Table of Babel

Around a purple-covered table in the New York Athletic Club gathered last fortnight as improbable a collection of international oddities as Hollywood ever cinematically juxtaposed in a European hotel or an ocean liner. Their names were Soussa, Ankrom, Tiedtke, Lee, Deardorff, Lagache, Robyns and Zaman. They were, respectively, an Egyptian painter, Detroit barber, German hotel clerk, U. S. swimming champion, St. Louis secretary, Parisian stockbroker, Amsterdam diamond merchant and one-eyed Antwerp insurance salesman. Few of them spoke English. The difference in tongues did not confuse them in the least. They had met, not to talk, but to play billiards for the world's amateur three-cushion championship, being held for the first time in the U. S. The soft, agreeable click of ivory balls was one language with which all eight were thoroughly familiar.

Last week it became apparent that Edward Lancaster Lee understood this language better than his colleagues. After an eight-day round robin in which each man played the seven others, Deardorff had been beaten twice and Edmond Soussa, sad-eyed son of a Cairo cigaret tycoon, three times, while Lagache, the defending champion, had lost more games than he had won. Lee not only won all seven of his games but, in the last, against Lagache, made the high run of the tournament--10 caroms.

Expert billiard players, disgusted with ordinary billiards because it is so easy, have never ceased devising harder variations. Three-cushion billiards, in which the cue ball must touch three cushions before completing a carom, is the most difficult of all. As a swimmer, Lee specialized in long distance, won the U. S. championship five times. Because of his swimming prowess he was asked to join the New York Athletic Club in 1925. When he took to utilizing the club's billiard tables, it naturally occurred to him to learn the game the longest, hardest way. He won the U. S. title in 1931, held it for four years thereafter. A 30-year-old auto-accessories salesman, expert at bridge and handball, he smokes incessantly, applauds good shots by pounding his cue on the floor, plays in a stiff shirt.

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