The Burglar
Part 3

by Vaughan

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Jen is a burglar, who has been captured by an elderly magician, Trevor Phillips, with a shotgun. He persuaded her that he would not turn her in to the police or shoot her if she alloweed him to perform some illusions on her.

He has sawn her in two and restored her. Then he vanished and reappeared her middle from neck to knee.

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Jen stood there still restrained inside the cabinet, enjoying the warmth of
the room and wondered. A lot of questions vied for attention. How had he known
she was here? Why had she not attempted to escape? Why had she co-operated? Why
had she changed her clothes, not once, but twice? Why had she allowed him to saw
her in half? How had he sawn her in half? Was Mr. Phillips a real magician or a
very clever illusionist? Was Mr. Phillips sane? Was he calling the police even
now? Would he come back at all? The entire question of how the magic worked, if
it really was magic. Why was all this stuff stored in an upstairs room, instead
of some shed or warehouse? In fact why had he kept this equipment at all? How
much was all this stuff worth?

Then surprised herself by thinking, 'I wonder if he makes a good omelette.'
Jen's mind went onto an entirely different tack, considering her brief
relationship with the retired magician. It had started with hostility, but that
was to be expected as she was an intruder. Why had he offered her an alternative
to shooting or the police. Why had she accepted? Why did she feel better about
him and more trusting? She discovered she quite liked her captor. She found him
gentle, considerate and kind, despite the pain he had inflicted. She began to
wonder what else he had in store for her. What were the other two cabinets that
he had dragged into the clear area for? She found herself looking forward to
being subjected to whatever Mr. Phillips had in mind for her. This realization
jarred; why was she anticipating more pain and discomfort? She soon realized
this was not what she was enjoying, but the peculiar situations she was being
put into and the polite and sensitive way that the old man was subjecting her to
them.

While all these thoughts had been ebbing and flowing through her mind, Jen
was flexing her toes to keep the cramps at bay, and caressing the soft nap of
her red velvet costume.

A while, probably longer than the ten minutes promised, later the door
reopened and Mr. Phillips walked in carrying a large tray.

"I'm glad your still here, but I half expected you to be gone, having
used a hair grip to pick the padlocks."

Jen cursed herself for not thinking to try this, so pulled one out of the wig
and made the excuse that it was the wrong type, which it really was.

"Oh well. So, what do you need to get yourself out before your omelette
gets cold?" enquired Mr. Phillips. He had brought out two small tables and
placed chairs beside them. On each table he set a plate with a fluffy-looking omelette
on and a steaming mug of tea.

"You'll find a thing like a pen-knife in my trousers; that's all I
need."

The old magician went behind the screen in the corner and soon returned with
the tool. He handed it to Jen, then sat at the further of the two tables to
watch. Jen did him the courtesy of waiting until he was sat, before attempting
to pick the locks. Because of the awkward position it took Jen more than her
usual twenty seconds to pick the padlock at her neck. Once she had undone the
neck shackle and checked that her neck showed no sign of detaching, Jen lean
down and made swift work of the leg shackles. She stepped from the cabinet and
turned to put the padlocks back in place. She started to bow, then curtsied
prettily in acknowledgement of the old man's clapping. She went and sat at the
other table.

Mr. Phillips took a sip of his tea. He lifted his fork and said, "Bon appetite."

Jen picked up the fork on her table, there was no knife, and cut off a small
section of the omelette. She immediately discovered that it had a
melt-in-the-mouth texture. She had soon devoured the entire omelette. She looked
at the tea and was surprised to see that there was no milk in it. "Is there
any milk?" she asked.

"You don't have milk with that kind of tea. Try it, see what you
think."

Jen took a sip. It did not taste quite like ordinary tea; it had a smoky flavor,
which was very pleasant. "What is this? It's not tea, is it?"

"It's a specialty tea I got into the habit of drinking when I was
touring England. I took me quite a while to find a supplier when I got back.
It's called Lapsang Souchong; it comes from China. I like it."

