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FRANK LANE'S METHOD OF DOING THE THREE PELLET CARD TRICK
If you get nothing else out of this book except this trick, you will be repaid one hundred times for buying it. This is my FAVORITE Club trick and has made me in actual cash, hundreds of dollars. How? Because when I have done this trick for different organizations it has made them talk so much that this trick alone has brought me plenty of engagements; and in some instances, I have been hired to do this one trick AND NOTHING ELSE.
JOHN NORTHERN HILLIARD saw me do this six successive nights at six different organizations, and he was so impressed that he offered me anything that I wanted so that he could publish it in the new book which he was about to have printed and which was to cost $15.00.
I am telling you all this so that you will realize you are getting something; not only a secret, but an effect that will absolutely knock your audience cold and one that you will continually keep in your performance and thus bring you actual cash besides prestige.
THE EFFECT: An ordinary deck of cards is used. The deck is shuffled. Three cards are selected by three different men, with the deck in THEIR hands, and WITH YOUR BACK TURNED TO THEM AND TO THE AUDIENCE ALL THE TIME. The spectators write the name of the card on three different slips of paper. These are collected by a fourth spectator, performer takes them in his fingers one at a time, and without opening them, HE NAMES EACH ONE OF THE MEN'S CARDS. Before I give you the secret, let me tell you this:
- The deck is ordinary.
- There is absolutely no sleight-of-hand.
- You can do it immediately.
The effect is perfectly uncanny; and this, combined with the ease with which you do it, makes it one of the best effects to offer an audience. Now... if you're still interested, here it is:
THE SECRET: If there is no sleight-of-hand to it, and yet at the same time it is so easy to do, we must have a set-up; so we have the deck set up for the Si Stebbins System.
You address your audience somewhat like this:
"Ladies and Gentlemen: For my last effect I'm going to try to prove to you that I'm a real magician. I'm going to show you something that you have never seen before--and something you'll never see again--unless you see me do it. When magic is mentioned in your home, or in other places, you will forget all about the other tricks I have done here tonight; but THIS one will remain in your memory. You might have an idea of how I do the trick with the dollar bill, or the trick with the handkerchief, but you WON'T have the SLIGHTEST idea or the faintest inkling of how this is performed. I'm going to ask three gentlemen to come up on the platform and help me. I'll promise there will be no jokes. I'm going to be serious every moment."
When the men come up on the platform you take out three pieces of paper from your pocket, about 2-in. square, fold each one in halves, then fold it over again, and with a pencil, mark one of the papers "1," another "2," and the other "3" ON BOTH SIDES. Give one paper to each of the men and have them place it in their vest pocket. As you do this you talk.
"I'm folding three pieces of paper, Ladies and Gentlemen, and I'm marking each of them No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 on both sides. I pass one of the papers to you, sir; one to this gentleman, and one to you. Will you kindly put them in your pockets because I'm going to have you use your hands in a moment."
Pick up your cards and take them out of the case, fan them out, and let the audience see that it is an ordinary deck.
Continue: "I have here an ordinary deck of cards, Ladies and Gentlemen, and when I get through what I'm going to do, one of these men is going to have this deck for himself. Which one of you gentlemen plays cards? You, sir? Very well, then, the deck will be yours. Every time I do this trick, folks, I give away a deck of cards--not because I like to give things away, especially to strangers--but because I want everybody to know that I'm using NOTHING but an ordinary deck; and you can see how foolish it would be for me to give a deck of cards away to anyone if there was anything the matter with them. I know that if anyone in this audience would like to examine these cards, the gentleman here will be courteous enough to allow you to do so. Here's the case, sir. I'll give you the cards later on.
"Now I'm going to ask the audience to help me out in this respect: I want you to be sure that these gentlemen do EXACTLY as I tell them to do--no more, no less. When I tell you gentlemen to cut the deck I mean to cut it--like this--and then complete the cut. (An ordinary cut.) Later on, when I have you take a card I'm going to ask you to show it to someone else. You may show it to the audience, or to only one person--ANY person--and if I allow you this privilege of showing it to ANYONE you want, or to the whole audience, you must realize that I have no one to assist me in any way.
"Now, the first gentleman: Will you take the cards and place them on your left hand? Don't do anything until I tell you. I'm going over here with my back turned and I'm going to ask you to follow my instructions."
Walk away from him down to one side of the audience with your back turned towards him and start giving instructions.
"Will you kindly cut the deck? Is it done? Cut it once more. Are you satisfied, sir, that with my back turned to you, and with you handling the deck, that I don't know where any particular card is in that deck? Thank you. Would you cut them once more? Now I'm going to ask you to take the card nearest you, the TOP card, take it in your right hand, look at it, and now remember, you have your own choice of whether to show it to one person or to the entire audience. Is it done? Now you have the deck in your left hand and the card in the right. Take that card--tuck it in the center of the deck some place--even the deck all up on the ends and sides so I won't even know APPROXIMATELY where your card is. Is it done? Thank you."
You walk back to performer, take deck from his hand... as described in "Two Hours With Frank Lane"... thereby getting a peek at the bottom card, simply REMEMBER that bottom card.
"Now I'm not going to run through this deck... I'm not even going to look at it... I'm going to pass it to No. 2 man."
