SHARPS AND FLATS
Spoofing a mesmerist--The spoofer spoofed--Spoof card tricks--
Racecourse sharps--The “dud” diamond wheeze--I am beautifully
“had”--Three-card trick sharps--A Newcastle adventure--
Bunny’s spoof--Spoofing a “new chum”--The performing elephant
and the dude--Wheezes and gags.
I was once supposed to have been mesmerised myself. It happened at
Newcastle. I was a guest at an hotel there where a professional
mesmerist also chanced to be staying.
One day, in the course of conversation, I expressed incredulity
regarding his alleged power. “You can’t mesmerise me,” I said.
“Well,” he retorted, “I don’t mind trying. But you must promise not to
try and resist me. You must remain passive.”
“All right,” I said, “I will. Go ahead with the show.”
He made several passes, during which I kept smiling at him, and shaking
my head, as much as to say it was no good.
Then all of a sudden I threw myself into a state of rigidity, a trick I
had learnt and practised years previously, and pretended to go off into
a cataleptic trance.
The mesmerist was hugely elated. The others present, most of whom knew
me, were considerably surprised. Not one of them but believed that he
was witnessing a genuine hypnotic phenomenon.
After a while the mesmerist made several passes designed to bring me
to. But herein he failed. Again and again he tried. It was no good. The
only movement I made was to bite my lip so that it bled, and roll up my
eyes horribly, leaving only the whites visible.
The mesmerist began to get badly frightened, and after one or two more
vain attempts he ran out of the house to, as he said, fetch a doctor.
Meanwhile the others carried me, still rigid, upstairs to bed.
A friend volunteered to stay and watch me, and after a while I came to
of my own accord.
“Thank God!” exclaimed my friend, and called out for the others to come
up and have a look at me.
“Fine bit of play-acting, wasn’t it?” I said.
But the others would not believe me. They were quite sure in their own
minds that I really had been mesmerised, and only when I repeated to
them practically the whole of the conversation that had passed between
them while I was in my supposed trance, did they realise how completely
they had been spoofed.
As for the mesmerist, he never came back to the hotel. Instead of going
for a doctor, he had made a bee-line for the railway station, and
skipped the town. Evidently he thought it was all up with me.
Here is a spoof bet which may be new to my readers. You select a man of
obviously bigger physique than yourself, and offer to wager him, say, a
sovereign, that you measure the bigger round the chest. If he takes you
on, as he probably will, you hand him a tape measure and say, “So as to
be perfectly fair, you measure me, and I’ll measure you.” When the test
is finished he will say that he has won. “Oh, no,” you reply, “I’ve
won. You are the bigger man of the two, and it was I who measured you.”
I spoofed one of the “fliest” men in England with this trick on one
occasion.
Another time I was spoofed myself at the Empire, Liverpool, where the
Macnaughtons took my carefully prepared pack of cards and stuck them
together with glue, so that they formed a more or less solid block. The
result, when I started to attempt to perform my tricks with them, can
be more easily imagined than described.
By the way, speaking of card tricks, the majority of these, though
infinitely puzzling to the observer, are usually susceptible of a quite
simple explanation. Take, for example, that known as “The Two Queens,”
and which is not infrequently worked on racecourses with a view to
fleecing the public.
The way it is done is as follows: The performer takes the two Queens
of either colour, black or red, and holds them up so that the audience
can see them. Cutting the remainder of the pack into two lots he places
one of the Queens upon the top half. At this point the performer’s hat
falls off, or his attention is apparently distracted by some cause, and
he turns away from the cards, still holding the other Queen. Someone in
the company meanwhile quickly places a few cards from the bottom half
of the pack upon the Queen, which had been placed upon the top half.
When the performer resumes he announces that he will place the second
Queen upon the first, and accordingly places it upon the cards. He
now asserts that the two Queens are together, and offers to bet that
he will produce them in that order. The audience, thinking otherwise,
make various bets, and then the performer dealing the cards from the
bottom of the pack produces the two Queens one after the other. This is
accomplished by means of a confederate. When the performer has shuffled
and cut, he notes the top card when the pack is cut. One of the Queens
is placed on this card. When the hat falls off the confederate places
the other cards as described, and the Queens are really separated.
