One rainy afternoon in January 1932, Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight-of-hand artist in the world, sat in the Innes Department Store in Wichita, Kansas, bored out of his mind. The 37-year-old Vernon had come to Kansas with his wife, Jeanne, and their young son, Ted, for the new year, lured by invitations from his friend and fellow magician Faucett Ross and the promise of work cutting silhouette portraits of customers at the store. Ross had helped the Vernons get settled, and the two men did nothing for several days but practice and talk magic. One of their sessions ran from 3 in the afternoon until 11 the next morning. Then, finally, Vernon knuckled down and went to work.

Although he was best known for magic, the Innes job was no fluke. Vernon had been practicing the delicate, fading art of silhouette cutting since his teens, and whenever money was a problem—which was often—he relied on his scissors to pay the bills. By 1932 he was a distinctive and sought-after stylist, and the store agreed to his condition that he start work late, at 11 in the morning, and knock off by 5:30. Soon he was swamped with customers, and crowds waited for him to arrive in the morning. His only antidote to the clamor was to assert a harsh artistic prerogative: If he didn’t like the looks of a customer, he would refuse to cut that person’s silhouette.

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