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The requirements for this trick consist of two complete packs of cards and an extra card, which we will suppose to be the knave of diamonds. One of the two packs, which we will call A, has on top a card made adhesive at the back as above described, and its own knave of diamonds at the bottom. The other pack, B, is wholly unprepared.

The first step is to offer pack B to be shuffled, and when it is returned to palm on to it the spare knave of diamonds, after which the pack is left temporarily for the time being in view on the table. The next step is to pick up pack A, and force from it the knave of diamonds, receiving it back on top of the prepared card, passed to the middle of the pack for its reception. Squaring up the pack and applying the necessary pressure, the performer offers it to be shuffled, meanwhile delivering himself to something like the following effect.

“Before going further, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to remember exactly what has been done. A card has been chosen from this pack. It has been put back again, the cards have been shuffled, and you can all bear witness that I have not touched them since. Nobody knows, except the lady who chose it, what card she chose. Whereabouts in the pack it may be at this moment not one of us knows, even the lady herself. I can assure you truthfully that I don’t, but I propose, by force of magic, to compel that card, whatever it may be, to leave that pack altogether, and pass into the other one. Nay, more than that, I shall compel it to place itself at any number in that pack you like to name. What shall we say? Seventh? Good.

“Now please bear in mind that that pack, like the other, has just been shuffled, and that I have not touched it since. It is therefore manifestly impossible that I should know the position of any card in it. Of course, as there is already a knave of diamonds in the pack, it is just possible, though scarcely likely, that that card may have been shuffled into the seventh place. We will see.”

He counts off cards from the top of the pack on to the table, faces down, not exposing any card till he comes to the seventh, which he holds up so that all may see it. “Now, Madam, is that your card? I don’t want to know the name of it yet. It is not your card? I did not suppose it was, for the chances were over fifty to one against it, but you never can tell!”

He gathers up the cards counted off, and without disturbing their order, replaces them on the top of the pack, thereby bringing the original top card to the seventh place.

“Now please observe that I do not touch these cards again till the miracle has actually happened. I will now ask you, madam, to be good enough to name your card. The knave of diamonds, you say? That is all right. Had you taken the knave of clubs, I should have feared for the success of my experiment, for that knave always gives trouble, if he can; but the knave of diamonds is a very gentlemanly card, and I have no doubt that he will readily oblige. Now, Percy (perhaps you didn’t know his name was Percy), I want you to leave the pack you are in, and place yourself seventh in the other pack. Go at once, like a good boy. Start at the top, and go straight down. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven!

“I should think he has arrived by this time. Let us make sure first, though, whether he has really left the other pack.”

Picking up pack A, he counts the cards slowly, not looking at them himself, but showing the face of each before laying it on the table. “Stop me, please, if you see the knave of diamonds.” He counts, “one, two, three, four,” and so on to the end. “Fifty-one cards only! Then there is one card missing, and as you have not seen the knave of diamonds, and as all the other cards are here, it is plain that it is he who has left the pack. We have still to find out whether he has obeyed orders, and gone over to the other pack. You wished him to place himself seventh, I think. I won’t touch the cards myself. Will some gentleman come forward, and count them off for me?” (This is done.) “The seventh card is really the knave of diamonds, is it not?

“But, you may say, this might be the knave properly belonging to this pack. Please look through the pack, sir, and if there has been no deception you will find the proper knave in some other part of it. You have found the other knave? Then you will admit that that proves clearly that this first one is the identical card the lady drew.”[3]

It would be easy to give other combinations dependent on the use of the adhesive principle, but these may safely be left to the ingenuity of the reader. If the face, instead of the back, of a given card be treated with the adhesive, that card will itself disappear from the pack. By due adjustment two adhering cards may (the one slightly overlapping the other) be made to form a temporary long or wide card.

[3] A somewhat more elaborate trick of mine on the same principle (The Elusive Card) will be found described in the Magazine of Magic, Vol. II, pp. 13, 47.