The Prestige by Christopher Priest Read Free Book Online Page A

asked if any of us would care to “find the
     lady”. Some of the older men chaffed him and tried to warn off the others, but a few of us
     stayed to watch. Tiny sums of money began to change hands; not mine, for I had none to
     spare, but one or two of the workmen were willing to gamble a few pence.
    What fascinated me was the smooth, natural way that Noonan manipulated the cards. He was
     so fast! So dexterous! He spoke softly and persuasively, showing us the faces of the three
     playing cards, placing them down on the small box in front of him with a quick but flowing
     motion, then moving them about with his long fingers before pausing to challenge us to
     indicate which of the cards was the Queen. The workmen had slower eyes than mine; they
     spotted the card rather less often than I did (although I was wrong more often than I was
     right).
    Afterwards, I said to Noonan, “How do you do that? Will you show me?”
    At first he tried to fob me off with talk of idle hands, but I persisted. “I want to know
     how you do it!” I cried. “The Queen is placed in the middle of the three, but you move the
     cards only twice and she is not where I think she is! What's the secret?”
    So one lunchtime, instead of trying to fleece the other men, he took me to a quiet corner
     of the shed and showed me how to manipulate the three cards so that the hand deceived the
     eye. The Queen and another card were gripped lightly between the thumb and middle finger
     of the left hand, one above the other; the third card was held in the right hand. When the
     cards were placed he moved his hands crosswise, brushing his fingertips on the surface and
     pausing briefly, so suggesting the Queen was being put down first. In fact, it was almost
     invariably one of the other cards that slipped quietly down before her. This is the
     classic trick whose correct name is Three Card Monte.
    When I had grasped the idea of that, Noonan showed me several other techniques. He taught
     me how to palm a card in the hand, how to shuffle the deck deceptively so that the order
     remained undisturbed, how to cut the pack to bring a certain chosen card to the top or
     bottom of the hand, how to offer a fan of cards to someone and force him to choose one
     particular card. He went through all this in a casual way, showing off rather than
     showing, probably not realizing the rapt attention with which I was taking it in. When he
     had finished his demonstration I tried the false dealing technique with the Queen, but the
     cards scattered all about. I tried again. Then again. And on and on, long after Noonan
     himself had lost interest and wandered away. By the evening of the first day, alone in my
     bedroom, I had mastered Three Card Monte, and was setting to work on the other techniques
     I had briefly seen.
    One day, his painting work completed, Noonan left the yard and went out of my life. I
     never saw him again. He left behind him an impressionable adolescent boy with a
     compulsion. I intended to rest at nothing until I had mastered the art that I now knew
     (from a book I urgently borrowed from the lending library) was called Legerdemain.
    Legerdemain, sleight of hand, prestidigitation, became the dominant interest of my life.

The Prestige
    3
    The next three years saw parallel developments in my life. For one thing I was an
     adolescent growing rapidly into a man. For another, my father was quick to realize that I
     had an appreciable skill as a woodworker, and that the comparatively coarse demands of the
     wheelwright's work were not making the best use of me. Finally, I was learning how to make
     magic with my hands.
    These three parts of my life wove around each other like strands in a rope. Both my father
     and I needed to make a living, so much of the work I did in the yard continued to be with
     the barrels, axles and wheels that made up the main part of the business, but when he was
     able to, either he or one of