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence as they both drink tea, then Jen
asked, "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" asked Mr. Phillips in reply.

"I don't know, really. This just doesn't seem right. You caught me
breaking and entering and you don't shoot me or call the cops; instead you give
me some clothes and saw me in half and vanish my middle and then feed me.
There's something here that just doesn't make sense. Why are you being nice to
me?"

"You think sawing you in half was being nice to you?" queried the
old man.

"Well, not while you were doing it , of course, but looking back on it,
it was kind of neat. I felt better when I got out than when I got in, except for
the bruise, of course. And doing the girl without a middle, er, that was
alright, except for being locked in and so cold; very cold."

"If I had realized that it was going to be quite so cold, I would have
done something different or, maybe, got you to wear something warmer. It's such
a long time since I've done that effect; I forgot about the whole hot and cold
thing," Mr. Phillips apologized.

"That's beside the point really. You've been so courteous and nice to
me, despite the fact you don't seem to trust me much and I was burgling your
home. If you just wanted to do your tricks on me, why did you offer me supper?
How do you know that I won't leap over the strangle you?"

"I'm fairly certain that you are not a killer; you don't seem to have
the necessary hair-trigger reflexes needed to kill. And I think you liked the
magic, even if it hurt a bit." Seeing Jen nod, Mr. Phillips continued,
"Within seconds of seeing you, I knew you would really like the magic, I
had an idea as soon as I sensed you coming." Jen's eyes widened. "Yes,
I felt you approaching as you crossed the lawn. It's a sense magicians have to
learn; who is going to be a good assistant or victim, if you are selecting an
audience member. It's an essential skill, because there are some people the
magic just won't work on and some who will spoil a performance. This sense I
have is why I live alone in such a large estate, so that I can't sense the
people who would make good magic, which I find depressing. But when I sensed
you, I knew from the direction you came from that you were not a caller, so I
thought if I could get you into a sawing box I can have an assistant for a short
while and indulge myself in pleasure of performing illusions."

"I know the magic makes me feel alright, even if it hurts a bit; in fact
quite a lot, but how does the magic make you feel good?" inquired Jen.

"I think it's the power. The pleasure of having mastery of the
situation and the feeling as the magic flows through me into the effect. There's
nothing quite like it; it's like the adrenalin buzz of driving a really big
truck for the first time, being in control of all that power, but it doesn't
wear off with familiarity."

"So, what are we going to do next?" asked Jen.

"For the next half hour or so we are going to digest, because grand
illusion style magic on a full stomach is bad for you." When Jen raised an
eye-brow, Mr. Phillips added, "I don't want to go into details, but it
isn't dangerous, just very very messy."

Jen stifled a giggle. "Can you show me some of the smaller stuff, while
we're waiting for that lovely omelette to settle?"

"By all means," replied the aged magician, who was already feeling
much younger. "You were saying a while ago that you would rather see a few
card tricks or effects with silks than be divided in two; is that still
true?"

"I don't remember saying that," said Jen.

"I assure you that you did. Maybe not in quite those words, but you most
certainly did. I may be seventy-eight, but my memory is still as good as
ever."

"You're seventy-eight?" exclaimed Jen in disbelief, "I
reckoned that you were at least ten years younger."

"I feel flattered, but you must know some very decrepit old folks,"
commented the retired magician. "They say, 'It's doing what you enjoy keeps
you young.' But it seems to me that stopping usually increases the aging
process, but with magic the effect seems to be more permanent. There are many
magicians and illusionists that have carried on well past the usual retirement
age."

There was a pause while Mr. Phillips thought back to the magicians he had met
in his youth and Jen wondered whether he was going to tell her some story from
his past.

The old man then said, "I was asking you if you would like to see a card
trick."

"Yes," answered Jen, somewhat flustered by the sudden return to the
subject at hand. Then realizing the ambiguity of the answer, said, "I'd
love to see a card trick. My uncle used to do the three card trick and one where
you picked a card and put it back then he produced it. I've always like card
tricks, but I can never work them out."

