As for the fruit, the coin is placed in it beforehand, or introduced by means of the coin knife.
Performance.—The marked coin is passed to your agent, who pushes it into a fruit by a cut made in it while you are letting a duplicate fruit be examined. The prepared one is buried in seed in the vase which is brought in upon the stage. The second fruit is put into the disappearing box and made away with. A touch to the spring releasing the trap of the vase makes all the seed run off, and the fruit containing the coin is triumphantly opened.
THE DIE AND DOVE TRICK.
You have the double die described in The Secret Out, composed of a hollow tin case, painted like a die, and a die in solid wood.
You hold up a borrowed hat and say that you will visibly pass that die (both being as one) into the hat. Upon the crown you leave the cover and the solid cube you put inside the hat—or you say—“Now you see this die, and now you do not see it!” and pass it down on the secret shelf behind your table. Or, again, you exchange it for a hollow die holding a live bird, and opening with a sliding side.
Fig. 15.
You place this die on a plate, and, in covering it, and turning it over, open the slide, so as to have the now open face down on the plate.
You have a small cage containing another bird, on which you set a handkerchief, in the centre of which is sewn a square plate of metal of the size of a cage, at top. Your table trap takes in the cage, and you hold the handkerchief by the square plate at the proper distance from the table, so that the way the folds fall from its edge will resemble their draping the cage.
Now, say—“I shall make that die pass into the hat and this bird take its place!”