"Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls!" Mancini the magician raised his arms to silence the applause from the theatre audience. "Would you like to see how I did this trick?"
There was a moment of baffled, awkward silence from the audience, followed by a growing ripple of murmurs. Mancini raised his arms again. "Of course you do! And, as before, I shall show you with the aid of my assistant, Carla."
Mancini strode across the stage, back to the prop that had been the centre of the act. It consisted to two cabinets - 'teleporters' as Mancini had called them - on top of a platform. A team of stagehands were already busy around the cabinets, removing their doors and replacing them with sheets of transparent plastic. Mancini waited for the stagehands to finish, then nodded to the conductor in the orchestra pit.
"Music, sir!"
The orchestra began to play, and Mancini started to repeat his last routine; only, this time, everyone could see what was going on. Carla climbed into one of the cabinets, then squeezed herself through a trapdoor in its bottom. She pulled herself through the hollow platform, to emerge from a trapdoor in the base of the other cabinet. Back and forth Carla went, with both her and Mancini showing off to the audience.
As the routine finished, Mancini silenced the thunderous applause. "And now you know how that's done!"
The audience laughed in repsonse.
"Alright," Mancini called out. "Now, see if you can work out how this one is done!"
Another transparent cabinet had been lowered from the fly tower until it was only a metre above the stage. Carla helped Mancini into the cabinet, then started it spinning. Slowly, the cabinet was raised, still spinning so the audience could see Mancini inside it. The magician raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, and - !
It took a moment for the audience to recover from the flash and crack of the pyrotechnics. But, it did not stop them cheering and clapping the empty cabinet.
