For the benefit of the reader I may explain that the pack of cards I took from my pocket and spread out face downwards on the table was a trick pack, of the kind used by conjurors. Every one of the fifty-two cards comprising it was an ace of spades.
Also Fatty’s brother in London, who was of course well known to me, had previously been instructed by me to reply “ace of spades” in case he received a wire from anybody inquiring, “What card am I thinking of?” In fact I have quite a number of people all over England who have received similar instructions, for I frequently work this particular wheeze, but in a slightly different form, at conjuring entertainments at private houses.
I lost sight of Fatty soon after the occurrence narrated above, but I have been given to understand that he believes to this day that he became for a brief while, and under my influence, a genuine, first-class telepathist. Nor did the fact that all his further experiments in the same direction resulted in complete failure shake his confidence in the least. He attributed it to the fact that the people he selected to influence him did not possess a sufficiency of will power.
Another man who used to work for me, and whom we christened Talking Tommy, holds a similar opinion. We worked the spoof on him, too, and he went home, after having a few drinks at about three o’clock in the morning, and tried the experiment on his wife, who was in bed and asleep.
Waking her up, he said: “Get out of bed, dear; I’m a telepathist. I want you to hide this matchbox downstairs somewhere. Then I’ll blindfold myself, and you shall will me to find it.”
“But I don’t want to will; I want to go to sleep,” expostulated the poor lady.
“Just this once, darling,” pleaded Tommy. “There’s a fortune awaiting us if we succeed. I can see us working it on the Halls together at one hundred pounds a week. It all depends on whether or no you possess sufficient will power. Hide the box, then concentrate your whole attention on guiding me mentally to the place where you have hidden it.”
Thus adjured, the sleepy lady arose, and for the next half-hour she was wandering round the house in her bare feet, upstairs and downstairs, trying to will her blindfold husband to where the matchbox was. Of course she failed. Tommy fell over the coal-box, knocked two of his choice vases off the mantelpiece, but found no match-box. Then, in the end, he got wild, and told her it was all her fault, she hadn’t got as much will power as a she tabby cat.
Tommy was one of the most simple-minded men I ever came across. He had a lawn at home. It was almost as big as an ordinary billiard table, but Tommy was awfully proud of it. One year, however, the grass grew patchy. Tommy was quite upset about it, and used to bewail his ill luck to all and sundry.
“Oh,” said one of the dressers, “if that’s all, I can easily put things right for you”; and he went and mixed some permanganate of potash in a bottle, and told Tommy to take it home, dilute it with plenty of water, and sprinkle his lawn with the mixture at night before going to bed. “It’s the most wonderful fertiliser ever known,” concluded this champion liar, “and in the morning you’ll find your lawn a lovely velvety green all over.”