"You see that chest of drawers over there?" Jen nodded. "Would
you mind going over there and bringing several packs of cards from the top
drawer."

Jen rose and approached the chest. When she pulled the drawer she found that
it was three-quarters full of decks of cards, all still in their cellophane
wrappings. "That's an awful lot of cards," remarked Jen as she picked
out four packs; two red and two blue.

"I'm sure you'd be surprised how many decks a practicing magician gets
through. Most magicians get through several packs a day just in practicing and
usually a new pack per card trick per performance. Cards are tricky things to
handle and there is very little true magic done with them; it's all down to the
skill of the performer, for the most part, and rigged decks for the rest. You
see, cards wear out and if you are relying on them to react predictably, they
have to be absolutely new, if one card gets creased or the slightest tear, the
whole pack has to be thrown away."

"Oh," said Jen, not sure how to react. "Is four packs
enough?"

"Plenty. Throw three over here and keep one for yourself!"

Jen gently threw a blue and two red packs, keeping the remaining blue for
herself. Using her behind she shut the drawer and returned to her seat.

By the time Jen was back in her seat, Mr. Phillips had skinned the decks and
was lazily cutting and re-cutting the blue-backed deck with one hand.

Jen put her deck on the table and applauded the old man's dexterity, although
his large hands helped. "Very good, but you were going to show me a card
trick," she remarked as he performed a one-handed riffle-shuffle.

"Oh yes, so I was." He did some patently obvious acting of thinking
and Jen felt sure that if this had been a cartoon there would have been a light bulb
hovering over the old magician's head. He squared up the blue pack of cards and
began idly flicking down its edge with his thumb. "Tell me when to
stop!" the old man instructed.

"Stop!" said Jen.

Mr. Phillips stopped with his thumb between the deck and his fingers.
"You'll have to be faster than that," he said with a smile, then
resumed stroking his thumb down the side of the deck. The deck almost purred as
the cards flipped against each other.

"Stop!" said Jen, anticipating the old magician's next thumb
stroke.

"I think that was just a little too fast, don't you?" he smiled;
his thumb still resting on top of the blue backed deck. "Try again!"

As Jen waited for the right moment to call 'stop' again, she realized the old
man was playing with her. "Stop!" she called.

The soft sound of the stroked deck stopped. Mr. Phillips' thumb was now in
the deck between the cards. Slowly, with no funny moves that Jen could detect,
the magician withdrew the card on which his thumb had come to rest. This card he
placed on the edge of his table nearest Jen, still face down. He placed the rest
of the deck aside and picked up both red-backed decks. While he riffled the two
decks together, he asked Jen whether she knew what the card she had selected
was. She said no and asked how could she know. He did not answer her question,
but continued to shuffle the two decks of red-backed card together. After three
or four cuts and riffles, the old man held the double deck one handed and began
to stroke his thumb down the one hundred and four paste-board rectangles. He
looked up at Jen and said, "when you're ready." She watched him stroke
the cards several more times before saying stop again. Once more his thumb found
a card within the deck and carefully transferred it face-down to the front of
the table beside the previously selected blue backed card. The magician
continued to shuffle the remains of the double deck, then went back to stroking
his thumb down the edge. Jen said stop during the second stroke and Mr.
Phillips' thumb one more plunged into the deck; the card extracted was placed
next to the other two cards, also face down.

"You seem to have selected three cards. Do you know what any of them
are?" asked the magician.

"Of course, I don't; I haven't got X-ray eyes. Let me guess! The one on
the right is the ace of spades."

"Your right or my right?" asked Mr. Phillips indicating the wrong
red-backed cards, which flanked the blue-backed one. Jen did not notice this
subtle misdirection, but was slightly confused by the question. She clarified,
pointing at the card she hoped she meant. The old man placed a finger on it,
asking for confirmation. She nodded.

