As if by accident, he brushed the board with his elbow. This moved a ball slightly to the right.
The result was another black number. But by a sudden movement the operator showed that he was startled.
The stranger fed in two more quarters before Johnny tried the trick again.
This time the operator looked at him and uttered an audible snarl before he began to count. He knew he was beaten.
“Three, nine, fifteen, zwenty-zoo. Dot’s red,” he muttered.
And at the sound of that low mutter Johnny remembered.
So struck was he at this revelation, that he could barely repress an audible exclamation. The stranger chose a small pocket camera, and the game went on.
From this time on the question of whether the stranger won or lost did not count. Johnny was trying to think; to plan a course of action. He knew now where he had heard that man’s voice before—at the fire in which Mazie barely missed losing her life.
As he looked at the man he knew he could not be mistaken. The hooked nose was covered by the mask, but the stoop was there and the voice was the same. If he needed further proof it was not long in coming. As the man stepped back to take down the small camera, Johnny noticed that he walked with a decided limp.
“He’s the man,” Johnny thought to himself. “He’s the man who burned the school houses, the welfare center and the zoo, who attempted to kill me, and did kill poor old Ben Zook!” As he thought of Ben Zook he found it difficult to hold himself in hand. He wanted to leap across the board and throttle the man where he stood.