There isn’t much to this convincing mystery, but I can assure you that a revelation of a thought of and pocketed card while everything remains with the spectator will put plenty of people back on their heels. Individual performers will make use of the principle in various ways according to their temperament. So far I merely use it straight, getting the correct answer apparently directly from the mind.
The deck is handed a volunteer who stands with back to audience and facing performer. He is told to slowly and deliberately fan through the cards looking at the face of each one passing by. At any time he sees a card which he likes, he is to remove that one and pocket it. Then he is told to lay the deck aside. During this the performer has been standing up stage at anywhere from ten to thirty feet away. Yet he gets the card !
In explaining what spectator is to do, the performer holds the deck before himself, but turned so that in fanning the faces will be towards the audience. As he tells the spectator to take out a card he likes, the performer pulls any card half way up by grasping it at the top edge with thumb and finger. This serves to plant a method of procedure in the spectator’s mind.
The deck is a very strong one-way back deck. The five and ten cent stores carry a great variety of fancy backed cards, many of these terrific one-way backs and not suitable for that purpose in any other feat except this. The deck is stacked throughout. Personally I use the Nikola System, but any arrangement by which you know the name of the card at any position from 1 to 52 is all right. After the arrangement, the backs are turned so that they are in groups of five up, five down, five up, etc. With the spectator standing as described, the audience does not get a chance to see the backs, but you do. The person starts to run slowly through the deck. On the first group you say to yourself “O”. As he goes into the second group say “5”. On the third group say “10”. Then he pulls a card from a group. It is not trick at all to see if it is the first, second, third, fourth or last of that bunch. You merely add that position to the number given that group and you have the number at which card lies in deck. Thus you know the card and have come about as close as possible to actually reading a mind. It makes an excellent opening item for a card routine, but it looks so impossible that it’s hard to follow. I generally switch into the stunt as a winder-upper and let them worry a while.
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