Trade secret

Uniformed girls moved constantly along the aisles, accepting bets and stamping sheets of the winners to be paid off at the windows. And then in the later afternoon Mart and Berk recognized some of the visitors who began coming in. A few of them took seats, but others stood at the rear watching with coldly professional faces. They represented the management and ownership of the other, more conventional clubs about the city.

“I think we’re in,” Mart whispered to Berk. “Within a week we’ll have a Volcano in half the clubs in Las Vegas!”

He was a little optimistic there. It took almost three weeks before that number had bought a franchise on the Volcano. He was able to deliver the first one within two days, however, and almost before the delivery truck was back at the warehouse he received a call. Mart recognized the cigar-in-mouth voice of the gambler with whom he had made his first deal.

“What’s the matter with these things? Can’t you build them so they will stay operating more than ten minutes? We put the marbles in the hole and all they do is come rolling down the outside. They won’t stay in!”

“You put the machine back together the way it was and quit tinkering with it,” said Mart. “It will work all right the way we had it.”

The gambler adjusted his cigar with a crunching sound in the phone. “We got to change the percentages. You don’t expect us to play Santa Claus, do you? How do you make the adjustments?”

“Listen, I told you when we made the deal that these devices are straight. They operate strictly at random. A dozen balls in the pit gives you odds of eleven to one on each bet. What more do you want? The minute you tinker with the machines they’ll quit working. Now do you want to buy, or not?”

The gambler guessed he did, and hung up.

“Can you imagine these guys?” said Mart. “They talk about the one-armed bandits — how about the two-armed ones?”

There was a similar problem with every one of the clubs in which a machine was installed, but when it was finally straightened out, and the gamblers were resigned to operating an honest game, their relationships became one of distant respect based on mutual expediency. Mart and Berk needed the club installations to expose the machines to public view, and the gamblers found it somewhat like discovering a vein of high-grade gold ore under the floor of the roulette room.

Neither Mart nor Berk had any desire to prolong their stay in the gambling paradise. There was still no response, however, from the one source they hoped to disturb with the machine.

“We’ve proven the machines are effective as gambling devices,” said Berk. “But we’re wasting time. We ought to give Sam the go-ahead on the bar and drugstore models. We’re not going to get the roulette wheel’s successor into the Bureau of Standards and the University of Chicago by sitting here in Las Vegas.”

“You don’t think physicists are likely to come here to gamble?” said Mart.

“Physicists aren’t likely to gamble. And after buying the week’s groceries, how could they?”

“Yes,” said Mart, “I guess that’s one of the points we started out to make. Anyway, I’ll bet we get a bite before the end of the week. Whether we do or not, we’ll close up by then. I’ll send Sam a wire this afternoon to get in production. By next Christmas: two Volcanoes where only one pinball stood before!”

During the same afternoon Mart’s attention was attracted to a patron of the club, who was what Mart had come to label an un

gambler. There were gamblers and non-gamblers, and sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. But a pure ungambler could be spotted at a glance.

This particular specimen sat in the front row of the amphitheater staring at the Volcano almost as if in a trance. He moved only occasionally to polish the glass of his spectacles with the large white handkerchief, which he withdrew with a flourish. He made bets. A considerable number of them. He did not win a single time. Mart felt like telling him to give it up. You have to have just a trace, at least, of ESP or you haven’t got a chance. Successful gamblers were loaded with it. The ungamblers were apparently born with a total lack of it.

Mart finally resisted the impulse to protect the fellow from his own deficiencies, and turned away from the amphitheater. He saw that Berk was also watching from a post near the cashier’s cage.

“FBI, I’d say,” said Berk.

“Him? Not a chance. Probably a fresh MA in English Literature. I hate to see the poor guy throwing away his money, but what can I do?”

It was almost closing time that night before this particular patron gave up his seat and left the building. They had a house rule requiring betting on at least one game in four in order to keep the seat. Evidently the man had run out of minimum dollar bets. Even so, he seemed reluctant to give up his seat and leave.