A Day Without Baron Teucher Part 2

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the carnival game midway.

Ernest halted before a timber booth draped in striped canvas. On a wide wooden counter rested three pyramids of heavy wooden bottles. Players were handed three small, stitched-leather balls and tasked with knocking all the bottles completely off the table from a distance of four paces.

Ernest's gaze locked onto the display.

Eleanor looked at his rigid posture. "No. We are not engaging with carnival games."

Ernest's expression was completely blank. "I made no verbal statement."

"Your face made an engineering declaration," she said. "You are calculating the mass distribution of those bottles."

"The bottom tier of wooden cylinders has been intentionally modified," Ernest noted, pointing a finger. "The base diameter is broad, and the wood grain suggests the lower half has been weighted with lead plugs to lower the center of gravity."