In dealing from the bottom the performer watches carefully until he
arrives at the card which he had previously noted when the cut was
made. When this is dealt he knows that the next card will be one of
the Queens. So, instead of dealing this he pulls it back underneath
the pack with the fingers of the left hand, and continues dealing. He
produces the other Queen, and it is then a simple matter to deal the
first Queen which he had pulled back. A shrewd spectator would notice
that the Queens appear in reverse order to that in which they were
placed in the pack, but audiences are so amazed that they don’t notice
a little thing like that.
It is not by means of card tricks alone, however, that the unwary
are cheated on racecourses, and elsewhere. I could fill a good-sized
volume if I liked with accounts of the wiles of some of the “fly”
gentry frequenting these places. One of them once “had” me beautifully,
though, I need hardly say, not at cards. It concerned a diamond ring.
The man, a well-known Birmingham racecourse frequenter, brought it
to me while I was playing there, and asked me to buy it, saying that
he had won it at cards. This story, I reflected, might or might not
be true. Anyway, it was nothing to do with me. I am a good judge of
diamonds, and I examined this one very carefully.
I saw at once that it was a splendid blue-white stone, and worth
certainly not less than £80. The man asked me £40 for it. I offered him
£20, which sum, after some hesitation, he agreed to take. “Hand over
the money,” he said, “and the ring is yours.”
This conversation took place in one of the hotel bars in the centre of
the city, and I had not so much money on me. I accordingly told him to
bring the ring round that night to the theatre where I was playing,
and I would let him have the money; which he did. The stone was to all
appearance perfect, blazing with fire, and I put it in my waistcoat
pocket, thinking what a nice surprise it would be for my wife.
So it was a surprise, but not in the way I intended. For next morning
all the blaze and beauty had gone out of the stone. It looked like
a piece of ordinary glass. I rushed round to a jeweller’s with it.
“You’ve been had,” he explained. “The stone is not a diamond at
all, but a jargoon, a gem whose lustre, especially if it is well
polished, exactly resembles that of the diamond. Only it is extremely
evanescent.” I may say that the stone I first examined was a genuine
diamond, and worth fully four times what I agreed to pay. It was
afterwards that the jargoon was substituted for it, and in the hurry of
dressing I did not notice the difference.
Here is a tricky way of tossing for drinks and winning. It cannot be
described as cheating, being rather in the nature of forced suggestion.
You say to a man, “Come on, I’ll toss you for drinks round,” at the
same time pulling out a coin and placing it flat on the counter, or
elsewhere, with the tail uppermost, and, of course, covered so that
he cannot see it. “Come on,” you say, speaking very rapidly, yet
distinctly. “Cry to me. Which is it? Heads or tails.”
In nine cases out of ten the man will cry heads, but it must be done
quickly, without giving him time to think; and you want to lay a little
emphasis, but not too much, on the word “heads.” Anybody can try this
for themselves, and they will find that what I say is true.
Another coin-tossing trick! Where you are asked to “cry to pieces,” a
favourite trick with men who are not too particular is to say, with
affected carelessness: “Oh, I’ll have the same as the top one.” In this
way, if the first coin is a head, he starts off with one to the good,
and the man who puts down the coins is, of course, handicapped to that
extent.
Speaking of racecourse sharps, I once was tackled by a gang of
three-card men under rather peculiar circumstances. I was working at
the Empire, Newcastle, where I topped the bill as the World’s Premier
Card Manipulator. With me were the Poluski Brothers, and Sam Poluski,
who is well known in the profession as a sportsman, introduced me
to a local tout, called Bunny, who used to back horses for him, and
incidentally, if he heard of a “good thing,” he would tell Sam about
it, and Sam would tip him for his trouble if the horse won. If it
didn’t win, then Bunny got his commission from the bookie with whom he
placed the bet, so that he was all right either way.
