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By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw it into the roadway. "I'll be hanged if I go, Walker," said he, as he resumed his walk. "I've never been hustled into doing a thing yet, whether by woman or man."
Then I recalled to his memory the case as reported, adding that the fact of the murderer's prolonged evasion of justice, appeared, by some curious legerdemain of his excited fancy, if not to have suggested of that I was doubtful yet to have ripened his conviction of guilt.
The tiny flare was sufficient to reveal the entire floor space as well as the wall, but there was no remnant of candle visible. I held the sliver of wood, until the flame scorched my fingers, staring about in bewilderment. Then the intense darkness shut me in. I crouched back to the wall, revolver in hand, and it seemed as though the blood in my veins had turned to ice. What legerdemain was this!
It seems a task by no means enviable under any of its different aspects; but really, in the whole course of my experience at the bar, it has never yet fallen to my lot to witness so startling a feat of legal legerdemain, as that attempted in this court-room by the counsel for the plaintiff.
Almost immediately a professor of legerdemain made his appearance and, with the customary facility of his brotherhood, proceeded to remove tons of débris from presumably empty hats, rabbits from handkerchiefs, and hard-boiled eggs from childish noses and ears. The assembled group watched him with polite tolerance.
The phenomena are all the results of tricks, clever mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and the rest of the company fools. It is obvious that this theory can only account for a very small proportion of the facts observed.
His handwriting would indicate this even if we did not know, from the books he read, how conversant he is with at least one foreign tongue. Again, he has some decided interest in the subject of cancers and, perhaps, some interest in legerdemain, if we may judge from his perusal of Robert Houdin's book.
It is true that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings, to practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies of governments, sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a principle which Hastings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms, and on which he acted with undeviating steadiness.
You saw the plot at once as he constructed it; the pipe ash became explicable in the seduction of Miss Belton's charms. The cunning net unwove itself, delicately and deliberately, to tangle round the lady. There was in it that superiority in the art of legerdemain, of mere calm, astonishing manipulation, so applauded in regions where romance has not yet been quite trampled down by reason.
These hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition.
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