“Let it ride,” I said.
“You’re crazy.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and she raked down all but five dollars of her winnings.
I’ll never know what made me say that about the double O. I was skating on thin ice, sticking my neck out. It was just a crazy hunch I had, but one of those things a man gets sometimes when he feels hot all over, as though he had clairvoyant powers. I was absolutely certain that it was going to come double O again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just knew. That was all.
The ball rattled around the wheel and finally came to rest in one of the pockets.
I heard Esther Clarde gasp, and looked over just to make certain where the ball had stopped.
It was in number seven.
“You see,” she said, “you’d have made me lose.”
I laughed. “You’re still playing on velvet.”
She said, “Well, maybe the seven will repeat,” and played it for two bucks. It repeated. After that, I quit feeling lucky, and stuck around. Esther ran her roll up to about five hundred bucks, and then cashed in.