the
other ten, he still wins from Loud Mouth.”
“Even I can follow that. So it leaves the
fourth man nine months, and the fifth man eight months, and the sixth man seven
months. But—”
“Now according to the Law of
Probabilities in my school book, and don’t ask me who made it or why it
works that way, to find the odds against all those things happening
in succession, you don’t add them up, you have to multiply them. Like
this:”
He had written:
“Don’t forget that eight-fifteen
curtain,” Hilda said.
“It’s not so hard as all that.”
He made a few quick cross-cancellations to
simplify the problem, did a little rapid arithmetic, and ended up
with:
385 1728
“That’s fine,” she said. “But
how does it give you the odds?”
“It means that theoretically, out of any
1728 batches of six people, there should only be 385 batches in which two
of ‘em weren’t born in the same month—meaning where Loud Mouth would
lose his bet. 385 from 1728 leaves 1343. So the odds are 1343 to
385, which——”
The Saint made another swift calculation, and
whistled.
“It comes out at almost three-and-a-half
to one,” he con cluded. “And everybody thought Loud Mouth
was nuts to be offering two to one—only a bit more than half the
honest odds! A fellow could make a career out of being so crazy!”
Her face fell for a moment, in transparent
anxiety, before she forced herself to suppress the thought.
“Well, after all, it’s not so different
from the kind of statistics that insurance companies worry about, is it?
Papa probably knows the correct way to work it out, just like you did.”
“I hope so,” said the Saint; but
for the rest of the evening only the superficial part of his attention was
completely avail able to the conversation, the entertainment, or even the notable
charms of his companion.
Now that he had belatedly been obliged to
think seriously about it, his fateful instinct for chicanery and the fast
double- shuffle could recognize the loud and unlovable gamecock of the
Interplanetary Hotel’s Spaceship Room as a probable charter member of an
ancient fraternity, with a new angle. But the most interesting novelty was
not the switch from the stereotyped con man’s beguiling suaveness to Mr.
Way’s crude art of alienation, but the upper-class mathematics on which the
nasty little man had based his act. This was an artifice that Simon
Templar had never met before, and he seriously wondered if it might not
prove too tricky even for him.
He had even graver doubts when he saw the
obnoxious operator again the next day. Wandering up to the Futuramic Terrace in
search of a long cooling potion after a couple of hours of swimming and
sunning himself on the beach, he spotted the little man sitting at one of the
tables by the pool, unselfconsciously exposing as much of his bulbously misproportioned physique as could not be contained in a pair of
garishly flowered Hawaiian shorts, and holding forth to a pimpled and
sulky-mouthed young man and two tough- looking middle-aged women with the
unmistakable air of dames who had never yet lost an elbowing contest at a bar gain
counter.
The table, like all others on the terrace,
sported a cloth patterned in red, white, and blue stripes about three
inches wide; and Mr. Way was flipping cigarettes a foot or two into the air so
that they fell on it at various random angles.
“In Pakistan, where it’s practically the
national game, they call it Tiger Toss—from the board they play on, which has black and yellow stripes. And they use carved ivory sticks in stead of
cigarettes. But the measurements are relatively just the same: the sticks
are exactly as long as the stripes are wide. Like on this
cloth, the stripes happen to be just as wide as one of these
cigarettes is long. See?”
He demonstrated.
“Then you toss a stick, or a cigarette,
onto the board, or the cloth, and see how it lands. It has to spin in the air
and turn over so there’s
other ten, he still wins from Loud Mouth.”
“Even I can follow that. So it leaves the
fourth man nine months, and the fifth man eight months, and the sixth man seven
months. But—”
“Now according to the Law of
Probabilities in my school book, and don’t ask me who made it or why it
works that way, to find the odds against all those things happening
in succession, you don’t add them up, you have to multiply them. Like
this:”
He had written:
“Don’t forget that eight-fifteen
curtain,” Hilda said.
“It’s not so hard as all that.”
He made a few quick cross-cancellations to
simplify the problem, did a little rapid arithmetic, and ended up
with:
385 1728
“That’s fine,” she said. “But
how does it give you the odds?”
“It means that theoretically, out of any
1728 batches of six people, there should only be 385 batches in which two
of ‘em weren’t born in the same month—meaning where Loud Mouth would
lose his bet. 385 from 1728 leaves 1343. So the odds are 1343 to
385, which——”
The Saint made another swift calculation, and
whistled.
“It comes out at almost three-and-a-half
to one,” he con cluded. “And everybody thought Loud Mouth
was nuts to be offering two to one—only a bit more than half the
honest odds! A fellow could make a career out of being so crazy!”
Her face fell for a moment, in transparent
anxiety, before she forced herself to suppress the thought.
“Well, after all, it’s not so different
from the kind of statistics that insurance companies worry about, is it?
Papa probably knows the correct way to work it out, just like you did.”
“I hope so,” said the Saint; but
for the rest of the evening only the superficial part of his attention was
completely avail able to the conversation, the entertainment, or even the notable
charms of his companion.
Now that he had belatedly been obliged to
think seriously about it, his fateful instinct for chicanery and the fast
double- shuffle could recognize the loud and unlovable gamecock of the
Interplanetary Hotel’s Spaceship Room as a probable charter member of an
ancient fraternity, with a new angle. But the most interesting novelty was
not the switch from the stereotyped con man’s beguiling suaveness to Mr.
Way’s crude art of alienation, but the upper-class mathematics on which the
nasty little man had based his act. This was an artifice that Simon
Templar had never met before, and he seriously wondered if it might not
prove too tricky even for him.
He had even graver doubts when he saw the
obnoxious operator again the next day. Wandering up to the Futuramic Terrace in
search of a long cooling potion after a couple of hours of swimming and
sunning himself on the beach, he spotted the little man sitting at one of the
tables by the pool, unselfconsciously exposing as much of his bulbously misproportioned physique as could not be contained in a pair of
garishly flowered Hawaiian shorts, and holding forth to a pimpled and
sulky-mouthed young man and two tough- looking middle-aged women with the
unmistakable air of dames who had never yet lost an elbowing contest at a bar gain
counter.
The table, like all others on the terrace,
sported a cloth patterned in red, white, and blue stripes about three
inches wide; and Mr. Way was flipping cigarettes a foot or two into the air so
that they fell on it at various random angles.
“In Pakistan, where it’s practically the
national game, they call it Tiger Toss—from the board they play on, which has black and yellow stripes. And they use carved ivory sticks in stead of
cigarettes. But the measurements are relatively just the same: the sticks
are exactly as long as the stripes are wide. Like on this
cloth, the stripes happen to be just as wide as one of these
cigarettes is long. See?”
He demonstrated.
“Then you toss a stick, or a cigarette,
onto the board, or the cloth, and see how it lands. It has to spin in the air
and turn over so there’s
Similar Books