"So, you are guessing that this card is the ace of spades?" Jen
nodded again. Mr. Phillips continued, "I don't suppose for one minute that
you would be in the least surprised if you were wrong?"

Jen was not sure whether she wanted to nod or shake her head, so instead she
said, "I don't know, having named a card I would be surprised if it didn't
come up somewhere or other, but the chances of that card being the ace of spades
are small."

"I'll turn over the card carefully and we'll both see what it is."
He lifted the edge nearest Jen and it immediately became apparent that the card
was a picture card and when face up it turned out to be the Jack of hearts.
"I don't suppose you have any guesses for what the other cards are."

"No. I can only be more wrong. What's the card on the other end?"
she asked.

"This one?" queried Mr. Phillips, indicating the other red-backed
card. Jen nodded. "I'll show you." The card was another jack of
hearts. Jen was quite impressed and said so; she thought that the chances
against selecting two cards the same at random from two decks shuffled together
were astronomical.

I hate to pour cold water on your adulation, but the chances are just
slightly less than one percent. What you will find totally inexplicable is that
both of them match this one," the magician declared as he reversed the
blue-backed card, to expose another jack of hearts.

Jen was almost stunned and felt sure that this could not have happened by
co-incidence; particularly as Mr. Phillips had stated that the inexplicable
would occur before he had turned up the card.

"Thank you, for that deafening round of applause; at least, I think I've
gone deaf, 'cause I don't hear anything."

Jen sat up and gave four or five polite hand claps. "I'm sorry. I wasn't
sure you were finished," apologized Jen.

"Actually, I'm finished, but there's more to this trick, but you do
it."

Jen was not sure how she was supposed to top picking three cards the same out
of three decks. She looked puzzled.

"Toss your deck to me so that I can check you haven't broken the
seal!" instructed the old man.

The old man caught the cellophane wrapped deck, turned it over and threw it
back. Jen nearly failed to catch the return; it was so swift.

"Now what am I supposed to do?" inquired the young burglaress.

"Open the pack and throw away the jokers, then count the cards face down
onto the table."

It took Jen a matter of moments to skin the cellophane wrap and tip the pack
from the cardboard outer. The inner cellophane wrapper proved a little more
difficult, but soon the jokers were discarded and she was counting the cards
onto the table. She counted aloud, so as not to lose count. She soon had a
sloppy pile of fifty-two cards on the table, which she squared up neatly.

"Fifty-two cards. What do I do now?"

"You find the Jack of hearts," stated Mr. Phillips.

Jen spread the cards out a bit in the hope that which card was the required
Jack would be obvious, but all the card backs looked exactly the same. She
hovered a finger over the spread cards in the vain hope that she would feel
which card was the right one.

The old man laughed. "If you can find it that way, good luck to you, we
both know you aren't a magician, so why don't you make it easy for yourself by
looking at the fronts?"

Jen flushed. She picked up the cards and leafed through them, looking for the
Jack in question. She easily spotted the other Jacks, but the Jack of hearts
eluded her. She went through the deck two more times, more carefully each time.
Finally she admitted, "I can't find it."

"There can't be a card missing from a brand new deck with fifty-two
cards in," pointed out Mr. Phillips, adding, "Unless..."

Jen quickly thought through the possibilities. It soon came to her that there
might be a duplicate card in the pack. A riffle through the deck found a pair of
aces of spades. Triumphantly she slammed the duplicated aces on the table and
said, "See! I told you that once I mentioned a card it would turn up sooner
or later, but where is the missing Jack of hearts?"

Mr. Phillips looked very pleased with himself. He answered Jen's question
with a question that took her by surprise. "Are those shoes
comfortable?"

Jen was surprised to be so suddenly reminded that she was in a red velvet
costume with fishnet tights and black shoes with two-inch heels. The shoes had
been comfortable until she thought about them, when she felt something under her
left foot. She leaned down and took the shoe from her foot and looked at the
object that had caused the discomfort. It was a blue printed rectangle of
pasteboard. She knew before she removed it and looked at its face that it was
the missing Jack of hearts. And it was.

