r, and played it to
lose.

"That's a luck-piece, Hahn," he said. "If it loses, I'll take it up."
Hahn gave him an eye-flick of acknowledgment. He was used to mascots.
Sandy watched the play until at last the jack slid off to rest by the
side of the case, leaving the winning card, a nine, exposed. Sandy alone
had won. The luck-piece had proved its merit.

In twenty minutes Sam borrowed a stack from Sandy's steadily
accumulating winnings and departed for the craps table. He wanted
quicker action than faro gave him. Luck flirted with him, never entirely
deserting him. And Sandy won until the news of his luck spread through
the room. The gamblers began to get the hunch that the Three Star man
was going to break the bank. Not all at the faro layout attempted to
follow his bets. Plimsoll's roll had never yet been very badly crimped.
With the peculiar paradox of their kind, while they told each other that
Plimsoll's game was square, they held the secret conviction that Hahn's
fingers would manipulate the case in an emergency so that the house
would win. And they waited feverishly for the time to come when such a
show-down would arrive.

Sandy did not have many chips in front of him, but there were five small
oblongs of blue, markers representing five hundred dollars apiece. Hahn
laid the fingers of his right hand lightly across the top of the case,
the fingers of his left hand curled about it. It had come down to the
last turn of the deal again. Every player and onlooker knew what the
three cards were--a queen, a five and a deuce. The checking-board showed
that the queen had lost twice and won once, the five had won three times
and the deuce had won twice and lost once. Most of the players shifted
their bets accordingly, the queen to win, the five and deuce to lose.
Hahn still waited.

"Goin' to call th' turn?"

All eyes shifted to Sandy. No one else was going to try to name that
combination. If the order of the three cards were named correctly the
bank would pay four to one. If Sandy staked all on his call he would win
over ten thousand dollars. Plimsoll would have to open his safe. Hahn
did not have that amount in his cash drawer.

The rest--save Sam, now close behind Sandy, with ninety dollars winnings
cashed-in--watched Sandy enviously and curiously. Hahn was a wonder. The
case might be crooked, the spring eccentric. Plimsoll himself was
looking on. Butch Parsons stood beside him for a second and then
strolled into