"I am always glad to meet a man who loves figgers," remarked the stranger, solemnly. He set his valise on the table and leaned over the Cap'n's shoulder. "I have wonderful faculty for figgers. Give me a number and I'll tell you the cube of it instantly, in the snap of a finger."
Cap'n Sproul merely ground his teeth and shoved his nose closer to the paper. He did not dare to look up. His whole soul was centred in effort to "walk the crack" of that column.
"I could do it when I was fifteen—and that was fifty years ago," went on the thin man.
The enunciation of those figures nearly put the Cap'n out of commission, but with a gulp and after a mental stagger he marched on.
"Now give me figgers—tens or hundreds," pleaded the stranger. "I'll give you the cube in one second—the snap of a finger. Since I see you hesitate, we'll take sixteen—a very simple factor. Cube it!" He clacked a bony finger into an osseous palm and cried: "Four thousand and ninety-six!"
That did it!
"Ninety-six," repeated the Cap'n, dizzily; realizing that he had bounced off the track, he rose, kicked his chair out from under him and shoved a livid and infuriated visage into the thin man's face.
"Whang-jacket your gor-righteously imperdence!" he bellowed, "what do you mean by stickin' that fish-hawk beak of your'n into my business and make me lose count? Get to Tophet out of here!"
The stranger calmly removed his ear-pads and gazed on the furious selectman with cold, gray and critical eyes.
"Your suggestion as to destination is not well considered," he said. "There is no hell. There is no heaven. I practically settled that point the first time I died. The—"