"That was great; the best card trick I've ever seen. How is it
done?" enthused Jen.

"Allow an old man his little secrets," he said.

There was a pause while Jen mentally digest what she had just seen, then she
asked, "That bit with the extra ace, was that the part of the original
trick?"

"You've found me out. I put that in on the spur of the moment. Now what
would like to see next? Some magic with silks, perhaps," suggested the
magician.

"That sounds nice, but what are silks?"

"Sorry, but it's magician's jargon for squares of material, originally
they were really silk, but these days they are generally some synthetic fiber or
other. I think that even if we did tricks with squares of gingham we would still
think of them as silks. You'll find some in the drawer below the cards."

Jen went back to the chest of drawers and opened the second drawer down. She
discovered that it was full of silks and a few other items. "How many do
you want? And what's this other stuff?" She held up a smooth black rod with
white ends and a flexible woven mat.

"Bring two of each color of silk, yellow, red and blue and one of the
ones with a design on it. Oh yes, bring the wand and the mat and another one if
you can find it," instructed Mr. Phillips.

Jen hunted in the drawer for a second mat, which she found. She also picked
out six eighteen inch squares of the right colors and a larger, two-foot white square
that was printed with a portrait of a handsome man, which could quite easily
have been Mr. Philips many years ago.

"Right, bring me one of each color of silk, including the big one, and a
mat; you can keep the rest and the wand."

Jen placed the items on the old man's table and returned with the remainder
to her seat.

"Right, I'll start this out easy with my variation on the effect
occasionally called 'The Sympathetic Silks'. Put your three silks in a heap on
the table, making sure that they are not knotted together."

After a hesitant start, Mr. Phillips was soon smoothly running through his
patter that went with the effect. Jen was astonished as the tying and untying of
the silks on the magician's table caused hers to knot together and unknot in the
same way. The climax was that her unknotting of the silks on her table caused
the old man's silks to become unknotted without him touching them.

At the end Mr. Phillips asked, "Did you enjoy that?"

"Yes, it was great, but what is the other stuff for?"

"Oh, that stuff, just do what I do and you'll see." He picked up
the mat and rolled it into a narrow cone and then waited.

It took a moment for Jen to twig that he was waiting for her to do as he had
done. She picked up the mat and had a good look at it; there did not seem much
to see, it seemed to be a plain thin mat made of woven straw and hemmed all
round with a thin red tape of fabric. The mat was about twelve inches by eight,
thin and quite flexible. It took only seconds to form it into foot long cone.

The old man took the large silk with his portrait on it and pushed it into
the open end of his cone.

"Which one should I use? I haven't got a white one."

"Any one you like. It doesn't really matter."

Jen picked the blue silk and stuffed it into the cone.

The magician made a mystical gesture over the cone, which he now held
horizontal. Jen turned her cone horizontal, tucked a stray end of silk back
inside the cone and tried to copy Mr. Phillips' mystical hand movement. He
raised the cone a foot above the table and still holding an edge of the mat
released it so that it unfurled and hung below his hand. This was followed by a
swift twirl of the hanging mat that showed that he was not hiding the white silk
behind it. The large white silk had disappeared. Jen tried to emulate his smooth
clean motion as she caught the edge of the mat, but she felt a little clumsy.
Immediately the mat was dangling from her fingertips and the blue silk floated
the short distance to the tabletop.

Jen blushed and asked, "How come yours vanished but mine didn't?"

"I'm not sure, but my guess is that you didn't get the hand waving bit
quite right. Try again, but use the wand and just tap the cone before opening
it."

Jen repeated what she had done, except that she replaced the hand movements
with a tap with the wand. When she allowed the cone to unfurl, the blue silk had
gone.