Bunny was perfectly straight himself, but he, of course, knew all “the
boys.” Well, on the Friday of the week I was there, there was what they
call up there “a flapper meeting”; that is to say, a small race meeting
got up under National Hunt rules among the farmers and others. I went
there alone, but took Bunny with me as a sort of bodyguard, and to show
me the ropes.
The place where the meeting was to be held was about half an hour’s run
from Newcastle by train, and I arranged for Bunny to meet me at the
Central Station. I got there first, and I must say that I had seldom
seen a tougher-looking crowd assembled anywhere. By and by Bunny turned
up, and I took two first-class tickets, for I didn’t like the look of
the mob on the platform, and I thought that by this means, and if we
waited until the train was just about to start, we might manage to get
a compartment to ourselves. If we could do this, I reflected, we were
all right, for the train, a special race one, did not stop until we got
to the course.
I was at this time a youngish lad, with curly hair, and looked,
I suppose, a typical “pie-can,” which is the bookies’ way of
characterising a “mug.” The train was a bit late at starting, and while
we were waiting I distinctly saw Bunny “give the office” to a gang of
“the boys.”
“Here, Bunny,” I said, taking him to one side. “No larks. What’s the
game?”
“All right, Carlton, old man,” he replied. “Don’t get alarmed. I’m only
going to have a lark with some of these chaps.”
I wasn’t at all reassured at this, for the gang didn’t look to me at
all the kind it was in the least advisable to play larks on. However,
there was not time to say anything further, for at that moment the
whistle blew, and Bunny jumped into an empty first-class compartment
and I after him, so too did five or six of the boys; the same Bunny had
given the tip to. Just as the train was starting a detective poked his
head in the window, and cried warningly, “Beware of card-sharpers.”
I quickly slipped my diamond pin out of my tie, and stuck it in the
back of my waistcoat. Then I buttoned up my coat over my inside pocket,
where the bulk of my money was, and waited.
I hadn’t long to wait. Within a minute or two the three cards were
produced, and the old familiar performance gone through; the men, all
apparently strangers to each other, winning and losing alternately.
Bunny also took a hand and won. Was he not, in a sense, “one of the
boys”? It was, of course, all stage-managed for my benefit.
But I wasn’t having any. Or at least I pretended I wasn’t. When I
did at length yield to their repeated entreaties, I won a sovereign,
and declined to bet any more. Thereupon they began to get nasty; so,
thinking the thing had gone far enough, I said: “Look here, boys, you
took me for a pie-can. Well, I’m not. But I’m a sport. I don’t want
your money. Here’s your quid back, and here’s another to get drinks
with.”
Then, picking up the cards, I remarked quite casually: “Let me show you
how we work the three-card trick down where I come from.”
So saying I took out three cards, including the Queen of Spades, and
throwing them down on their faces, I invited them to pick out the
“lady.”
One of them selected a card. It was the wrong one. Then another of the
gang chose another. It also was not the “lady.” Then I myself turned
up the remaining card. And that also was not the “lady.” There was no
Queen there. I had palmed it, and substituted a plain card for it.
The sharpers gazed at me in blank amazement. Bunny, in his corner,
rolled in his seat, and screamed with laughter.
Then, when he had recovered his breath, he said: “Don’t you know who
it is? Why you were all with me last night at the Empire, and saw him
on the stage there. It’s Carlton, the world’s premier card-manipulator.”
And he went off into another fit of laughter.
But “the boys” didn’t laugh. They had wasted the journey, to say
nothing of their fare money. And the language they used to Bunny was
quite unprintable.
Of course none of them had recognised me without my stage make-up.
I don’t know why it should be so, but it is a fact that we
professionals are exceedingly prone to play larks on one another.
A new-comer in the profession is especially likely to find himself
made a butt of. It is good-natured chaff, and if he takes it in good
part--well. If not, why so much the worse for him.
Once, when I was performing at Liverpool, I recall that there was a
“new chum” there who was doing some sort of show business in a sketch.
