When we parked in front of the hotel, I sensed that Tellford was disappointed with the service he was getting. I was too disheartened to even try to bluff. I told him I had never missed, and maybe this was the first time; and if so, no fee.
I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed and lighted a cigar. I tried to remember what it was, if anything, that set Carl Breton apart from other bridge players. If anything, it was that curious woodenness. After the hand had ended, instead of leaning back and relaxing like most players do, he would stay in that curious immobility. Not for long; for about ten seconds, then you could see him relax and wait for the next hand. Why in the world did he do that?
And there was one other thing. A very vague thing. A sort of cyclical aspect in his guessing. Once in a while he would make bad guesses. Not often. Just once in a while. But what happened each time before one of those hands where his guesses weren’t so sharp? Something tugged at my mind.
It wasn’t until I was stretched out flat again, cigar finished, that it came to me! His guesses went bad on the second hand following a hand that had been thrown in because there was no bid. I sat up and grinned into the darkness, then lay back and fell asleep.
At ten the next morning I rang the doorbell of Carl Breton’s small white house. The lawn was green and tailored. The house looked freshly painted. I knew he was at work. I had checked. The door was opened and the woman wheeled herself back away from it. She was fresh and pretty. She handled the wheel chair in a way that showed long practice. There were a few lines around her mouth, lines of old pain, I guessed.
“Good morning,” I said. “Have you ever forgotten anything?”
“What a weird way to start a conversation,” she answered, cocking her head.
I put on a doleful look. “It sure is. But according to the company, that’s the way I’m supposed to start out. They claim it works.”
She laughed. It was a good laugh. “You poor man! I bet you get tired of saying that. What in the world are you selling?”
“A memory course, Madame. The Acme method of memory building. A half-hour a day of simple instruction and at the end of the course you’ll never forget a name or a face. A simple example. You are introduced to a Mrs. Ferris. No. I won’t use that example. Please tell me what your name it.”
“Dorothy Breton.”
“Hmm. That’s a tough one. Breton. Let me see. With that blonde hair and that complexion you have sort of a Dutch girl look. Like your hair should be in braids. Braidon. Breton. Far fetched, I know. But now I’ve given my memory a key to you. I’ll never forget your name.”
She gave me a wide-eyed look. “But, goodness, I never forget names anyway.”
“Hard to sell, eh?” I was enjoying her. She was likeable. She was having fun. It was time for my jack pot question. “How about your husband then?”
“There,” she said, flattening my hopes, “you might have something. He’s absolutely helpless. He lays something down and the next minute he can’t remember where he put it. He’s terrible with names and faces.”
“Maybe he’s my customer then,” I said, maintaining my smile with an effort.
She frowned. “I don’t know. It’s the strangest darn thing about Carl. He can recite a list of all the names of the vice-presidents, and all the pharaohs of Egypt, and if you let him read a list of numbers from here to there, he can read it once and give it to you perfectly an hour later. But he can’t ever find his tie clip.”
Now I had it, and my smile was complete again. I felt fine. Record unimpaired. “You ought to buy him the course, Mrs. Breton, and make sure that he takes it.”
“Did you say 30 days? I won’t be around that long. I’m going off next week for some hatchet work. They’re trying to get me off wheels.” She said it without the slightest trace of self-consciousness.
“Are they going to?” I asked her.
“Sooner or later. But it’s so darn slow, and so darn expensive. It keeps us broke most of the time, but Carl doesn’t kick. He’s a dear. Would you like some coffee? I’ve got some on the stove.”
We talked in the kitchen. She had a good attitude. It had been a bad accident. Compound fractures of both legs. The car had skidded and thrown her against the door, the door had opened and she had gone out. She had braced her feet during the skid so they were caught behind the heater. And she made good coffee. They had two kids, both in grade school. Each time she went to Philadelphia for more bone surgery they had to hire a housekeeper.
She wished me luck in my door-to-door selling. I walked down the street and looked back at the house. A nice flavor of happiness there. Made me think of old days, of chances lost, of a girl whose hair had been just a bit darker than Dorothy Breton’s, and of a stupid guy who wanted to get out of that small town for keeps...
I checked out of the hotel, left my suitcase at the station, and went to the bank to see Tellford. He had a nice office. The bank was busy. A rustling sound, as if everybody was counting money.
I sat down and said, “Well, I’ve got it.”
He nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Hoped you would. What is it?”
“I know exactly what he’s doing and how. But I’m not going to tell you.”
His eyes turned very frosty. I was glad I wasn’t asking him for a loan. “I think you’d better explain that.”
“What Breton is doing is perfectly ethical, legitimate, legal. Any of you other gentlemen could do the same thing.” I paused, then sank the barb, praying that it was deep enough. I shrugged, to make it a little better. “You men can always stop playing with him. Protect your money. But if you can find out what he does, you might all become better bridge players. Tournament class, maybe. Good day, Mr. Tellford.”
He didn’t stop me. I got on my train. I sat in the coach, looked out of the window and felt a good deal of admiration for Mr. Carl Breton. He had to play each hand carefully and well, keeping track of the cards. And at the same time he had to remember the sequence of the cards in each trick that was picked up, see exactly in what order they were picked up. He had to remember two sequences. The opposition’s tricks and his own. Then see the order in which the two stacks of tricks were placed. That time of wooden immobility was when he re-affixed the order of the whole deck of cards in his mind. Then, almost incredibly, he had to set that sequence aside and give his whole attention to the other deck, the one to be played with next, the order of which he had previously memorized.
Check it yourself. Take a new deck in order. Give it the same casual shuffle and cut as you would in a game with friends. Deal out four hands. Pick up one. Got the queen of hearts? Then nine times out of ten the king will be either in the hand on your left, or in you partner’s hand. If you have to finesse, you know which way to go.
My best clue was the way his guesses were more shaky two hands after a hand had been thrown in. The double shuffle of the discarded hand distributed the sequence too much. And no wonder the guy acted wooden and remote. Each hand he played was an almost incredible feat of multiple memory. For, during each hand he had to remember the old sequence of those same cards so he could play cleverly. And he had to remember the order in which the tricks were being stacked. And, back in his mind, he had to keep on file the sequence of the cards which would be used for the next hand. The boy was earning his money.