FullReads

Kennedy advanced toward the table with an ax which he had seized from one of our men. A well-directed blow shattered the mechanism of the delicate wheel.

“DeLong,” he said, “I’m not going to talk to you like your old professor at the university, nor like your recent friend, the Frenchman with a system. This is what you have been up against, my boy. Look.”

His forefinger indicated an ingenious, but now tangled and twisted, series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the broken wheel before us. Delicate brushes led the current into the wheel. With another blow of his axe, Craig disclosed wires running down through the leg of the table to the floor and under the carpet to buttons operated by the man who ran the game.

“Wh–what does it mean?” asked DeLong blankly.

“It means that you had little enough chance to win at a straight game of roulette. But the wheel is very rarely straight, even with all the odds in favour of the bank, as they are. This game was electrically controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what is sometimes called the ‘mule’s ear,’ and other devices. You can’t win. These wires and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket the operator desires. Each one of those pockets contains a little electro-magnet. One set of magnets in the red pockets is connected with one button under the carpet and a battery. The other set in the black pockets is connected with another button and the battery. This ball is not really of platinum. Platinum is nonmagnetic. It is simply a soft iron hollow ball, plated with platinum. Whichever set of electro-magnets is energised attracts the ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operator to let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similar arrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations from other push buttons. A special arrangement took care of that ’17’ freak. There isn’t an honest gambling-machine in the whole place–I might almost say the whole city. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish–the men, the machines, the–“

“That machine could be made to beat me by turning up a run of ’17’ any number of times, or red or black, or odd or even, over ’18’ or under ’18,’ or anything?”

“Anything, DeLong.”

“And I never had a chance,” he repeated, meditatively fingering the wires. “They broke me to-night. Danfield”–DeLong turned, looking dazedly about in the crowd for his former friend, then his hand shot into his pocket, and a little ivory-handled pistol flashed out–“Danfield, your blood is on your own head. You have ruined me.”

Kennedy must have been expecting something of the sort, for he seized the arm of the young man, weakened by dissipation, and turned the pistol upward as if it had been in the grasp of a mere child.

A blinding flash followed in the farthest corner of the room and a huge puff of smoke. Before I could collect my wits another followed in the opposite corner. The room was filled with a dense smoke.

Two men were scuffing at my feet. One was Kennedy. As I dropped down quickly to help him I saw that the other was Danfield, his face purple with the violence of the struggle.

“Don’t be alarmed, gentlemen,” I heard O’Connor shout, “the explosions were only the flashlights of the official police photographers. We now have the evidence complete. Gentlemen, you will now go down quietly to the patrol-wagons below, two by two. If you have anything to say, say it to the magistrate of the night court.”

“Hold his arms, Walter,” panted Kennedy.

I did. With a dexterity that would have done credit to a pickpocket, Kennedy reached into Danfield’s pocket and pulled out some papers.

Before the smoke had cleared and order had been restored, Craig exclaimed: “Let him up, Walter. Here, DeLong, here are the I.O.U.’s against you. Tear them up–they are not even a debt of honour.”