He was rather stuck-up and touchy, and he was put through it rather
unmercifully in consequence. One night, for instance, he would find his
boots had been securely nailed to his dressing-room floor. Another time
the sleeves of his coat would be sewn together, and so on.
Well, one night he was waiting in the wings for his cue to go on, and
was holding a tall hat in his hand, which he used in his performance.
Suddenly this was snatched from him from behind, and jammed on his head.
“There you are,” he cried to the manager, without turning round. “These
fellows are always playing larks on me before it is my cue to go on. It
puts me off my business. I wonder you allow it.”
“That’s all right from your point of view,” replied the manager. “But
the culprit in this case is too big for me to tackle. Better have a go
at him yourself.”
Whereupon the victimised “pro.” swung round on his heel in order to
take stock of the offender. He found himself face to face with one of
Lockhart’s elephants. The beast had been trained by its master to do
the trick, and seeing the hat held temptingly had taken advantage of
the opportunity.
When the dog-muzzling order was previously in force, Dan Lesson, who
was one of the best-known practical jokers in the profession, one day
fixed a needle to the front of his dog’s muzzle, allowing it to project
an eighth of an inch. And--well you know how friendly dogs are. Another
“pro.” fixed a similar needle arrangement to the “push” of his electric
bell.
Yet another wheeze of his was to address about fifty envelopes to as
many of his friends and acquaintances. These he posted, but omitted to
put stamps on. Inside was a card, with these words neatly inscribed on
it: “Bet you a penny you paid twopence.”
I think that the following incident is about as perfect an example of
the “double cross” as it is possible to conceive.
I was playing in a certain town in the Midlands, and amongst the other
performers there was a bright, particular “Knut” who was, as he himself
expressed it, “dead nuts” on the girls. The rest of us took advantage
of this to, as we thought, play a game on him.
One day he received a letter, written in a disguised feminine hand by
one of us, which ran as follows: “Dear Mr. Blank,--I have seen your
show from the front and I think it’s simply ripping. But not more
ripping, I am sure, than you are yourself if one could only get to know
you. May I have that pleasure? If so, meet me opposite the fountain in
the park to-morrow afternoon at three. I will wear a blue navy costume
trimmed white, suède gloves, and a red rose in my bodice. Signed: One
of your admirers--Bessie.”
All the next morning the recipient of this missive strutted about
looking awfully pleased with himself, but, of course, said not a word
to anyone. Meanwhile we were busy helping a female impersonator,
who chanced to be playing at the same hall, to make up as the
supposititious Bessie.
Shortly before three he took his place on a seat near the fountain,
blue costume, toque, suède gloves, and rose, all complete. We were
hidden in the undergrowth at the back, on tiptoe of expectation, ready
to enjoy our carefully planned joke.
Presently along comes Mr. Knut, dressed to kill. The female
impersonator put on his most engaging smile, and half rose to greet
him, when to his and our astonishment and dismay a real girl dressed in
exactly the same fashion stepped forward from another direction, and
taking his arm, proudly marched off with him.
He had, of course, tumbled to our little joke, and had double-crossed
us. Needless to say we felt rather small.
Here is another “girl story.” I had in my employ at one time a big,
handsome chap who was also, like the knut mentioned above, exceedingly
fond of the fair sex. He was a favourite with them, too, so that he
practically had a sweetheart in every town we visited.
He used to boast to me of his many conquests, giving me names and full
particulars. Of these I made mental notes.
Finally he became engaged to be married to one of his numerous flames,
the wedding being fixed for a certain day at noon. Early that morning
I sent off prepaid telegrams to the managers of various halls in towns
where we had performed, and where I knew that old sweethearts of his
resided, asking them to wire the bridegroom as per the formula I sent
them. These telegrams I arranged to arrive at the bride’s house,
addressed of course to the bridegroom, shortly before the ceremony.
I was not there, but I heard afterwards graphic accounts of what
happened. It appears that the first wire arrived a few minutes before
the happy couple were due to leave for the church. The bridegroom,
quite unsuspicious, seized it and opened it, imagining it to be a
telegram of congratulation.
