BOOK OF TRICKS CHATSWORTH MAN BUYS EARLY CARDSHARP'S BIBLE.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

It is perhaps fitting that a book considered the bible of card-trickery and cheating has masked the true identity of its author for nearly a century.

By some accounts, it was penned by a murderous cardsharp who met his demise when he shot his girlfriend, then himself, with police closing in on their seedy San Francisco apartment in 1905.

By others, ``The Expert of the Card Table'' was written by the genteel son of Montana's first senator, but he went to his grave three decades later without leaving a clue to his astounding legacy.

Enter Chatsworth card-smith Steve Pepoon, who early this year bought a first edition of S.W. Erdnase's 1902 masterpiece signed by its illustrator for $10,259 on an eBay auction.

He too is mystified.

``It's been 100 years: He could have disappeared from history,'' said Pepoon, 44, admiring the diminutive manuscript whose masterful prose and illustrations have launched a thousand card magic careers.

``He probably got shot cheating at cards, he probably came to an inglorious end somewhere.''

What is clear to all who know the book is that the Erdnase primer set the standard as the first book ever to reveal the hard-core gambling sleights of hand and cheating methods of the age.

For Pepoon, the award-winning scriptwriter, the book and letters by the illustrator with clues to its author, was the buy of a lifetime. For Erdnase - most certainly a nom de plume, historians say - was the master of deception.

``This is the first truly great book on magic,'' Pepoon said. ``This book really helped light the fire on the close-up magic revolution in this century.''

The purchase stunned the magic world.

``It was a big deal,'' said Gordon Bean, librarian for Hollywood's Magic Castle magician's club, of the sale. ``It caused more of a splash than any eBay sale in magic.''

For Pepoon, the ``Expert'' is a centerpiece to his collection. Pepoon, who lives with his girlfriend and two German shepherds, is surrounded by magic.

In his living room are 300 volumes on the ancient craft, including a Houdini work signed by the author in 1916, life-size posters of ``Carter the Great: the Baffling Chinese Mystery,'' and dozens of decks of cards ready for the latest trick.

And in one case hangs a Berliner Belt and handcuffs once owned by escape artist Harry Houdini - and ``used,'' said its provenance, ``by a prisoner who was beheaded in Berlin for murdering a postman'' with bottles of beer.

All this by a man who, aside from some childhood card shuffling in his home town Paola, Kan., didn't delve into magic until he was ``blown away by sleight of hand'' at the Magic Castle five years ago.

``The thing that struck me about the Castle is we are really living in a Golden Age of close-up magic,'' said Pepoon, who now considers the place his ``Cheers'' hangout.

He got a tutor. He watched card magic videos. He practiced card tricks in the darkness of movie theaters. And he closely studied the ``Expert,'' a lesson in style as much as deception.

``We shall assume that it is the occasion of a public reception,'' Erdnase intones, referring to a chapter on conjuring. ``Our table is the hall, our deck the common herd, and we may fittingly select the four Queens as representing the feminine portion of the smart set.''

< It's all in the cards

Pepoon, who wrote TV scripts for ``ALF,'' ``Get a Life,'' ``Roseanne,'' and the ``Jackie Thomas Show'' in addition to winning an Emmy for one script for the ``Simpsons,'' got good at cards.

With a deck of Tally-Ho cards, Pepoon can dazzle practiced magicians as easily as unschooled skeptics.

``You're, like, creating a small miracle in front of somebody,'' Pepoon, whose gentle nature and frowzy hair belie the sharp tactician at cards who loves wowing audiences from children to fellow magicians. ``I still get a rush from it.''

In a short time, he won respect.

``He's good. He's a great writer. He's a great magician who really knows his stuff,'' said Johnny Ace Palmer, a world-champion card close-up artist from Huntington Beach. ``Very bright, and he loves magic, absolutely loves it.''

And loving magic, for those like Pepoon, means chasing after the origins of the ``Expert'' - which is as frustrating as chasing the author of Shakespeare's plays. Passions flare from all sides.

The man behind the book

It was Marshall D. Smith, the book's illustrator, who described meeting the mysterious author in a cold Chicago room fifty years earlier. Well- bred, about 40 years old, with unusually soft hands, he was an easterner who claimed to be related to Louis Dalrymple, a popular turn-of-the-century cartoonist.

He wanted his book, also titled ``Artifice, Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table,'' illustrated. More than anything, the self-published author demanded discretion.

Since no other works were penned by S.W Erdnase, many have argued that the author was an E.S. Andrews, the author's name spelled backward.

Because no such Andrews with any card experience has been found, many have settled on Milton Franklin Andrews, the gambler found dead in San Francisco in a murder/suicide, who was taller than Marshall described and whose writing never matched the elegance of the ``Expert.''

David Alexander, a Long Beach magician, author and former detective, believes he solved the mystery after an in-depth linguistic analysis and forensic profile.

It was Wilbur Edgerton (W.E.) Sanders, the scion of Montana believed to have been taken in a card game, who finally revealed the card secrets of the ``Expert'' as an act of revenge, Alexander said.

``After he was done, he had beaten up the bully that had beaten up him, then he was done with it,'' he said.

Whoever the author was, some magicians remain awed by the effort.

``Who was this man who understood so much about gambling, yet was so poetic in his use of language? Then to publish it under a pseudonym is a mystery, for those who produce mysteries,'' said Westlake Village card expert Michael Ammar.

``It became part of the lore of magic.''

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Photo:

(color) Chatsworth card-smith Steve Pepoon, against the backdrop of an early 1900s magician, holds the expert's card-trick bible he bought for over $10,259.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News