DELMORE SCHWARTZ
521
Give me my money." His voice was weak and now that he raised
it, it was curiously pathetic, and like the voice of an angry child.
And to make matters worse, he began to cough.
"My dear man ," said the ass istant manager, resuming his
official tone, "I am sorry but you are mistaken. You have not
won. You have mistaken a seven for a one because the print was
faint. After this , all of the ca rds will be clearly printed, so that
such mistakes cannot occur."
Cornelius came over to look into the matter for himself. He
took the card in his hand and looked at the number in question.
The old man looked at him, and then turned to the assistant
manager, saymg:
"Give me my mon ey! 1 have won!"
"You are being very unreasonable, " said the assistant
manager, begining to look harassed. The audience now began
to
clap to indicate its des ire for proceeding with the rest of the
game. The assistant manager explained what had happened to
the audience with great care and tact.
"Give me my money!" shouted the old man, as the young
man was speaking to the audience.
" Pl ease return to your seat," h e said to the old man, "so that
the game can go on."
Meanwhile Cornelius had looked carefully at the number in
question and decided that the assistant manager had no ground
for deciding that the one was a seven. There was a blur beside th e
upright bar of one which might conceivably have been meant to
be the horizontal bar which completed the seven, but the
faintn ess of th e blur was not sufficient to justify the assistant
manager.
"Look here," said Cornelius tactfully
to
the assistant
manager, "it seems to me that you can only assume that this is a
one. The blur is too faint to make it a seven."
" I know it is a seven," said the assistant manager angrily,
and when he said that, Cornelius recognized immediately that he
was so sure because the cards had been prepared in advance to
obviate the possibility of two winners of the jackpot, or even
one. Seeing this, Cornelius began to feel sick and angry, as he
always did when confronted with fraud or cheating.
"All my life I've been cheated," said the old man, wringing
