“You don't mean to say I've got an even chance on that table?” Smoke argued.
“As good as the next geezer's.”
“But not as good as the bank's.”
“Wait an' see,” Shorty urged. “Now! Let her go!”
The game-keeper had just sent the little ivory ball whirling around the smooth rim above the revolving, many-slotted wheel. Smoke, at the lower end of the table, reached over a player, and blindly tossed the dollar. It slid along the smooth, green cloth and stopped fairly in the center of “34.”
The ball came to rest, and the game-keeper announced, “Thirty-four wins!” He swept the table, and alongside of Smoke's dollar, stacked thirty-five dollars. Smoke drew the money in, and Shorty slapped him on the shoulder.
“Now, that was the real goods of a hunch, Smoke! How'd I know it? There's no tellin'. I just knew you'd win. Why, if that dollar of yourn'd fell on any other number it'd won just the same. When the hunch is right, you just can't help winnin'.”
“Suppose it had come 'double naught'?” Smoke queried, as they made their way to the bar.
“Then your dollar'd been on 'double naught,'” was Shorty's answer. “They's no gettin' away from it. A hunch is a hunch. Here's how. Come on back to the table. I got a hunch, after pickin' you for a winner, that I can pick some few numbers myself.”
“Are you playing a system?” Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes, when his partner had dropped a hundred dollars.