6. BOOK TESTS
1st Method. A favorite stunt of mind readers is to read—by mental effort alone, apparently—a word selected at random from a book.
In its essence the trick rests upon the forcing of a certain page and word on that page, and any force that can be made to appear to be a genuine choice can be used. For example, the number of the page can be forced by the method given in the prediction trick (4) explained above. Suppose that by this method you have forced the number 38. Announce that this number is to designate the page in the book which is being used, and that the total of the two digits will designate the number of the word from the top of the page. Thus the person who holds the book is to look at the eleventh word on the thirty-eighth page. This word you have memorized so that you can either write the word on a slip of paper, seal it in an envelope, and give it out to be held before the number of the page is arrived at (presenting the trick as a prediction) or, after the spectator has found the word in the book, proceed to read his mind in the usual way.
2d Method. Again, you can arrange a pack of cards in such a way that any two cards, taken together, will have a total value of 14 or 15. Count Jacks 11, Queens 12, and Kings 13. For example, the cards may run: 4, J, 3, Q, 2, K, A, K, 2, Q, 3, J, 4, 10, 5, and so on. When the arrangement is completed, there will be two Aces left over; these may be removed from the pack entirely or simply left in the card case when the pack is removed. The cards can then be cut any number of times with complete cuts, and any two cards removed from it together will total 14 or 15. Beforehand you memorize the fifth word on the fourteenth page and the sixth word on the fifteenth page of the book you will use.
Hand the book to a spectator; then introduce the arranged deck, make a false shuffle, and have the pack cut as often as is desired by another spectator. Invite him to remove any two cards together from any part of the pack, retire to a distance from you, add the values of the two cards, find the corresponding page in the book, add the two digits of the number, and find the corresponding word (counting from the first word at the top of the page). You have merely to note whether he is looking at the right or the left page, the right-hand page will always be the fifteenth and the left-hand page the fourteenth.
3d Method. In this procedure a chosen card is pushed by a spectator into a book at random. The first sentence at the top of the page thus selected is correctly visualized and written down by the performer.
Take a card—for instance, the Seven of Diamonds—open the book, which must be a rather thick one; memorize the first line on the top of the righthand page; insert the card and, in closing the book, allow it to protrude about half an inch. Set the book on your table with the protruding card to the rear, and put a rubber band around it. Begin by forcing a duplicate of the Seven of Diamonds—the Hindu shuffle force described in Chapter XVII on playing cards is a good one to use—and invite the spectator to push the card into the book which you present to him with the duplicate card already in it protruding toward yourself. Push his card in to the same extent as the other card; replace the rubber band; and, as you return to your table, turn the book round and push the spectator’s card right in, flush with the edges of the leaves.
Pretend to read through the closed book with great mental strain, and write on a slate the sentence you memorized. Place this on your table, with the writing away from the spectators. Invite the person who chose the card to come forwards. Under his close inspection move the rubber band and open the book at the place indicated by the protruding card, which he identifies as the card he himself pushed in. Ask him to read the first sentence on the righthand page aloud; then turn the slate and also read aloud the words you have written. They correspond exactly, of course. It is not safe to let the spectator handle the book himself, for the duplicate card might drop out.
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