Sherlock Holmes shook his head slowly. “I suppose not,” said he.
11
Norman’s automaton had finished breaking up the stones and resurfacing the shopkeeper’s backyard. Now he smacked the dust from his duro-flesh palms and returned to the kitchenette to brew up some tea for his living double. Norman watched his approach through the grimy rear window. He was doing very well now, he thought. There were no more signs of violent temperament now that his circuitry had been appropriately readjusted. He would give the creation a couple of days to redecorate the premises then, if all seemed sound, get him back on shop work. Although things had got off to a poor start, Norman was certain that the future looked promising, and that he would soon be able to dedicate all his time to his greatest project yet.
The scientific shopkeeper grinned lop-sidedly and struck up a bit more whistling. He sought about on his shelves for a chocolate bar which was still in date to munch upon. Through the open shop-doorway he spied another whistler. Jim Pooley was striding by at a jaunty pace en route to Bob the bookie. Here Jim would lay on one of the most extraordinary and ill-conceived Super-Yankee accumulators ever recorded in the annals of bookmaking history.
Norman gave up his futile search, made a mental observation that when the great day dawned and all his wares were computer-coded he would have no need to bother with such trifles as actually ordering new stock, and repaired to the kitchenette for a cuppa.
Jim Pooley pushed open Bob’s armoured-glass door and entered the betting shop. As is well known, to any follower of the sport of kings, the interior of such establishments vary by but the merest detail, be they based upon some busy thoroughfare in John O’Groats or down a back alley in Penge. The betting shop is always instantly recognizable to be the thing of beauty that it is: the grey, fag-scarred linoleum floor, and the ticker-tape welcome of slip stubs; the heavily-barred counter, twelve-inch black and white tellies; the rarely- scrubbed blackboards, displaying hieroglyphics that even the now legendary Champollion would find himself hard- pressed to decipher.
Jim squinted through the blue fog of Havana cigar smoke towards its source. Behind the portcullis, pulling upon his torpedo, sat Bob the bookie.
“In for another hiding?” the millionaire enquired.
Jim smiled and waggled his betting-slip. “Today is the day,” quoth he.
Bob stifled a yawn and rubbed a newly-purchased diamond ring upon the lapel of his smoking- jacket. The Koh-i-Noor glittered flawlessly in its setting as Jim slid his slip beneath the titanium security bars of the counter fortress. Bob held the crumpled thing at arm’s length and examined it with passing interest. “I have a new pocket calculator,” he told Pooley.
“Personalized for you by Cartiers of Paris, no doubt,” said Jim. “Wrought in platinum and fashioned into the likeness of a golden calf. Your initials in jade?”
“Something of the sort.”
“I have no wish to see it, but should it give you some small pleasure, I suppose I owe it to you. Times are, I see, as ever against you.”
“It is a hard life.”
“Oh, is it now? To tell you the truth, spending so much of my time, as I do, in the sensual pleasures of unashamed luxury, I rarely have time to notice.”
“It is electric,” Bob continued, “solar-powered in fact. It will work for a thousand years without maintenance.”
“Handy,” said Jim.
“But nevertheless useless.”
“Oh dear, and why might that be?”
“Well, for all the wondrous ingenuity of its creators, the lads have overlooked one small detail, and have denied it the facility to calculate any sum greater than nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds.”
“The fools,” said Jim.
“My sentiments entirely. Now should your selection,” he waved Pooley’s betting-slip sadly before him, “come up at the predicted odds, I feel that my calculator will find itself many zeros below the mark.”
“Don’t worry,” said Pooley sympathetically, “I have already worked it out in my head. I’ll have just the pound on it please, Bob.”
“As you wish, and shall you pay the tax?”
“Oh yes, I have no wish to upset the country’s economy. Such is not fair to the Government.”
“As you will then.” Bob pushed Pooley’s slip into the machine, and Jim passed him the exact amount in pennies and halfpennies. “I’ll be back around five to settle up,” said he.
Bob nodded and tinkered with his watch. “Video roulette,” he said. “The latest thing from Lateinos and Romiith.”
“A pox on those two lads,” said Pooley. “And good-day.”
Jim folded his betting-slip into his breast-pocket, left the fog-bound bookie, and strolled off along the Ealing Road. He had not gone but fifty yards when he found himself confronted by a most extraordinary little scene. A group of onlookers was gathered in a tight knot about the pavement doors of the Swan’s cellar. Pooley craned his head above the assembled throng and was more than a little surprised at what he saw.
Somehow, inexplicably jammed into the four-foot opening, was Neville the part-time barman.
“Someone get me out,” wailed this man, his voice soaring in pitch and volume above that of the rumbling spectators. “By the gods somebody, please!”
Pooley rubbed at his eyes. This was an impossibility surely? Thin man trapped in fat opening; such things could not be reasonably expected to occur. But strange as strange, here they were doing that very thing. Neville spied out Pooley’s face bobbing amongst the sea of others. “Jim,” he shouted. “Help me out will you?”
Pooley hastened to oblige. “Stand back now, ladies and gents,” he said. “Give the man some air now, please.”
“On your bike, Pooley,” said Old Pete, who had a particularly good place near the front. “We’re not going to miss any of this.”
“Be fair,” Jim pleaded. “You can see he’s in a bad way, give the lad a break.”
“How do you suppose it’s done, then?” said Old Pete. “Mirrors, do you think?”
Pooley shook his head. “I’ve really no idea, might it be what they call a shared vision? I’ve read of such things.”
“Possibly that. When I was in the East, a lad in the regiment took us to see the Indian rope trick. We saw the whole thing. Magician throws up a rope, it hangs in the air, he climbs up then vanishes, then he climbs down, the whole thing.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, well a bloke with us took pictures and when we got them back, what did they show?”
“Tell me.”
“They showed a mendicant standing beside a coil of rope. Every picture the same. Now what lied, the camera’s eye, or our own?”
Neville, whose face had deepened in colour by several shades during the course of this fascinating conversation, let out a great and terrible scream.
“Keep it down, Neville,” said Old Pete. “Can’t you see we are trying to apply ourselves to the situation.”