But directly he glanced at it, his face fell, and he tried to put it
in his pocket. The bride, however, seeing that something was wrong,
snatched it from him, and read it herself. Then she gave a scream and
fell in a faint.
The telegram, which was from Halifax, read as follows: “You base
deceiver. Shall be there to forbid the marriage. Think of our child.
Alice.”
In vain the poor chap protested. Nobody would believe him; and to make
matters worse, a few minutes later another telegram arrived, from
Manchester this time. It read: “Are you going to desert me like this
after faithfully promising to marry me? Beware! Jennie.”
Other similar wires came to hand at intervals, and the bride insisted,
on arriving at the church, on showing the whole batch to the clergyman
who was to perform the ceremony. He, good man, insisted on postponing
the marriage for an hour in order to see if anybody turned up to
forbid it. Naturally, however, and of course, nobody did; but in order
I suppose to make assurance doubly sure, when he came to the part
where any person desirous of forbidding the ceremony is invited to
come forward, he repeated the words slowly three times before finally
uniting the couple.
I may say that I never really thought that my little joke would have
been taken so seriously by all concerned, or I would most certainly
never have perpetrated it.
Another practical joke in which a “dud” telegram played a part rather
misfired towards the end. The affair happened at Brighton, where, as
it chanced, a famous theatrical star (whom I will call Estelle), a
well-known mimic (who shall be Smith), and myself were performing.
Each of us was putting up at a different hotel, Estelle (I think) at
the Grand, and Smith at the Metropole, where he had engaged rooms for
himself and wife, who was devoted to him, and who was also very, very
jealous of him.
Knowing this, I got my assistant, a man named McMillan, to disguise
his handwriting, and dispatch to Smith a fake telegram as if from
Estelle, couched in imitation French, and asking him (Smith) to come
round and see her at her hotel that evening. The wire, I may add, ran
something like this: “Voulez vous mi sheri sus soir? respondez tuts
weet.--Estelle.”
I got McMillan to send the wire off from the Brighton Post Office early
in the morning, and it was delivered to Smith, as I had foreseen, while
the couple were in bed.
Smith read it, and tried to smuggle it on one side, but his wife
snatched it away and read it also. Then, of course, the fat was in the
fire. The good lady was out of bed in an instant, and throwing on some
clothes, rushed round to Estelle’s hotel.
“You try to steal my husband!” she screamed indignantly to the
astonished and but half-awake actress. “You wicked woman!”
In vain did poor Estelle protest, and that with almost equal
indignation. “I no want your husband. Your husband--pouf! I can have
kings! Kings, I tell you!”
“A king!” corrected Mrs. Smith, with emphasis.
“Well, then, a king,” agreed Estelle. “And he is very good to me.
Everyone knows that. What I want with your husband?”
There was a lot more talk, and in the end Mrs. Smith, still
unconvinced, went back to her hotel, packed up her things, and took the
first train back to London.
Soon afterwards Smith came to me and told me all about it, asking my
advice.
“Somebody’s been having a game with you,” I said. “Let’s go round
to the Post Office, and try and get a look at the original of the
telegram.”
We went, and after some demur the postmaster allowed us to see the
telegraph form. Smith scanned it carefully, but McMillan had well
carried out my instructions as to disguising his handwriting, and he
could make nothing of it.
Then, in an evil moment, it occurred to him to turn the form over,
and there at the back, in the space provided for the name and address
of the sender, he read, “Carlton, Hippodrome, Brighton.” My dresser,
instead of putting the name and address of the actress, had, in a
moment of temporary forgetfulness, inserted my own.
Smith, I will say, took the matter in good part; but I had a rough time
explaining matters to his wife.
A joke I once saw played by one friend on another struck me as being
amazingly funny. One was clean-shaven, the other had a long thick
beard, into which his friend stuck some half-dozen prawns, without,
of course, his being aware of it. It did look funny. Try it yourself.
But don’t try it on a man who is bigger than you, or possibly awkward
results may ensue.
