Before Midnight

He turned back on his side. "For some reason," he said, "I feel like offering you a drink. You look a little like my son-in-law, that may be it. There's a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase that he gave me. Help yourself. I don't want any."

"Thanks, but I guess not Another time."

"As you please. About my being a fool, I was one once, twenty-six years ago, back in nineteen-twenty-nine. I had stacked up a couple of million dollars and it all went. Fifty million others were fools along with me, but that didn't help any. I decided I had had enough and got me a job selling adding machines, and never touched the market again. A few years ago my son-in-law made me quit work because he was doing very well as an architect, and that was all right, I was comfortable, but I always wanted something to do, and one day I saw the advertisement of this contest, and the first thing I knew I was in it up to my neck. I decided to make my daughter and son-in-law a very handsome present."

He coughed, and shut his eyes and breathed a little, then went on. "The point is that it's been twenty-six years since I made a fool of myself, and if you and those other fools only knew it, once was enough. There's only one thing you can tell me that I'm interested in, and that's this, what are they going to do about the contest? As it stands now it's a giveaway, and I'll fight it. That young woman, Susan Tescher--she lives here in New York and she's a researcher for Clock magazine. She's working on it right now--and here I am. I'll fight it."

"Fight it how?" I asked.

"That's the question." He passed his finger tips over his right cheek and then over his left one. "I haven't shaved today. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you one idea I had."

"Neither do I."

He had his eyes steady on me, and they didn't look so sick. "You strike me as a sensible young man."

"I am."

"It's just possible that Miss Tescher is a sensible young woman. If she tries to bull it through on the basis of what was agreed last night, after what has happened, she may end up by wishing she'd never heard of the damn contest. I think the rest of us might get together with her and suggest that we split it up five ways. The first five prizes total eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars, so that would make it one hundred and seventy-four thousand apiece. That ought to satisfy everybody, and I don't see why you people would object to it. As it stands now--was that a knock at the door?"

"It sounded like it."