Say you have a friend, or friends, dining with you. You lead the conversation round gradually to the subject of telepathy, mentioning incidentally that you yourself possess certain gifts in that direction.
Probably your statement will be received with polite incredulity; whereupon, pretending to get huffed, you take a pack of cards, spread them out on the table face uppermost, and invite any one of your guests to select any card he pleases.
He picks out, we will say, the three of hearts. Then you say to him: “Now I have a friend living at Hampstead (or wherever the place may be) who is telepathically en rapport with me. If you will keep perfectly still for a minute or so, I will try and place myself in communication with him, and let him know by means of telepathy which card you have chosen.”
You then bury your head in your arms on the table, pretending to be thinking deeply for a short while; then presently you look up with an air of relief, heave a deep sigh of satisfaction, ejaculate “Sakabona! I’ve got him!” or some similar phrase, and tell your friend to go to your telephone, and ring up a certain number, which you give him.
You then tell him to ask for “Charlie,” which, you explain, is your friend’s name, and say to him, “What card have I chosen?”
Wonderingly, and not a little sceptical, your friend does as he is bid. But his scepticism vanishes when the correct answer comes back over the ’phone.
“What card have I chosen?” he asks. And almost instantly the answer comes back: “The three of hearts.”
Now for the explanation of this very puzzling trick; puzzling, that is to say, to the uninitiated.
Like most other tricks of the kind, it is very simple, once you know how it is done.
There is, of course, no telepathy about it. The real fact of the matter is that the “spoof” is worked by means of a code previously arranged between yourself and your friend at the other end of the wire. On the wall near his telephone-box is a card made out as follows:—