“Looks easy enough,” smiled Johnny as he watched the operator roll the balls. “Too easy. There’s a trick somewhere.”
Now Johnny got a lot of fun out of discovering tricks. “Mind if we watch him a little while?” he asked.
“Not a bit,” answered Mazie, putting a hand on his shoulder as the crowd pressed about them. The man in the booth, a tall, broad shouldered man, gave them a quick look. Johnny blinked under that look.
“But after all,” he told himself, “we’re masked. If he has seen us before he’ll not recognize us now.”
He looked at the man and started. There was something vaguely familiar about him. Yet he, too, was heavily masked. There was little chance of telling who he might be.
For fifteen minutes Johnny studied the game. Men played, women played and boys as well. There were plenty of red numbers; but only once in all that time, while the operator hauled in the money, did red turn up. Yet, when for a moment the business lulled, the man behind the table could make red come up easily enough.
“It’s strange,” said Johnny, scratching his head. “It seems so absurdly simple. One would say it couldn’t be doctored at all, and yet it is. Ah well, what’s the use? Let’s go on.”
He was turning to go when a long arm reached out from behind the board and touched his shoulder. It was the operator. There was greed shining from the small black eyes that peeped evilly through the holes in the mask.
“See, mister,” the man was saying, “I give you a roll. It don’t cost you noding. I don’t gives you noding. See! It is free.”
“No, I don’t want a roll,” said Johnny, starting away again.