"Still hungry. They don't fill me up at all."
"But those are large eggs. Do you know how much a hundred of them
weigh? Over fifteen pounds!"
"I don't care how much they weigh. I'm still hungry."
"Do you mind if we weigh you?"
"So long as you don't stop givin' me eggs, okay."
They brought out a scale and Ollie stepped on it. He weighed one
hundred and thirty-nine pounds, on the nose.
Then he started eating eggs again. At the end of his second hundred,
they weighed him once more. Ollie weighed one hundred thirty-eight and
three-quarters.
The judges stared at each other and then at Ollie. For a moment the
entire audience sat in awed silence, as if watching a miracle. Then the
mood of awe passed.
One of the judges said wisely, "He palms them and slips them to a
confederate."
"Out here on the stage?" demanded another judge. "Where's his
confederate? Besides, you can see for yourself that he eats them. You
can watch them going down his throat."
"But that's impossible. If they really went down his throat, he'd gain
weight."
"I don't know how he does it," admitted the other. "But he does."
"The man is a freak. Let's get some doctors over here."
Ollie ate another hundred and forty-three eggs, and then had to stop
because the restaurant ran out of them. The other contestants never
even had a chance to get started.
* * * * *
When the doctor came and they told him the story, his first impulse
seemed to be to grin. He knew a practical joke when he heard one. But
they put Ollie on the scales--by this time he weighed only a hundred
thirty-eight and a quarter pounds--and fed him a two pound loaf of
bread. Then they weighed him again.
He was an even one hundred and thirty-eight.
"At this rate, he'll starve to death," said the doctor, who opened his
little black bag and proceeded to give Ollie a thorough examination.
Ollie was very unhappy about it because it interfered with his eating,
and he felt more hungry than ever. But they promised to feed him
afterward and, more or less unwillingly, he submitted.
"Bad teeth, enlarged heart, lesion on each lung, flat feet, hernia,
displaced vertebrae--you name it and he has it," said the doctor.
"Where the devil did he come from?"
Ollie was working on an order of roast beef and was too busy to reply.