Tales of the Unexpected

turned to me. ‘I’d consider it a favour if you’d come along and referee.’
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll come along, but I don’t like the bet.’
    ‘You come too,’ he said to the girl. ‘You come and watch.’
    The little man led the way back through the garden to the hotel. He was animated now, and excited, and that seemed to make him bounce up higher than ever on his toes as he walked along.
    ‘I live in annexe,’ he said. ‘You like to see car first? Iss just here.’
    He took us to where we could see the front driveway of the hotel and he stopped and pointed to a sleek pale-green Cadillac parked close by.
    ‘Dere she iss. De green one. You like?’
    ‘Say, that’s a nice car,’ the boy said.
    ‘All right. Now we go up and see if you can win her.’
    We followed him into the annexe and up one flight of stairs. He unlocked his door and we all trooped into what was a large pleasant double bedroom. There was a woman’s dressing-gown lying across the bottom of one of the beds.
    ‘First,’ he said, ‘we ’ave a little Martini.’
    The drinks were on a small table in the far corner, all ready to be mixed, and there was a shaker and ice and plenty of glasses. He began to make the Martini, but meanwhile he’d rung the bell and now there was a knock on the door and a coloured maid came in.
    ‘Ah!’ he said, putting down the bottle of gin, taking a wallet from his pocket and pulling out a pound note. ‘You will do something for me now, pleess.’ He gave the maid the pound.
    ‘You keep dat,’ he said. ‘And now we are going to play a little game in here and I want you to go off and find for me two – no tree tings. I want some nails, I want a hammer, and I want a chopping knife, a butcher’s chopping knife which you can borrow from de kitchen. You can get, yes?’
    ‘A
chopping knife!
’ The maid opened her eyes wide and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘You mean a
real
chopping knife?’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course. Come on now, pleess. You can find dose tings surely for me.’
    ‘Yes, sir, I’ll try, sir. Surely I’ll try to get them.’ And she went.
    The little man handed round the Martinis. We stood there and sipped them, the boy with the long freckled face and the pointed nose, bare-bodied except for a pair of faded brown bathing shorts; the English girl, a large-boned fair-haired girl wearing a pale blue bathing suit, who watched the boy over the top of her glass all the time; the little man with the colourless eyes standing there in his immaculate white suit drinking his Martini and looking at the girl in her pale blue bathing dress. I didn’t know what to make of it all. The man seemed serious about the bet and he seemed serious about the business of cutting off the finger. But hell, what if the boy lost? Then we’d have to rush him to the hospital in the Cadillac that he hadn’t won. That would be a fine thing. Now wouldn’t that be a really fine thing? It would be a damn silly unnecessary thing so far as I could see.
    ‘Don’t you think this is rather a silly bet?’ I said.
    ‘I think it’s a fine bet,’ the boy answered. He had already downed one large Martini.
    ‘I think it’s a stupid, ridiculous bet,’ the girl said. ‘What’ll happen if you lose?’
    ‘It won’t matter. Come to think of it, I can’t remember ever in my life having had any use for the little finger on my left hand. Here he is.’ The boy took hold of the finger. ‘Here he is and he hasn’t ever done a thing for me yet. So why shouldn’t I bet him? I think it’s a fine bet.’
    The little man smiled and picked up the shaker and refilled our glasses.
    ‘Before we begin,’ he said, ‘I will present to de – to de referee de key of de car.’ He produced a car key from his pocket and gave it to me. ‘De papers,’ he said, ‘de owning papers and insurance are in de pocket of de car.’
    Then the coloured maid came in again. In one hand she carried a small chopper, the kind used by butchers for chopping meat bones, and in the other a hammer and a bag of nails.
    ‘Good! You get dem all. Tank you, tank you. Now you can go.’ He waited until the maid had closed the door, then he put the implements on one of the beds and said, ‘Now we prepare ourselves, yes?’ And to the boy, ‘Help me, pleess, with dis table. We carry it out a little.’
    It was the usual kind of hotel writing desk, just a plain rectangular table about four feet by three with a blotting pad, ink, pens and