Leslie Charteris The Saint 34 The Saint to the Rescue

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.And the guywho's running the game who's got a concession from the rajah, of course shows'em how easy it is.'Look,' he says, 'even if a stick falls at right angles tothe pattern, there's still room for it inside a stripe.And the more it fallsat an angle, the more room there is.'" Mr.Way illustrated the fact with acigarette." 'Until if it was parallel with the stripes, there'd be room foreight or nine of 'em to lie in there side by side without touching thedividing line,' says this official gypper.But they never got me to play.No,sir." Mr.Way's insufferably malevolent stare swung around him like a scythe."Before I'd buy a tale about a philanthropic rajah, I'll be-lieve in abig-hearted Shylock."Without giving anybody time to draw a deep breath, he picked up anothercigarette and went on: "Right away, I can see how anybody with a grain ofsense would look at it.Either the stick gotta fall at right angles to thestripes like this or it doesn't.It's as simple as that.One or the other.Afifty-fifty chance.And once it falls like this, square across the stripe, ifit's only a hair off of dead center, see, it has to touch the line or crossover the next stripe.Now, there's so little chance it'll fall dead center,one in a million maybe you can forget it.So it still boils down to whetherit falls square or not.""Now wait a minute, smarty-pants," riposted one of the women, in an almostequally strident voice."If that's what you call using a grain of sense,saying it's fifty-fifty if it falls this way or two hundred other ways ""At least, there are ninety degrees in a right angle," cor-rected the poutyyoung man."So if you said eighty-nine other ""Are you ribbing me, trying to sound like those other be-nighted heathens?"snarled Mr.Way."Or if that's what you call your intelligent opinion, wouldyou back it up with any more than hot air?" Even from his attenuated costumehe was able to produce a wad of currency which he slammed on the table with avehemence that almost equaled a slap in the face."You want to bet even moneywith me? I'll say the cigarette touches the line, you can do the tossing, andwe'll see who comes out ahead.And I'll fade anyone else who wants to comein."Simon adroitly evaded the contentious bantam's challeng-ing eye, and driftedon to find himself a vacant table, where he asked a mildly befogged waiter fora Pimm's Cup, a pen-cil, and a piece of paper.When all these items werefinally delivered, he sipped the cold ambrosial drink and went so-berly towork with the other articles.By that time, a "Tiger Toss" school was in fulland audible session on the other side of the terrace, with Mr.Way theself-appointed banker daring all and sundry to prove themselves as ignorant asthe credulous Pakistanis.The techniques of bogus backgrounding, Machiavellian misdirection, and agadfly approach that could be relied on to make almost anyone but a lower-casesaint too furious to think straight, were the same as the night before.ButPage 39ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlthe specific probability problem, shorn of the artistic camouflage, Simon soonfound, would be unscientifically called a snorter.Since it is not the purpose of this story to double as a first primer ofhigher mathematics, which it may already have started to sound like, thereasoning by which the Saint solved this rather interesting equation must beomitted from the present text.To anyone who has not set at least one foot inthe mystic realm of trigonometry it would be meaningless.Those who havestudied such subjects, of course, may recog-nize it at once under the name ofBuffon's Problem.The Saint took much longer to wring the correct answer outof his rusty recollections, and when he had done it he had even more respectfor the perverse astuteness of Mr.Way.It was quite comforting to persuade himself that such comparatively small-timeimprobity was not worthy of his serious attention, and that the types who paidMr.Way for improving their education would not be mortally hurt by the fees;but this consolation was short-lived.Chronologically, it lasted about twominutes, until his reverie was cut short by Hilda Mason's voice beside him."Well, here's the man who knows his arithmetic."Simon turned and jumped up, grinning."I was starting to worry about you, not seeing you on the beach all morning.Iwas afraid I'd shown you one night club too many.""I did sleep a bit late.And then, Papa and I had a lot to talk aboutwhen I got up."George Mason was with her, in a gaily checkered terry-cloth robe that failedto obscure a certain haggardness in his amiably inflated presence."Like a dutiful daughter, she is understating the fact that I made a fool ofmyself last night," he said, lowering him-self into the next seat."After youleft me, I was inveigled into expressing my views on that birthday bet.Unfortunately, my reasoning seems to have been erroneous.Hilda has beentelling me how you worked it out, which I now remember is the propermethod but I'm afraid this is a little late.Somehow I managed to lose almosttwo hundred dollars to Mr.Way on various names chosen at random from Who'sWho and other directories.And then, somehow, we began playing this game ofTiger Toss, which I see he is still at."The girl glanced across the terrace, and down again to the scratch-pad onwhich Simon had been trying his creaky computations."Were you just working that one out?" she asked."Yes.And I have a headache which only another Pimm's will cure.""Tell us the answer.""I can do that, but don't ask me to explain it.It's a bit more complicatedthan the birthday deal.If you don't want to be bludgeoned with a lot ofdouble-talk about sine curves and spandrels, you'll have to take my word forit that the theoretical odds are almost exactly seven to four against thestick, or the cigarette, falling cleanly inside a stripe."There was the kind of silence which is tritely called preg-nant."And I was playing him for even money," Mason said som-berly."It honestlylooked like an even bet to me, because.Well, my stupid reasons aren'tvery important, are they? However, they cost me another hundred and fiftydol-lars.And by that time, I had imbibed a trifle more than I'm usedto enough, I fear, to make me somewhat reckless.When he offered to let mematch him for double or quits, in some simple variation he calls Monte CarloMatch, I was optimistic enough to accept.As a result, I may not be muchwiser, but I am some seven hundred dollars poorer.""And so," Hilda said, "this is our last day here."She was much too young to show the same gray deflation as her father, butyoung enough for an excessive brightness of eye to be betrayed by a slightunsteadiness of lip."Does it make all that difference?" Simon asked."It does to us.You see, we're not quite like the usual people who come tothese places.With a job like his, and a family to bring up, Papa could neverafford it.But he always promised me that when all the others were safely onPage 40ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmltheir own I'm the youngest and the time came for him to retire, we'd have onetremendous splurge and see what it felt like to be millionaires for a coupleof weeks.And I held him to it; although I've got a secretarial job now andI'll pay him back for my share eventually.I thought he should have it foronce in his life, before he settles down to scraping along on his pension.Butwe don't really belong here, and since this has happened we've got to besensible.""Don't feel sorry for me," said the older man defiantly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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