Here's where you get your peek at the bottom card, as you pass the deck to the man with your right hand. Now turn to No. 1 man and say:
"I'm going to ask you, sir, to take your seat and when you are sure I'm not looking at you to open your paper, write down the name of the card in any way you desire on the inside of the paper, and then fold the paper again so that the number will show on the outside."
Now you address No. 2 man and when you walk away you have him do exactly the same routine as described above for the first man, with this one addition:--Let him cut the cards twice, and then have him cut off about a THIRD of the deck, and then complete the cut. This makes it a little safer for you, as he might cut to the same spot where the other man put his card. When you have him cut a third of the deck, the third time he cuts will eliminate any danger. After the routine is over, have him take his seat in the same manner as No. 1 man, and when you have learned the bottom card, as you pass the deck to the third man, you continue talking, as follows:
"Now, for this third gentleman I'm going to work a little different. I'm going to ask you, sir, to shuffle that deck of cards as much as your heart desires. Later on I'm going back to you and I'm going to say: 'You're the gentleman that shuffled the deck as much as you wanted' and when I say that, I want you to reply 'Yes.' So I want you now to shuffle them so you CAN say 'Yes.' Are you satisfied that they are shuffled enough? Now, here's what I want you to do--and I want you, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see that he does exactly as I say--take the deck in your left hand, and with your right thumb and second finger, I want you to pull out some cards from the center of the deck... take as few or as many as you wish... and when you get this portion out in your right hand, turn that portion over so that you can see the bottom card of that portion, show it to somebody else, and then put the whole portion back on the deck again."
As you say the above, you demonstrate what you want him to do; and as you say "Is that clear?" you get a glimpse of the bottom card of the whole deck and then overhand shuffle the cards, leaving that bottom card on the top of the deck--and hand the deck to him. Now don't you see that when he takes the portion from the center and looks at the bottom card, then puts them on top of the deck, that the card he looked at will be to the LEFT of the card you noted, when you fan the deck later on.
Before you walk away from him and turn your back while he is doing this, simply watch him for a second until you see that he is STARTING right. Then turn your back. After he goes through the routine, have him cut the deck and then tell him to lay the cards down on the table--that you don't even want to touch them. Now continue talking:
"Now, sir" (after you come back to stage) "let's work with you a little different again. Let's forget your paper. YOU MERELY THINK OF YOUR CARD. Then take your seat, please."
You now walk down to No. 1 man and without looking at his paper, you stretch out your right hand and take the paper from him. Hold it above your head. Ask him to think of his card... and bring back to your audience the fact that your back was turned, something like this:
"Now, sir, you remember you told me that as far as you knew there was no possible way I could tell any card while my back was turned; yet you cut the deck three or four times... you took some card... and you are now thinking of it. The gentleman took a black card... it was a Queen... and you TOOK, sir, the Queen of Spades."
Say "The Queen of Spades" in a hesitating manner, as if it were somehow coming to you through some mental process. Of course, all you do is add three to the first card you remembered and take the next suit. That will be the man's card. When you name the card, open the paper... tell the audience how he wrote it... then give it to someone in the audience.
Follow this same routine with the No. 2 man. When you get to the third man, say this:
"Now this is the first time that I'm taking the deck in my hands I don't know whether I showed you folks that this was an ordinary deck or not--but it is."
And as you run through them, faces towards audience so that they can see they are all different, you locate the card that was on the top and then note the card to the left of it--and that will be the man's card. You fan these cards in a hurried manner, as if you just thought of showing the cards were all different. After you have found out what his card is, you take the deck down to the man you are going to give the deck to, saying:
"This is your deck, sir. Hold it in your hand, sir, just like this for a moment, until I get through. Now I'm going to ask the No. 3 man to be serious. I want him to really think of his card."
Look at him intently.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to try to SELL this trick to you, exactly the same way a salesman would sell something to a business man. Remember, this gentleman shuffled the cards as much as he wished. He took some cards from the middle--he looked at one of the cards--and put them back. I have had no chance to manipulate the cards--my back was turned--and you must realize without my telling you that there was NO possibility of sleight-of-hand in any way whatsoever. If it ISN'T sleight-of-hand, it must be something else. I'm going to ask the gentleman to think of his card. You're thinking of a red card... you're thinking of a heart..."
Put your hand up to your forehead and look at one spot, as if you were thinking intently, and repeat:
"You're thinking of a heart, sir, and it's... the s--, the s--, the seven spot of hearts."
NOTE:--Now you see how simple this is to do, but the preparation and the salesmanship of it are what get me the engagements that I told you about. You can sell it as good as I can, so go to it!
Now I'm going to present a young man who perhaps none of you know personally, but he's the inventor of my favorite trick, "Charlie, the Wonder Snake." He's also the feller that does all my drawings and he made the drawings for this program tonight... I saw him do a trick at one of Dr. Calkins' Conventions in Springfield. He fooled me on it and it's a clever stunt for anybody who plays Clubs. I have asked him to show it to you boys... and not only show it... but tell you exactly how he presents it... with his patter. He's a PAL of mine... and now, Lionel, go out and show the boys how you did it in Springfield... Here he is, folks... come on, keed...
LIONEL WALKER OF SPRINGFIELD, MASS.