"Very good," commented the old man, "now to get them back, we
reverse the procedure. Make the cone again, then tap it, and pull out the silk
that has appeared inside." Mr. Phillips reached into the cone he had formed
and extracted a blue silk. He acted looking puzzled, then looked expectantly at
Jen's cone as she put in two fingers not expecting to find anything. Her fingers
met silk, so she closed her fingers round it and pulled. From the cone she
pulled the white silk. She looked at it as if she was holding a snake and not a
white silk square.

"That went well," remarked the old man. "Would you like to try
something else?"

"Why not?" replied Jen.

"OK. This one you will do all by yourself. I'll tell you what to do and
you do it. OK?"

"Alright." Jen nodded.

"Take your two silks and knot them together at a corner and make sure
that the knot is going to hold, because it somewhat spoils the effect if it
comes undone."

Jen picked up the red and yellow silks and tied them together using a reef
knot. She tested the knot by trying to pull it apart and it held.

"Good. Now I want you to put the knot into you mouth (don't worry the
silks are clean) give the knot a quick lick, then take hold of each silk against
your ears and pull."

Jen complied, expecting that, by magic, the firm knot she had made would give
way, but instead the silk pulled against the corners of her mouth so she stopped
pulling and looked at the old magician for a reaction.

"Good," he said, "Do you think you could do that blindfold?"

Jen nodded and made a move to remove the silken knot from her mouth so that
she could speak.

"Don't remove the knot just yet! Just put the big silk over your head
and try again."

Jen picked up the big white silk and was about to drape it over her head,
when the magician said, "The right way up please." Jen rotated the
silk until the portrait was the right way up and then draped it over her face.
She took the ends of the two silks that dangled from her lips, raised them to
her ears and pulled. To begin with she could feel the pressure at the corners of
her mouth and then this vanished. She assumed that the knot in her mouth had
come undone; a quick flick of her tongue confirmed that the knot was no longer
there. She felt a tickle of silk brushing up her cheeks as her hands pulled away
from her head, then suddenly the silks stopped when her hands were just short of
four feet apart either side of her head. She moved her head in the hope of
seeing what the silks were caught on as she could still feel the material
against her ears. As she moved her head the large silk fell into her lap, and
she felt the tension in the silks increase. Jen released the silks and felt them
settle onto her bare shoulders, but still touching her ears.

Mr. Phillips was smiling with amusement. "Go and have a look at yourself
in a mirror he smirked.

Jen stood and moved over to the dressing table where she had put on the wig.
The sight she saw reflected there amused and confused her. From her right ear
hung the yellow silk and from her left ear hung the red one. She gaped in
amazement. Tentatively, she picked up the end of the yellow silk and followed it
back to the side of her head, where it seemed to disappear into her ear hole.
Her other hand followed the other silk which seemed to emerge from left ear.
Gingerly, she gripped the red silk and cautiously tugged. It gave slightly as
one might expect a silk square fed through a small hole to give. Besides the
silk moving she felt a tickling in her ear canals on both sides of her head and
the yellow silk moved as if it was being pulled into her ear. Experimentally,
she tugged with her right hand and returned the silks to their former position
and felt the same sensations reversed left for right.

"I seem to have a couple of silks threaded through my ears," Jen
observed. "I wonder how that happened?" she asked, knowing that Mr.
Phillips would not give a direct answer.

Mr. Phillips did answer. Jen heard it muffled by the silk stuffing her ears.
"It seems you've been careless. You were meant to untie the knot with your
tongue."

Jen turned round quickly, in disbelief of what she had just heard. When she
saw the grin on his face she knew he was joking.

"So what do I do now? I can't go around with silk scarves hanging out of
my ears."

The old magician's smile as he suggested, "Why don't you pull them out
of one ear?" alerted her to expect this not to work.

For want of a better idea of what to do, she gently pulled the yellow silk
from her right ear while allowing the red one to be dragged into her left. She
had extracted about three or four inches of material her ear when it stopped
coming. She gave it a harder tug and felt her head pulled sideways. She decided
that it was probably a bad idea to try and force it, so she tried pulling the
silks from her left ear. After about seven or eight inches had been drawn out of
her left ear and a corresponding amount drawn into her right, again it snagged.

