“The world’s first and only completely honest gambling device,” said Mart. Abruptly one of the balls appeared on the outside of the cone and rolled to the bottom where it clanked against the metal rim. The number of the ball and its color flashed on a panel behind them. One of the customers looked pleased and waved a betting sheet at the nearest girl attendant.
“Absolutely foolproof,” Mart said. “The emergence of a ball from the cone is governed absolutely and completely by random chance.”
The man peered closer at the balls which had resumed their dancing on the diaphragm. “Is that so? What keeps them bouncing up and down?”
“A small motor actuates the rubber diaphragm. The balls are matched in weight to a thousandth of a milligram and their balance exceeds that of the finest ball bearing.”
“Is that so? You’re sure the game isn’t fixed, now?”
“Positive,” said Mart.
“Think I’ll try it. Where do I buy some chips?”
“Just take a seat anywhere you like. One of the girls will provide you with a betting sheet and you stamp your selection for the following game with the device provided on the arm of the chair. The attendant will show you how. The play is continuous.”
“Thanks, mister. Two dollar bet high enough to start?”
“You may start as low as a dollar if you like.”
“Look, mister, I want my games to be honest, but I want you to know I’m no small timer. Nothing smaller than two dollars for Paul Gentry. But you’re sure this game’s not fixed —”
Mart went out into the night air and joined Berk. “The guy’s a reporter,” he said. “We’ll be in the papers. If that doesn’t bring us business, nothing will.”
But it wasn’t the newspapers. Not at first anyway. Joe Baird had learned with considerable interst of the closing of the New York office and with exasperation that was also considerable he had tracked them during the ensuing weeks. So elusive had they been that it was two weeks after their opening before his man caught up with them. So it was not in the newspapers at first, but on Joe Baird’s television program the following night.
“What two famous ex-Govemment scientists are now operating a gambling joint in Las Vegas, Nevada, and why? That’s the many dollared question that a goodly number of their colleagues and government officials are going to want answered.
“You recall that we first had the Nagle Rocket which created such a furor during the Christmas season. Next was the idiotic mechanism with the disappearing bead, which is rumored to contain hidden in it even more important scientific discoveries than the rocket toy. Now we have the most fantastic device of all, a new type gambling machine. It is evident that Dr. Nagle’s complaint about low Government salaries was a serious one to him, for he now appears in the role of professional gambler to tidy up his personal fortune.”
Baird gave a lengthy description of the Volcano cone, obviously based on the observations of the pseudodrunk to whom Mart had shown the machine. “It is a fascinating gadget, completely hypnotic in its effect on the addicts who play it. We’re certain that it will be as successful as the previous enterprises of Nagle and Berkeley, but we express our regret and the regret of a nation that such badly needed genius should be found in the dimly lit back streets of scarcely legal commercialism.”
Mart and Berk missed the broadcast, being on duty at the club, but they read the account which was reproduced almost verbatim in the morning paper. Mart grinned as he passed it across the breakfast dishes to Berk. “We’ll know tonight. If that doesn’t bring them in, nothing will.”
His prediction was more than accurate. Long before noon the curious began streaming toward the obscure building housing the Volcano Club. By mid-afternoon there was not an empty seat remaining in the amphitheater.
Even Mart had to admit there was something hypnotic about the thing. He stood at the rear, watching over the heads of the crowd as they leaned half forward in their seats with eyes staring at the wash of colored light and the glowing balls that jumped at random.
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!”