photographs of the boy climbing the rope, disappearing and reappearing at a courtyard in Calcutta. However, the courtyard had been filled with dense smoke and when he had developed the photographs they revealed that "neither the juggler, nor the boy, nor the rope had moved at all." This caused Hamilton to suggest that the juggler had somehow drugged or hypnotized Bernard. Elliot criticized this second-hand account as nothing more than "hearsay evidence." He found the details and lack of witnesses suspicious, concluding that Bernard had hoaxed Hamilton. L. H. Branson in his book Indian Conjuring (1922) wrote that "the trick has never been performed out of doors. That is to say that a rope thrown up into the air has not remained suspended in mid-air, nor has any boy ever climbed up it. That when at the top he has not disappeared and that after his appearance he did not come down in bits, covered with blood or otherwise." Branson offered £300 to anyone who could demonstrate the trick in the open. Magicians such as Harry Blackstone Sr., David Devant, Horace Goldin, Carl Hertz, Servais Le Roy and Howard Thurston incorporated the Indian rope trick into their stage shows. However, their stage versions involved the use of curtains, mirrors and wires. The real challenge was to perform the full trick including the disappearance of the boy in broad daylight, outside in the open air. Thurston considered this to have never been achieved and in 1927 offered a reward of 5,000 rupees to anyone who could demonstrate it. The journalist James Saxon Childers reported in 1932 that he visited India with a desire to see the trick but noted that "the first conjuror I asked about the rope trick smiled at me, the second laughed, and the third swore that the trick could not be done, had never been done, and that only the amazing credulity of the Occident nurtures the rumor." In 1934 the Occult Committee of The Magic Circle, convinced the trick did not exist, offered a large reward to anyone who could perform it in the open air. The American magician Robert Heger claimed to have perfected the trick over 20 years and would demonstrate it to an audience on stage in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He claimed he would perform in London to The Magic Circle if his demonstration was successful. However, his demonstration was a failure as