"I don't think simply trying to pulled them out of my ears is going to
work. I can pull it so far and then it won't come any further." She
demonstrated, by pulling both silks through her head until again they stopped.

"Ah! I think I know what's going on," Mr. Phillips said, in a
manner that suggested that he had known what was going to happen all along and
was acting the inspiration. "I think that that knot of yours is stuck
inside your head and won't come out of you ear holes."

At first thought this made sense to Jen, but then she asked herself, 'How
come the silks and the knot passed through the base of my skull to get in there,
but won't pass through my ears to get out? And what on earth is this doing to my
brain?' She gave voice to these thoughts.

"Firstly, I wouldn't worry about your brain; do you think you could have
framed such intelligent questions if your brain was being effected," said Mr.
Phillips. After a pause for thought, he continued, "as to how the knot went
in but won't come out, that's just how it is."

Jen was puzzled; she felt there ought to be a better explanation than 'It's
just how the magic works'. Her face showed her puzzlement.

Seeing Jen's expression, the magician explained, "Magic doesn't always
work the way you might expect. It doesn't always follow what you might expect if
you tried to apply common sense to it, but it does have some sort of logic to
it, although most people wouldn't recognize it as logical. For instance, how
many ways would you think there were of cutting a person in half?"

Jen looked blank, wondering what it had to do with anything. "Don't look
at me, I'm not the expert; you are."

"Well, I know sixty-eight methods well enough to use, and the magician
who taught me knew well over a hundred and that was before some of the newer
cutting implements became available. The things he would have been able to do
with a electric jigsaw, would have been a joy to behold, unfortunately he died
before they became available and before his time." Mr. Phillips' voice
broke into a sob. Jen sat still, not wanting to intrude on the old man's obvious
grief. After several minutes racking sobs the aged magician seemed to pull
himself together and dabbed at a tear with a blue silk. "It was such a
senseless accident. He was doing the most dangerous magic in any magician's or
illusionist's repertoire; The Bullet Catch. I wasn't there when it happened, but
I feel a bit guilty for not having spent more time trying to persuade him not to do
it. If I'd been there I might have been able to help prevent it. With the bullet
catch timing is critical; you have to do the actual magic between the pulling of
the trigger and the bullet hitting you, which is next to no time. The slightest
distraction means you miss the time and if your bullet firer is accurate you get
shot and as most of them are aimed at your mouth, it's hardly surprising that
most times when The Bullet Catch goes wrong it usually proves fatal." Mr.
Phillips sat hunched in his chair for several more minutes wiping several tears
from his cheek, for the moment he looked a lot closer to his seventy-eight
years.

Sitting still and trying to be unobtrusive finally took its toll on Jen; she
shifted position and having made some sound, she felt that she should say
something. "I'm sorry. It sounds as if you were very close to your
teacher," she observed.

"Yes, I was. He was my grandfather."

Jen could not think of anything to say that would not sound either insensitive or
ingratiating, so she remained silent.

After a further several minutes, the old man sat up straight again. "I'm
sorry to go all emotional on you, but it's a long time since I thought about
grandfather and my emotions got the better of me."

"That's OK, I'm sorry for your loss. How long ago did it happen?"

"Forty-three years ago. I think he was the last man to do that trick by
magical means. Since then even true magicians have used the illusionist's
method; it's safer, but not much." Mr. Phillips sat for more time
considering then said, "let's get back to more immediate concerns. You do
look, kind of, silly with silks hanging out of your ears."

Jen turned back to the mirror and realized that had she seen someone else in
her situation she would have found it highly amusing. A smirk spread across her
face. "So what am I supposed to do to get the knot out of my head?"

"You don't."

"I beg your pardon! You can't be serious. I don't want to go around with
these things for the rest of my life," exploded Jen.

"Don't get so heated up. You're not going to have to life with them.
It's just that we'll solve your problem by other means. Do you remember what
we were doing earlier?"

