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this well): “Every word in this notebook that describes my
     life and work is true, honestly meant and accurate in detail.”
    Now I rotate my hands so that you may see their backs, and I say to you: “Much of what is
     here may be checked against objective records. My career is noted in newspaper files, my
     name appears in books of biographical reference.”
    Finally, I tweak at the cuffs of my jacket to reveal my wrists, and I say to you: “After
     all, what would I have to gain by writing a false account, when it is intended for no
     one's eyes but my own, perhaps those of my immediate family, and the members of a
     posterity I shall never meet?”
    What gain indeed?
    But because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an
     illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it!
    Already, without once writing a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life.
     The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of
     everything that follows, yet nowhere will it be apparent.
    I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it
     is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now
     you are looking in the wrong place.
    As every stage magician well knows there will be some who are baffled by this, some who
     will profess to a dislike of being duped, some who will claim to know the secret, and
     some, the happy majority, who will simply take the illusion for granted and enjoy the
     magic for the sake of entertainment.
    But there are always one or two who will take the secret away with them and worry at it
     without ever coming near to solving it.
    #############
    Before I resume the story of my life, here is another anecdote that illustrates my method.
    When I was younger there was a fashion in the concert halls for Oriental Magic. Most of it
     was performed by European or American illusionists dressed and made up to look Chinese,
     but there were one or two genuine Chinese magicians who came to Europe to perform. One of
     these, and perhaps the greatest of them all, was a man from Shanghai called Chi Linqua,
     who worked under the stage name Ching Ling Foo.
    I saw Ching perform only once, a few years ago at the Adelphi Theatre in Leicester Square.
     At the end of the show I went to the stage door and sent up my card, and without delay he
     graciously invited me to his dressing room. He would not speak of his magic, but my eye
     was taken by the presence there, on a stand beside him, of his most famous prop: the large
     glass bowl of goldfish, which, when apparently produced from thin air, gave his show its
     fantastic climax. He invited me to examine the bowl, and it was normal in every way. It
     contained at least a dozen ornamental fish, all of them alive, and was well filled with
     water. I tried lifting it, because I knew the secret of its manifestation, and marvelled
     at its weight.
    Ching saw me struggling with it but said nothing. He was obviously unsure whether I knew
     his secret or not, and was unwilling to say anything that might expose it, even to a
     fellow professional. I did not know how to reveal that I
    
    
     did
    
    
     know the secret, and so I too kept my silence. I stayed with him for fifteen minutes,
     during which time he remained seated, nodding politely at the compliments I paid him. He
     had already changed out of his stage clothes by the time I arrived, and was wearing dark
     trousers and striped blue shirt, although he still had on his greasepaint. When I stood up
     to leave he rose from his chair by the mirror and conducted me to the door. He walked with
     his head bowed, his arms slack at his sides, and shuffling as if his legs gave him great
     pain.
    Now, because years have passed and he is dead, I can reveal his most closely guarded
     secret, one whose obsessive extent I was privileged to glimpse that