Just then, as presaged by the passage preceding, that fool Monty entered the Pie-athon, an annual charity event dedicated to raising popular awareness of the plight of starving millions around the globe by inviting people to eat as many pies as they possibly can. Monty, a five-time winner of the event, current holder of the Ars Quared medallion and known abroad as The Infinite Pieman, was hotly favoured to win this year's event, too. As word got out, vast sums of money came into play as tipsters competed with fixers and players to see who could manipulate the odds, the pies or the man most successfully.
As Monty, the Infinite Pieman, entered the arena, a shocked hush descended on the crowd. This can not be, one man said. It must be a lark, quoth another. This quaint jest must be unearthed, jibbered a third.
For Monty had lost weight. So much so that those who recognised him did so only by dint of a swift perusal of his dental records.
Monty had lost a good deal of weight.
Where has the copious belly gone? asked one spectator. Whither the withered girth? murmured a poet who had got lost. How can this man's capacity match his previous form? queried a little tic-tac man.
Then Monty sat at his allotted table, upon his special chair and as he reached towards the first pie, a barrage of exploding light bulbs cast their ghastly glare for the benefit of photojournalists and shutterbugs among the assembled populace. Monty's diminutive mitt encased the first pie and crained it to his gaping maw.
He nibbled.
He swallowed.
"Mmmm," said Monty. "Golly, I do believe I'm full to the brim!"
"Already?" exclaimed a judge who hadn't been paying a lot of attention, preoccupied as he was with filling out a car-tax renewal form that was already two days overdue.
Tickets were torn, bets lost, money by the thousands, millions, billions failed to change hands.
Until Simple Simon went to the chicken-hatch and said, "I'd like to claim my winnings, please."
"Your winnings?" echoed the tout with a laugh and a jolly smile. "What can you have won, little simpleton?" he asked.
"I bet Monty wouldn't finish a single pie," Simon said. "I bet on it and you gave me odds of a billion-billion-to one."
"Well, I guess I did, at that," admitted the sporting gambling man as he proceeded to count out a billion-billion bills.
Simon could never share his winnings with the man who made it possible without the whole world believing it to have been a fixed contest, but he was able to feed the starving millions around the world by opening free pie shops in every major centre of poverty and every key famine area, and this was quite enough for Monty, who gave his name to the shops.
Monty's Infinite Pies.
..... ummmm ..... said Celly ...... I suppose ...... as she finished off a pie
