Just Plain Weird Read Free Page B

then. Raffles was distance for quite a while, deeply distracted by something. When he next spoke, it was with a level of seriousness I’d never before heard him speak.
              “There is something terribly wrong going on in that house,” he said grimly.
              Though I had to concede it had been a strange episode, I had the distinct feeling he was talking about something entirely different.
              “What do you mean?” I asked.
              “Well,” he said, frowning, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he took a gulp, “It doesn’t add up.” Here I ought to explain that Raffles’ mind didn’t work the way other people’s minds worked; somebody else might notice that the man seemed somewhat childlike, while his daughter seemed somewhat more the adult, or something like that. Raffles, on the other hand, was steadfastly literal: if he said that something didn’t add up, some mathematical problem was troubling him.
              Knowing this, and not seeing how anything mathematical could be applied to the episode, I said, “You’re kidding, right?”
              “No,” he said, and before he continued, he hedged as though afraid he might sound crazy. “Did you notice how the floor was covered in the living room?”
              “Tiled?”
              “Yeah.”
              “Yeah, I thought that was unusual.”
              “I’m not talking about style or taste,” he said. “I’m talking about area.”
              “I don’t get you,” I said.
              “Look,” he labored to explain, “That house is not much different from your house, right? It is built on a similar lot, with a side driveway that is approximately the same width as your driveway. Well, hard as this will be for you to believe, that living room we were sitting in is-- say-- about three feet wider than it should be.”
              I was completely lost, and the expression on my face must have shown I didn’t have a clue what he meant.
              “All right,” he said. “These houses are built on identical lots, right? The lots are forty to forty-five feet wide, right? The driveways are about twelve feet wide, which leaves twenty-eight to thirty-three feet for the house and a border around the house. Now, that house is about eighteen feet wide, from outer wall to outer wall, right? That’s my estimate, anyway, but I think it’s pretty close-- close enough to illustrate the problem. Now, the tiles used to finish the living room floor in that house are nine inches by nine inches. By my estimate, the living room can be no more than 21.5 tiles wide-- that’s if you allow six inches for the outer walls. But when we were in that room, I counted that the living room was about 25.5 tiles wide, which is three feet wider than it ought to be.”
              By now I must have been looking at him as though he’d gone daffy. Who in their right mind counts the tiles on the floor when they go visiting a neighbor?
              “I don’t get what you’re saying,” I admitted. “The living room is too wide?”
              “That’s not quite the point,” he said, rolling his bulgy eyes, and added: “The living room is three feet wider than it can possibly be.”
              “It can’t be that wide?” Only Raffles could make me feel this stupid.
              “More than that, even,” he stated conclusively. “The point I’m trying to make, here, is that the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.”
     
     
     
               
             
              “Let me get this straight,” I said. “I notice that these people are acting a little weird. You twist my arm to go over there, just to prove to me that I’m imagining things. And now you’re coming back with there is nothing wrong with the people, but the house-- there’s