Mart went out into the night air and joined Berk. “The guy’s a reporter,” he said. “We’ll be in the papers. If that doesn’t bring us business, nothing will.”
But it wasn’t the newspapers. Not at first anyway. Joe Baird had learned with considerable interst of the closing of the New York office and with exasperation that was also considerable he had tracked them during the ensuing weeks. So elusive had they been that it was two weeks after their opening before his man caught up with them. So it was not in the newspapers at first, but on Joe Baird’s television program the following night.
“What two famous ex-Govemment scientists are now operating a gambling joint in Las Vegas, Nevada, and why? That’s the many dollared question that a goodly number of their colleagues and government officials are going to want answered.
“You recall that we first had the Nagle Rocket which created such a furor during the Christmas season. Next was the idiotic mechanism with the disappearing bead, which is rumored to contain hidden in it even more important scientific discoveries than the rocket toy. Now we have the most fantastic device of all, a new type gambling machine. It is evident that Dr. Nagle’s complaint about low Government salaries was a serious one to him, for he now appears in the role of professional gambler to tidy up his personal fortune.”
Baird gave a lengthy description of the Volcano cone, obviously based on the observations of the pseudodrunk to whom Mart had shown the machine. “It is a fascinating gadget, completely hypnotic in its effect on the addicts who play it. We’re certain that it will be as successful as the previous enterprises of Nagle and Berkeley, but we express our regret and the regret of a nation that such badly needed genius should be found in the dimly lit back streets of scarcely legal commercialism.”
Mart and Berk missed the broadcast, being on duty at the club, but they read the account which was reproduced almost verbatim in the morning paper. Mart grinned as he passed it across the breakfast dishes to Berk. “We’ll know tonight. If that doesn’t bring them in, nothing will.”
His prediction was more than accurate. Long before noon the curious began streaming toward the obscure building housing the Volcano Club. By mid-afternoon there was not an empty seat remaining in the amphitheater.
Even Mart had to admit there was something hypnotic about the thing. He stood at the rear, watching over the heads of the crowd as they leaned half forward in their seats with eyes staring at the wash of colored light and the glowing balls that jumped at random.
Uniformed girls moved constantly along the aisles, accepting bets and stamping sheets of the winners to be paid off at the windows. And then in the later afternoon Mart and Berk recognized some of the visitors who began coming in. A few of them took seats, but others stood at the rear watching with coldly professional faces. They represented the management and ownership of the other, more conventional clubs about the city.
“I think we’re in,” Mart whispered to Berk. “Within a week we’ll have a Volcano in half the clubs in Las Vegas!”