"I thought so," she said triumphantly. "Charlatan!"
For a moment the grin flickered off his face and I tensed to catch Shari if she should start to drop. But I guess he thought better of it.
"Some other time," he said. "Let's get this over with. Make it simple. You may have some statistical objections to my technique tonight, but I'm not looking for fringe effects. If this hot-eyed swain of yours is any good at all, he'll bat a thousand." He got a deck of cards out of his desk drawer and fanned it out face up so that he could pluck the two of spades and the two of hearts from the deck. The rest he put back in his desk.
He put his hands under the desk, with the two cards in them, produced the cards again, face down, and laid them in a thin stack on the desk before all of us.
"What's on top?" he said. "Red or black?"
"How will you score?" Shari insisted. He scowled at her and tossed a squeeze counter across the desk.
"You score," he said. "It really isn't necessary. Tex will either be right all the time or it won't matter."
But before I could call the top card, the office door opened behind us. I looked around, expecting Pheola. Instead it was Milly with the down, down hose. Only this time she was decently dressed in a dark two-piece suit and wore make-up. She certainly was no more talkative than before, nor did Wally introduce her. Shari was perfectly equal to the occasion and looked through Milly with composure. This takes about three generations of overbreeding.
"Try it," Wally insisted. "What's on top?"
I hit it. Then I missed it. Then I hit three in a row. It wasn't fast work, because Wally hid the cards under his desk after each guess, shuffled the two cards around and then laid them before me again. This went on for about twenty minutes. At that point Shari spoke.