Twenty Years of Spoof and Bluff

by Carlton

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.”