But I wasn’t having any. Or at least I pretended I wasn’t. When I did at length yield to their repeated entreaties, I won a sovereign, and declined to bet any more. Thereupon they began to get nasty; so, thinking the thing had gone far enough, I said: “Look here, boys, you took me for a pie-can. Well, I’m not. But I’m a sport. I don’t want your money. Here’s your quid back, and here’s another to get drinks with.”
Then, picking up the cards, I remarked quite casually: “Let me show you how we work the three-card trick down where I come from.”
So saying I took out three cards, including the Queen of Spades, and throwing them down on their faces, I invited them to pick out the “lady.”
One of them selected a card. It was the wrong one. Then another of the gang chose another. It also was not the “lady.” Then I myself turned up the remaining card. And that also was not the “lady.” There was no Queen there. I had palmed it, and substituted a plain card for it.
The sharpers gazed at me in blank amazement. Bunny, in his corner, rolled in his seat, and screamed with laughter.
Then, when he had recovered his breath, he said: “Don’t you know who it is? Why you were all with me last night at the Empire, and saw him on the stage there. It’s Carlton, the world’s premier card-manipulator.”
And he went off into another fit of laughter.
But “the boys” didn’t laugh. They had wasted the journey, to say nothing of their fare money. And the language they used to Bunny was quite unprintable.
Of course none of them had recognised me without my stage make-up.
I don’t know why it should be so, but it is a fact that we professionals are exceedingly prone to play larks on one another. A new-comer in the profession is especially likely to find himself made a butt of. It is good-natured chaff, and if he takes it in good part—well. If not, why so much the worse for him.