to the place of production, screened from view. Several stage illusions utilize this idea. The person to be produced reaches the place of production via a short length of plank, over which he moves from a trap in the backdrop, or from some nearby accessory. Any method of conveying an inanimate object from a secret hiding place to the place of production comes within this class.
Now in the foregoing discussion, which has touched upon the majority of applications of the secret compartment principle as used in connection with appearances and productions, I have confined the examples cited largely to the more familiar tricks. This is because these tricks are generally well known to most magicians and for that reason serve more clearly as examples.
But in citing these examples it must be emphasized that the identical objects used, or the accessories connected with them should be changed in appearance to produce a trick that will have a new aspect to the spectators. And where pre-selected properties must be used, because of the character of the act or because of the necessity of using properties appropriate to the routine, the previously cited examples may act as guides in connection with methods utilized with objects of similar nature. All that is necessary is to adapt the method to what you have.
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