“I’ll tell you later,” he said.  “We have to get ready for the trick box and the vanishing lady stunt now.”

“Oh, Joe! were you in much danger?” she asked in a low voice.

“Oh, not much,” he answered, and he tried to speak lightly.  Yet he did not like to think of that one moment when he saw the rusted and broken wire.

While Joe and Helen are preparing for the box act, which has been treated fully in the previous volume, the explanation of how the vanishing lady trick was accomplished will be given, though that, too, has been explained in an earlier volume.

A large newspaper is put on the stage and the chair set on the paper, thus, seemingly, precluding the possibility of a trap door being cut in the stage through which the lady in the chair might slip.  The word “seemingly” is used with a due sense of what it means.  The newspaper was not a perfect one.  On one of its sides which was not exhibited to the audience, there was cut an opening, or trap, that exactly corresponded in size with a trap door on the stage.  The paper, as explained in the previous book, is strengthened with cardboard, and the trap is a double one, being cut in the center, the flaps being easily moved either way.

The audience thinks it sees a perfect newspaper.  But there is a square hole in it, but concealed as is a secret trap door.

When Joe laid the paper on the stage he placed it so that the square, double flap in it was exactly over the trap in the stage floor.  He then drew the page of the paper that he had held out to the audience toward himself, exposing the trap for use, but because it was so carefully made, and the cut was so fine, it was not visible from the front.

Helen took her place in the chair, which, of course, was a trick one.  It was fitted with a concealed rod and a cap, and it was over this cap, brought out at the proper moment, that Joe carefully placed the black veil, when he was pretending to mesmerize Helen.  There was a cross rod, also concealed in the chair, and on either end of this, something like the epaulettes of a soldier, so that when these ends were under the veil and the cap was in place it looked as though some one sat in the chair, when, really, no one did.

Helen was in the chair at the start.  But as soon as she was covered by the veil she began to get out The seat of the chair was hinged within its frame As Helen sat on it, and after she had been covered with the veil, she rested her weight on her hands, which were placed on the extreme outer edges of this seat frame.  She pulled a catch which caused the seat to drop, and at the same time the trap beneath her, including the prepared newspaper, was opened by an attendant.  The black veil all about the chair prevented the audience seeing this.

Helen lowered herself down through the dropped seat of the chair, through the trap, and under the stage.  And while she was doing this it still looked as if she were in the chair, for the false cap and the extended cross rod made outlines as if of a human form beneath the black veil.