The late Dan Lesson, as I have already remarked, was a rare hand at
these sort of practical jokes, and speaking of prawns somehow naturally
reminds me of kippers. On one occasion Dan was dissatisfied at the
way the orchestra played his music, so he got a none too fresh kipper
and tacked it inside the bass viol. In a few days that orchestra was
the sickest orchestra in England. The smell was something awful. It
was hot weather, and the theatre was a bit close anyhow. They pulled
up the boards. They even tore up the drains. But they didn’t succeed
in locating where the smell came from. For all I know the mummified
remains of that kipper, now of course no longer smellable, is in that
viol yet.
The trick, I may add, is an old one with music-hall artistes who want
to get even with a bad landlady, the kipper in this case being nailed
under the leaf of the table near the centre. I knew of one case where
the local sanitary inspector was actually called in. He had all the
drains up, and then failed to find out whence the overpowering odour
emanated from.
Another similar “stunt” is to put a pinch of gunpowder in a bloater,
and hand her the doctored fish with strict instructions that it is to
be grilled, not fried.
Many funny stories could be told by performers of their experiences
with their landladies. Of course, there are good and bad of every kind,
good cooks and bad cooks, honest women and dishonest women.
My Christmas dinner in Edinburgh where I was performing in pantomime
some years ago I am not likely to forget. My mother sent me a Christmas
pudding, and she prided herself on her skill in making them. I bought
a fine turkey, and invited all my pals round to my special Christmas
dinner. Of course in Scotland they do not recognise Christmas Day, and
all the theatres and music-halls are open, New Year’s Day being the
big holiday there. However, to get back to the Christmas dinner! I had
previously told all my pals how nice my mother made Christmas puddings,
but imagine my surprise when my landlady served up the turkey--she had
stuffed it with the pudding!
On another occasion when I was performing at the Theatre Royal,
Dublin, my wife asked me what I would like for supper, and I answered,
“sausages, mashed potatoes and onions,” telling her at the same time to
be sure to ask the landlady if she knew how to cook them. She replied,
“Av coorse,” adding that she had cooked them hundreds of times before.
When I got them, however, they were served up like Irish stew. She had
put the beautiful Cambridge sausages, the onions, and potatoes in the
pot together, and said, on being remonstrated with: “Sure, that’s the
way we cook them in Oireland.” This incident was capped later on at
Cork where I fancied a shoulder of mutton. The landlady fried it in a
frying-pan.
I remember once a very dishonest landlady in Leeds, the pick of the
bunch. I used to go out and buy my own things in those days and always
kept my tea, sugar, etc., in a little cupboard in my combined room.
Everything used to vanish, but she always had an excuse on the tip
of her tongue, so after half a bottle of whisky had gone one night I
put some jalap in another whisky bottle. I had to laugh, for she was
running up and down stairs all night long complaining of pains in her
stomach, but although half the contents of the whisky bottle containing
the jalap had gone, she persisted in declaring that she had never
touched it. Later on, when my tea had nearly all vanished from the
caddy, and she had the audacity to complain to me as to how much tea I
drank, I carefully caught a fly and put it alive in the tea caddy. When
I got home, and took down the caddy to put my tea in the pot, the fly
had gone, but even then she would not admit her dishonesty. So I made
up my mind to catch her properly the next time. I carefully counted six
potatoes, not letting her know I had counted them, and asked her to
boil them for my dinner; but she had me again, she mashed them!
To “have” the average man on “a little bit of string” is quite easy,
and some of the simplest “gags” I have found the most effective.
For instance, you ask a man if he is good at mental arithmetic. The
probability is he says that he is. You then ask him two or three
exceedingly easy questions, such as, for example, what is twice seven,
how many times does six go into eighteen, and so on. Then you say,
“How many penny buns make a dozen,” followed, when he has answered it
correctly, by the catch question, “How many half-penny ones?” He is
practically certain to answer on the spur of the moment, “Twenty-four.”
