“Dot’s fair enough, mister,” replied the man.
This last remark went through the boy like an electric shock. Those words, that accent, the whole thing—where had he heard it before? Strive as he might, rake down the walls of his memory as he did, he could not recall. And yet something within told him that he should recall, that here was a key to something important; something tremendously big.
“No,” he whispered to himself, “I can’t recall it now, but I can stick around. It may come to me all of a flash.”
“All right,” he thought to himself, “if I have to, I’ll play.”
Fortune favored him. He was not obliged to play, but could watch.
“Set ’em up!” said a stranger, producing a shiny quarter.
“Count ’em,” he said a moment later as the last ball dropped into its hole.
“Four, nine, sexteen, zwenty-zree. Dot’s black. Try again. Anoder times you are lucky.”
The man did try again, again and yet again, and always he lost.
And then, like a flash, the trick of the game came to Johnny. If the balls were carefully placed in certain definite positions on the narrow board, they would always escape falling into holes marked 7 and 11. These numbers were needed if the result was to be a red number.