Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

You then continue, “I shall now take these sevens (you can see for yourselves that I have not removed them), and place them in different parts of the pack.” At the words, “You can see for yourselves,” etc., you take off the four top cards, and show them fanwise. In reality, three of them are eights, but the fourth and foremost card being actually a seven, and the eighth pip of each of the other cards being concealed by the card before it, and the audience having, as they imagine, already seen the same cards spread out fairly upon the table, there is nothing to suggest a doubt that they are actually the sevens. (You will now see the reason why it is necessary to place uppermost the seven of the same suit as the absent eight. If you had not done so the seven in question would have been of the same suit as one or other of the three sham sevens, and the audience, knowing that there could not be two sevens of the same suit, would at once see through the trick.) Again folding up the four cards you insert the top one a little above the bottom of the pack, the second a little higher, the third a little higher still, and the fourth (which is a genuine seven) upon the top of the pack. The four sevens, which are apparently so well distributed throughout the pack, are really together on the top, and you have only to make the pass, or, if you prefer it, simply cut the cards, to cause them to be found together in the centre of the pack.