Here is another equally simple catch. You take a piece of white paper,
tell a man to place his forefinger on it, and offer to bet him you can
draw a ring round it with a piece of lead pencil that he can’t lift his
finger out of. You then draw a small ring on the paper round the tip of
the finger, and ask him to lift his finger out of it. Of course he does
so quite easily. You repeat this once or twice; then you draw your ring
round the forefinger itself.
Or you get a man to put an easily fitting ring on his little finger,
then join the tip of your little finger to the tip of his, and ask him
if he thinks it possible for you to remove the ring from his finger
without moving yours. He will almost certainly pronounce the feat an
impossible one, when all you have to do is to slip the ring off his
little finger and on to yours, and the trick is done. The ring is no
longer on his finger. It is on yours. And the connection between the
two fingers, yours and his, has not been severed for an instant. Then
you say: “And now do you think it is possible for me to take the ring
off _both_ our fingers without severing the connection.” He is sure to
say, “No.” Whereupon you just lift the ring so that it does not touch
either, and the trick is done.
These little “spoofs” sound very simple after they are explained, but
all the same I have “had” some of the smartest men for “drinks round”
with them. Once, too, in Denver, I recollect a professional gambler
rather got on my nerves by bragging about the amount of money he
carried about with him.
“Look here,” I said suddenly, withdrawing my closed fist from my
trousers pocket, “I’ll bet you five dollars I’ve got more money in my
hand than you have.”
“Done!” he cried, and diving his hand into his pocket he withdrew it
stuffed full of gold pieces.
Mine held a matter of a few cents. “I’ve won,” he cried, exhibiting his
fistful of wealth.
“Not at all,” I retorted, “I said in _my_ hand. That money is not in my
hand; it’s in yours. You’ve lost. Pay up.”
Which he did, with the best grace he could.
A few days later he met me, and told me that he had won over five
hundred dollars from fellow gamblers by means of the trick. And these
men were supposed to be among the “widest” on the American continent.
Here is a trick game with matches which sounds as if nothing could be
fairer, and which yet is, in reality, an arrant swindle. The man who
wants to practise it starts off by telling his opponent (and dupe) that
it is a Chinese gambling game. This tends to throw him off his guard.
He then takes a number of matches and places them under his hat. Next
he tells the other fellow to take any number of matches from the box,
place them on the table, and lift the hat. “If,” he says, “you have
put down an even number of matches, and the sum total of both heaps of
matches, yours and mine, is even, then you win. If you have put down an
odd number, and the sum total of both heaps of matches, yours and mine,
is odd, then also you win. Otherwise you lose.”
This seems perfectly fair and aboveboard, yet in reality the game is
entirely in the hands of the man who puts the matches under the hat.
If he puts an even number of matches (say six) there, and the other
man puts down an even number (say four) then the total (ten) is an even
number, and the other fellow wins. If the other man puts down three he
also wins, he having put down an odd number, and the sum total of the
two heaps being odd.
In short, if I, who am supposed to be working the trick, choose to put
an even number of matches under the hat in the first instance, then the
other man must win. But equally, if I put an odd number, he must lose,
for in that case if he puts an odd number down the sum total of the two
heaps is bound to be even, and if he puts an even number down the sum
total is bound to be odd.
Here is a trick which invariably creates a good deal of fun and
amusement. I call it “The Vanishing Hair.”
At an evening party, or other similar gathering, you pluck a
hair--first asking permission, of course!--from the head of one of the
ladies present. This, you say, you will cause to vanish mysteriously,
and you get someone to tie a knot in it so as to identify it. This, to
create an impression.
You thereupon call for a small flat tea-tray, into which you pour a
tumbler of clean water, forming a light film upon the surface, on which
you place the hair, where it floats serenely, plain for all folk to see.
“Now,” you say, “you all see the hair is there. Watch closely while
I count three, and at the word ‘three’ you will see it suddenly and
mysteriously disappear.”
At this they all crowd round, bending closer down and peering intently
at the hair floating on the thin film of water.
“One--two--three!” you say, and bring your hand down flat with force
on the hair, when, of course, the water flies up into their faces and
they hurriedly back away wiping their eyes. Meanwhile the hair most
certainly does disappear. You see to that.