"Earlier?" asked Jen, puzzled.

"Yes, the sympathetic silks," replied the magician, holding up the
red and yellow silks from his table, which were knotted together at a corner.

"Let me guess. You are going to untie those and the knot inside my skull
will undo as well then I'll be able to pull the scarves from my ears,
right?"

"Precisely," confirmed Mr. Phillips. He held up the knot and
carefully untied it so that the untied ends were straight and without any kinks.

Jen carefully put tension on the silks and felt silken tickling in both ear
canals going outwards. While she was glad that she seemed to getting rid of the
silks, she also continued pulling smoothly in the hope that that would reduce
the chance of anything going wrong at the last moment. As her arms straightened
she felt the end of the silks come out of her ears and float down onto her
shoulders. Jen bundled the silks together and back to sit at the table.

"Do you really known sixty-eight ways of sawing a person in half?"
asked Jen with a combination of curiosity and worry that might remind the aged
magician of his mentor.

"Yes, I think so. I did when I last counted up, but I also know of
several dozen more that I have never done and I don't intend to start now. I'm a
dog who's too old to learn new tricks. You see, sawing someone in two is the
same basic trick, but there are as many variations as there are weapons that cut
and things to do to an assistant afterwards."

"Like what kind of things?"

"Well, the technique for using saws is different from that needed to
cutting with a sword and a buzz saw is different again. In fact, the technique
to a handsaw is a little different that used with a two-handed lumber saw,
because the number of teeth to the inch is different, and because cutting from
hip to hip is different from cutting from front to back, and because the body is
not symmetrical internally cutting from the left is different from sawing from
the right. It soon adds up."

"I can see that, now that you mention it. But I was actually asking
about the stuff you do to the assistant afterwards bit," commented the
young woman.

"Oh, of course. Well, the technique varies quite a bit depending on
that. It's quite easy if you are sawing through someone with no intention of
separating them. This is often seen, it does not need any special qualities in
the person being sawn so it can be done on audience members willy-nilly. It is
done these days with one of those electric jigsaw things and often the victim
isn't even aware that if some malicious person pulled their legs they would soon
bleed to death. In my day it was done with a bow saw; that had the advantage
that the victims waist ended up between the blade and the handle making what had
been done quite obvious," explained Mr. Phillips.

"If you are going to separate your assistant, you need to use another
technique entirely," continued the retired magician. "That, of course,
is because you have to make certain that they will join up again when they are
put back together. You also need an assistant with special qualities, which you
have in abundance." Jen blushed. "It takes another technique if you
want to take you assistant out of the boxes and yet another if you are doing the
double sawing."

"The double sawing? What's that?" interjected Jen.

"Oh, I'm sorry I forgot you're a bit new to this. The double sawing is
an effect where two assistants are sawn in half and their bottom halves are
swapped. That's why it requires a different technique; the cutting has to be
done so that the mismatched halves will join up enough that your assistant don't
fall apart, but don't join so strongly that they can't be separated again to
give both assistants their legs back after the show. It would be a disaster if
they needed sawing again to return the parts to the correct assistant."

"Why?" queried Jen.

"Um, it's like this, no matter how hard you try it is impossible to line
up the cut, so you would always end up some of the other assistant's
middle."

"I can see that that might be a bit creepy, but what if they wanted to
keep the other assistant's legs?"

"Yes, I know that might seem like an attractive idea, but in practice it
wouldn't work, because reality has a way of getting in the way. I'm sure that
you've heard of tissue rejection that prevents the willy-nilly transplantation
of organs; well that would happen if the legs remained swapped for more than a
few hours, even between twins. There are drugs that help prevent it, but would
you go onto expensive drugs for life, with the possibility that they will cause
liver or kidney damage, just for a pair of new legs, when you have a perfectly
good pair of legs that you could have back?"

"I suppose not," answered Jen. After a pause for thought, Jen
asked, "Can you teach me something that I can do?"