I was never more
astonished in my life. It seemed to me it was the cue was doing it.
Minus Twenty was even more astonished. I heard him as I passed:
"Who handicapped this man?" he asked.
"I did," said the pleasant-spoken youngster.
"Oh," said Minus Twenty--"friend of yours, I presume?"
There are evenings that seem to belong to you. We finished that two
hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of an hour. I explained
to Minus Twenty--he was plus sixty-three at the end--that my play
that night had been exceptional. He said that he had heard of cases
similar. I left him talking volubly to the committee. He was not a
nice man at all.
After that I did not care to win; and that of course was fatal. The
less I tried, the more impossible it seemed for me to do wrong. I
was left in at the last with a man from another hotel. But for that
I am convinced I should have carried off the handicap. Our hotel
didn't, anyhow, want the other hotel to win. So they gathered round
me, and offered me sound advice, and begged me to be careful; with
the natural result that I went back to my usual form quite suddenly.
Never before or since have I played as I played that week. But it
showed me what I could do. I shall get a new table, with proper
pockets this time. There is something wrong about our pockets. The
balls go into them and then come out again. You would think they had
seen something there to frighten them.
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