Easy card Tricks for Beginners - Cheating the Maid

For this amusing trick you arrange the cards thus: Holding the pack in your hands, find all the knaves, place one of them next to your left hand, and the other three on the table. Then find a queen, which also place on the table. Then say:—“Three scamps went into a tavern, and ordered drink. Here they are—the three knaves. ‘Who’s to pay? I can’t,’ said the first. ‘I won’t,’ said the second. ‘I wish she may get it,’ said the third. ‘I’ll manage it,’ said the first, the greatest rogue of the three. ‘I say, my pretty girl, haven’t you some very old wine in your cellar?’ Here’s the barmaid thus addressed by the rogue in question (showing the queen), and she replied:—‘Oh, yes, sir, prime old wine.’ ‘Let’s have a bottle.’ Off went the barmaid. (Put the queen in your pocket.) ‘Now for it, my lads,’ said the knave in question; ’”run" is the word. Let’s be off in opposite directions, and meet to-night; you know where.’ Hereupon they decamped, taking opposite directions, which I will indicate by placing one on the top of the pack, one at the bottom, and the other in the middle.

"When the poor barmaid returned (taking out the queen from your pocket) with the wine, great was her astonishment to find the room empty. ‘Lor!’ she exclaimed, ‘why, I do declare—did you ever!—Oh! but I’m not agoing to be sarved so. I’ll catch the rogues, all of them—that I will.’ And off she went after them, as shown by placing her on or after the first.

"Now, to catch the three seems impossible; but the ladies have always smiled at impossibilities, and wonders never cease; for, if you have the goodness to cut these cards, you will find that she has caught the three rogues." When the cards are cut, proceed in the usual way after cutting; and taking up the cards, you will find the queen and three knaves together, which you take out and exhibit to the astonished audience. One of these knaves is not one of the three first exhibited, but the one which you slipped on your left hand at first. There is no chance of detection, however; simply for the reason before given—nobody suspects the trick.

Excerpt from the book: Three Hundred Things A Bright Boy Can Do
BY MANY HANDS - FULLY ILLUSTRATED
LONDON - SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO., LTD. 1914