It is desirable when placing the mat upon the table for use to see that the mouth of the pocket is duly open and has not been, by any accident, pressed flat, and so closed.
The utility of the black art mat, however, does not depend upon the pocket only. Its unbroken or “plain” side, or indeed a mat wholly without pockets may also be very effectively used for vanishing purposes. In this case a little auxiliary appliance comes into play. This is a small velvet patch, serving as an “overlay.” It may be round or square, according to the purpose for which it is intended to be used. For coin-vanishing purposes it is best circular, and about two inches (or less, as the case may be) in diameter. The foundation is in this case a disc of thin card covered on both sides with velvet, in colour and texture exactly corresponding with that of the mat, under which conditions the patch, when laid on the mat, will be invisible. The exact similarity of the two surfaces is a point of the highest importance for black art effects, and the velvet used, if not actually silk velvet, should at least be of the silk-faced kind. Velvet which is all cotton will never give satisfactory results.
If a coin be laid on any part of the mat the performer has only (in the supposed act of picking it up) to lay the velvet patch over it to render it invisible. If it is desired to reproduce the coin, a handkerchief shown to be empty, may be laid over the patch, and a moment or two later picked up again, bringing away the overlay within it, and again revealing the coin in statu quo. A practical example of the use of this device will be found in the case of the trick entitled Lost and Found, post.
Fig. 10
Another little device which will be found useful in connection with the black art mat is a cardboard disc covered as above, to one side of which a coin, say a half-crown or half-dollar, is cemented as in Fig. 10. Such a patch, laid on the mat, coin side down, will attract no notice, but the mere act of turning it over will at any given moment produce the coin. The “change” of a coin may be expected very neatly by the aid of this device. Suppose, for example, that the performer desires to retain, unknown to the spectators, possession of a marked coin just handed to him. He lays it, to all appearance, in full view upon the table, but as a matter of fact merely turns over a patch, loaded as above, already on the table, the borrowed coin remaining in his hand.
The velvet patch may also be utilised in another way for “changing” a borrowed coin. The performer, asking the loan of a marked coin, brings forward held in his left hand a velvet mat (of small size) whereon to receive it; the right hand meanwhile holding palmed against the second and third fingers the velvet patch, and between this and the hand a substitute coin of similar kind. Turning (to the left) towards his table, with the coin in full view on the mat, he (apparently) picks it up and holds it aloft with the right hand, placing the now empty mat alone on the table. What he really does is to lay the velvet patch over the borrowed coin and to pick the substitute in its place. The original lies perdu on the mat, whence it is child’s play to gain possession of it at any later stage of the trick.
The process may be varied by placing the mat, after receiving the borrowed coin upon it, at once on the table, and a little later picking up the mat with the left hand, then proceeding as above indicated. The advantage of this plan is that the turn to the table to pick up the mat masks for the moment the right side of the performer and gives him a convenient opportunity to palm the coin and patch, bestowed in readiness in the pochette on that side.
The same principle may be applied with appropriate modifications to card tricks. The idea of the black art mat is so completely a novelty that I have not found leisure to give it the full consideration it deserves, and have probably far from exhausted its possibilities, but I offer by way of illustration the trick next following, which it seems to me would be rather effective, particularly as an introduction to some other card trick. We will call it