“That looks like genuine thought-reading,” Will was compelled to admit, thinking it over in his own mind; “but perhaps he forces his cards. One knows conjurers can do such wonderful things in the way of forcing.”
Instantly the Seer turned upon him with an air of injured innocence. “If you think there’s any conjuring about this performance,” he exclaimed, with much dignity, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet two, “you can offer them yourself, and allow each lady and gentleman in the room to pick as they choose for themselves among them. I’ll take each card, blindfold, as fast as they pick, hold it up behind my back, with my hands tied, without seeing it myself, and read off for you what it is by direct thought-transference.”
Will accepted the test—a fairly severe one; and, sure enough, the Seer was right. Carefully blindfolded with one of those moulded wraps, invented for the purpose, which prevent all possibility of looking down through the chinks, he yet took each card behind his back in one hand, held it up before their eyes without moving his head, and gave out its name distinctly and instantly. The audience was impressed. There was a touch of magic in it. But the Seer smiled blandly.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives—which, after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a gracefully deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a great deal more remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or gentleman will please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything you like, in English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper. Then fold it up, so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down and fastened. After that, as this experiment requires very great concentration of thought”—he knitted his brows, and assumed an expression of the intensest internal effort—“with Mrs Palmer’s kind leave, we will turn out the electric light, which confuses and distracts one by revealing to the eye so many surrounding visible objects. And then, without breaking the envelopes in which you have enclosed the pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the dark, what each of you has written.”