When Howard, quite glassy-eyed, planked down a limit bet on number 27, things had gone a long way. A plumber from Amarillo and a druggist from East Orange and a bride from Chicago and en old lady from Natchez fought with each other to put down their money on the same number, and the third dozen, and on odd, and on the color matching George's choice.
The croupier paid.
The tumult and the shouting rose. As if by magic, Oswald's Club had filled to the gunwales and excess customers were forming double lines outside the door. The fugitive bank-clerk from Fort Lauderdale discovered that he could be an honest man again and burst into tears. Howard moved like a zombie, because each win cut him to the heart. If he'd had the nerve to gamble for himself, he'd be getting all this money. But he didn't. Dry-throated, he didn't notice when the golden-wedding bridegroom began a fist-fight with a prominent clubwoman of Teaneck over who had bet what on which square of the roulette layout.
Then the croupier said with an appalled air, "I'm sorry, but I'll have to get more cash."
'"TRADITIONALLY but not technically this was the breaking of the bank. It was a feat of which gamblers day-dream. But it was nothing close to Howard's heart. He trembled. He was on the thin edge of hysteria from the complex anguish of being unable to stop betting—because he was getting money out of it-while even more money was going from his wins to George. Yet he couldn't gamble otherwise. He was congenitally unable to take a chance. While they waited for more money to be brought—
"Come, Howard," said George sympathetically. "You're overwrought. I'll buy you a drink while they get some more money for us!"
"Howard!" said Janet beatifically.
Howard blubbered. An enthusiastic populace regarded him as George supported him to a bar and threw a double Scotch into him. But Howard looked very strange. George was concerned.
"Do you want to stop now, Howard ?" he asked. "It must be quite a strain!"
They were the center of many eyes. Howard said thickly, "How much money have I got now!"
Janet computed and told him. Howard licked his lips. His frustration boiled over. George had gained much, much more. From his achievements!
"I want a bigger commission!" he protested bitterly. "I've got to have a better percentage! I won't work without a better deal!"
There was an intrusion. A short, plump man wearing a two-hundred-dollar suit said in a suave voice;
"What's this? Who's talking percentages?"
George looked down into the craggy features of the gentleman known as Joe the Greek. His four bodyguards, wearing professionally impassive expressions, crowded old ladies and honeymoon couples out of the way to stand protectively about their employer. George knew Joe the Greek. He'd negotiated a comprehensive coverage insurance policy on his syndicate's hotel, undertaking to reimburse the syndicate for just about anything that could happen to a hostelry, including athlete's foot in the swimming-pool.
"Ah!" said George. "How do you do?" Then he said pleasantly to Howard. "Howard, this is my friend Joe the Greek. He wants to congratulate you on your run of luck."
Howard tensed, like a war-horse scenting battle from afar. He was a businessman in a sense George would never accomplish. In the presence of a present or past prospective customer for insurance, he was a new man. He gave Joe the Greek a sincere smile and a warm handclasp, somewhat marred by wildly disheveled hair and a wilted collar and spectacles that were on crooked. He beamed. Then he explained volubly that he'd hoped to write the fire, theft, public liability, storm, lightning, and disaster insurance on Joe the Greek's syndicate's new hotel, but that he'd never been able to arrange an interview. He hoped some day—
"Yeah?" said Joe the Greek. "But what's this about percentages? You've been having quite a run of luck, they tell me."
George babbled. He wiped his glasses. A customer always had charms to sooth his savage breast though sometimes it was the customer's breast which was savage when all was over. Howard somehow stridently explained his deal with George. He wished to enlist Joe the Greek's sympathy, because Joe the Greek was a rich man and could throw insurance business his way, Joe the Greek blinked rapidly.
"You mean," he demanded," you can't gamble for yourself and you got to have a backer?"
"I don't gamble," said Howard desperately. "I—I can't! It's against my principles! But I ought to get a better percentage!"
Joe the Greek let out a quick breath. Then he said suavely, "You got a written contract with anybody?" At Howard's expression he looked at George and said without moving his lips; "Give, guy! That contract!" Janet looked at George's face. He looked only mildly concerned. She plucked a memo from her handbag. She gave it to George. He handed it to Joe the Greek. Joe the Greek tore it up without reading it. George said regretfully;
"I've been urging Howard to stop. He's getting upset."
"I'll take care of that," said Joe the Greek. "Boys—" This was to his bodyguards," look after my friend here. Help him back to the table. I'll look after his percentage!"
Howard said urgently, "—And · I'd like to show you how you can save money on that comprehensive coverage if you cancel and deal through me . . ."
JOE the Greek made a gesture. Howard moved toward the roulette table, only apparently on his own legs.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk!" said George. Then he said, "We've got some money belonging to him, but I think we'd better settle up privately and later on."
Janet said firmly, "He insisted on a written agreement, remember? I've still got it. Joe the Greek tore up a list of people to be invited to a wedding. And Howard agreed, in writing, to work only for you or forfeit all claims on you. And I've got the money! You try to take it away from me!"
George pushed through the mob and got Janet out of Oswald's. When they were in a taxi he said, "How am I going to get my hands on that money? Guess I'll have to marry you for it."
"You will, darling," said Janet happily. "You will!"
And George immediately became unable to think clearly or observe with precision or to see the cosmos as it actually was. In strict accuracy, there was nothing in the least abnormal about the cosmos now. Within the past few minutes it had settled down with the balance of nature neatly and it is to be hoped permanently restored. But George didn't notice. He was inebriated with emotion. He even forgot Howard.
Which was as well. Howard won one limit bet to be divided between himself and Joe the Greek as Joe the Greek should decide. Then he proceeded to run up the longest sequence of unbroken losses in the history of Oswald's Club, the Rodeo Arcade, or any other temple of chance in Tres Agua. He beat all the records. All of them. Joe the Greek staked him for a long time, because he didn't believe that anybody's luck could change so suddenly and so much. Howard couldn't believe it either. When Joe the Greek and his bodyguard wrathfully withdrew, Howard went on. Even with his own money—at least the money which was thirty per cent of what he'd won before lunch at the Formosa. He suffered intensely. But he proved even to himself that it was foolish to gamble. At the end, he burst into tears.
But Howard was only part of the proof that all was adjusted again. In a remote valley of the Andes, two rocks rolled downhill and came to rest near two other rocks. And then there were four. The old rule that two and two make four was working again. A small boy in Muscogee, Oklahoma, drew a careful bead on a sparrow with his sling-shot. He let go. He missed. The pebble sped on by, rose in a graceful parabolic curve, and moved onward and downward together. It smashed a window in a public-school building. The natural law that what goes up must come down was again in force. In the complex mechanism which is this world, everything was working normally.