To “have” the average man on “a little bit of string” is quite easy, and some of the simplest “gags” I have found the most effective. For instance, you ask a man if he is good at mental arithmetic. The probability is he says that he is. You then ask him two or three exceedingly easy questions, such as, for example, what is twice seven, how many times does six go into eighteen, and so on. Then you say, “How many penny buns make a dozen,” followed, when he has answered it correctly, by the catch question, “How many half-penny ones?” He is practically certain to answer on the spur of the moment, “Twenty-four.”
Here is another equally simple catch. You take a piece of white paper, tell a man to place his forefinger on it, and offer to bet him you can draw a ring round it with a piece of lead pencil that he can’t lift his finger out of. You then draw a small ring on the paper round the tip of the finger, and ask him to lift his finger out of it. Of course he does so quite easily. You repeat this once or twice; then you draw your ring round the forefinger itself.
Or you get a man to put an easily fitting ring on his little finger, then join the tip of your little finger to the tip of his, and ask him if he thinks it possible for you to remove the ring from his finger without moving yours. He will almost certainly pronounce the feat an impossible one, when all you have to do is to slip the ring off his little finger and on to yours, and the trick is done. The ring is no longer on his finger. It is on yours. And the connection between the two fingers, yours and his, has not been severed for an instant. Then you say: “And now do you think it is possible for me to take the ring off _both_ our fingers without severing the connection.” He is sure to say, “No.” Whereupon you just lift the ring so that it does not touch either, and the trick is done.
These little “spoofs” sound very simple after they are explained, but all the same I have “had” some of the smartest men for “drinks round” with them. Once, too, in Denver, I recollect a professional gambler rather got on my nerves by bragging about the amount of money he carried about with him.
“Look here,” I said suddenly, withdrawing my closed fist from my trousers pocket, “I’ll bet you five dollars I’ve got more money in my hand than you have.”