A COIN TO DISAPPEAR FROM YOUR CHEEK AND REAPPEAR AT YOUR ELBOW
While sitting at the table turn up your right sleeve, and, taking a half-crown or penny, rub it against your cheek, and then, as if by accident, drop it on the table. Pick up the coin and repeat the process, this time resting your elbow on the table, as you explain, to steady it. Move your hand from your cheek, and the coin has disappeared, and with your left hand produce it from your elbow. Then say, “I will reverse the experiment and send the coin back.” Place your empty hand against your face and your left hand containing the coin under your elbow. After rubbing your face and chin, show the coin again in your right hand and your left hand empty. You require two coins for this trick, one palmed in your left hand. When you rub the coin against your face the second time, drop it inside your collar and produce the palmed coin from your elbow. When you “reverse the experiment,” take the coin from your collar as you are rubbing your face and chin and drop the other coin from your left hand into your handkerchief spread over your knees.
TWO VANISHED HALF-CROWNS
This trick requires considerable practice, but is a very effective one. Take the two coins in your right hand, and throw them repeatedly, one at a time, into the other hand until the audience begin to think it is a “sell.” Then, offering your left hand (in which the coins are supposed to be) to some one, say: “Well, you try to do it.” Open your hand, and the coins have disappeared.
Explanation.—The last time you throw only one half-crown, and instead of throwing the second, bring the right hand down quickly, and at the same time jerk the coin in your left hand upwards into your right, and it will strike the coin retained there. The clink will be heard, and by closing your left hand quickly you will lead the company to suppose both coins are in that hand. Half-crowns are the best coins for the trick owing to their weight.
A DIVINATION
Request a member of the company (seated) to place a shilling or florin upon each knee, and cover them with his hands with his fingers stretched out. You then tell him, when you turn your back, to raise one of the coins and tap his head with it twelve times just above his ear; then replace it on his knee and cover it with his hands as before; and you will tell him, on examining the coins, which one he raised.
The examination of the coins has really nothing to do with the trick. All you have to do is to look at the person’s hands; the blood leaves the hand that has been raised, and 34 when it is again placed beside the other the difference in colour is most perceptible.
I have performed this trick hundreds of times in drawing-rooms, and it has never been detected, but created great surprise.