The Ping-Pong Table

One of the nicest things about Jack Barnes’s house was the rec room in the basement.  A large room, it took up about half of that particular floor, and it was filled with games.  An air hockey table, a pool table, and a ping-pong table were its main attractions, and Jack and his friends used these quite a bit—so much, in fact, that the old ping-pong table had been falling apart.  Seeing this, Mr. Barnes had decided to purchase a newer, sturdier one, and this was the one Jack and his friends had used over the past month.

“What an improvement,” remarked Jack.  “That old one looked like it would fall apart any day.  This one looks like it won’t fall apart for decades.”

“I can even stand on it!” demonstrated his friend, Kurt Morris.

“Yes, but get off, Kurt.  We want this thing to last a while,” said Jack.

Well, you can imagine Jack’s surprise when he got a letter from the company that had made the table.  “Notice!  Hija Inc. is recalling all Model H783 tables at once!”  The letter went on with instructions on how to return the table.  The cause of recall was “structural deficiencies.”

“Structural deficiencies?” said Kurt.  He, along with Robbie, was over at Jack’s house when the letter came.  “What do they mean by structural deficiencies?”

“I guess they didn’t think these tables were sturdy enough,” said Jack.

“Rubbish!” said Kurt.  “I could stand on that thing, remember?  Remember your last table?  There’s nothing a bit wrong with that table.”

“Maybe someone had an accident with it,” said Jack.  “Let’s Google it and see what comes up.”

Nothing exciting turned up on Jack’s search.  In fact, the only result to come up was a news article, which basically restated the letter.  There was one additional piece of information in the article.

“The recall may have stemmed from the fact that this particular model was a prototype the company was testing out.  Only 40 of these were sold, all in the Seattle-Tacoma area.”

“Only 40!” exclaimed Kurt, his collector’s mind going to work.  “Think about how rare this thing will be one day.”

“Rare?” said Robbie, in surprise.  “Kurt, do you really think people collect ping-pong tables?”

“People collect checkerboards.  Why shouldn’t they collect ping-pong tables too?”

“I don’t think we’re going to make any money off this table, Kurt,” said Jack.  “I do wonder why they’re recalling it, though.  Why don’t we give it a look?”

Kurt and Robbie agreed, and the boys descended the stairs to the rec room.  There were a few windows at the top of the room, but not much light was coming in because it had rained all day and was still quite cloudy.  Jack flipped on the light switch.

“Strange that there should be structural deficiencies on a ping-pong table with eight legs,” said Kurt.

The table did have eight legs.  Eight thick, wooden legs; four on each long side.  In fact, it was really built more like a pool table than a ping-pong table.  A thick wooden body supported the green “court” on top, and two strong metal poles held the net firmly in place across the board.

“Maybe they didn’t mean to put eight,” said Jack, “but they should have caught that.”  He ran his hand over the edge of the table, feeling for anything that might be loose.  Robbie went to one of the shorter sides and put his eye to the edge of the court, to see how flat it was.

“It looks perfectly flat,” he said, “unlike your last table, which had that fold in the middle.”

Kurt was studying the legs of the table.  He gave one of the corner ones a slight kick.  It didn’t seem to notice.  Moving down the table, he gave one of the side ones a kick.

“Oops!”

Jack looked.  “Kurt!  What did you do to it?”  The second leg had not survived Kurt’s kick as well; it had fallen off and now lay on the floor!

“That must be the structural deficiency,” said Kurt.  “Say, wait a second!  There’s a little hollow area at the top of this leg, and there’s a folded-up piece of paper in it.”

“Really?  Let me see it,” said Jack.  He pulled it out and unfolded it.  It read—

“[The following material has been edited by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America for security reasons.]”

“Whoa!” said Jack.  “This doesn’t look like something we’re supposed to be reading.”

“I’ll bet someone stole that!” said Kurt, “and the ping-pong table was being used to deliver it!”

“We’d better call the police!” exclaimed Jack.

The police came—along with a CIA agent, who took the paper.  They took away the ping-pong table, but returned it three days later, satisfied it contained nothing else.  Jack and his friends were strictly warned not to say anything about the case, and they agreed.  To date, no one besides them has heard of it.

Well, except you, of course.