e seat before it. Hawkes slid smoothly
into the seat and told Alan to stand behind him and watch carefully.

"We'll start at the beginning of the next round," he said.

Alan looked around. Everywhere men were bent over the patterns of lights
on the boards before them, with expressions of fierce concentration on
their faces. Far in the corner Alan saw the pudgy figure of MacIntosh,
the Keeper of the Records; MacIntosh was bathed in his own sweat, and
sat rigid as if hypnotized.

Hawkes nudged him. "Keep your eyes on me. The others don't matter. I'm
ready to get started."

_Chapter Nine_

Hawkes took a coin from his pocket and dropped it in a slot at the side
of the board. It lit up. A crazy, shifting pattern of colored lights
passed over it, restless, never pausing.

"What happens now?"

"You set up a mathematical pattern with these keys," Hawkes said,
pointing to a row of enamelled studs along the side of the machine.
"Then the lights start flashing, and as soon as they flash--at random,
of course--into the pattern you've previously set up, you're the winner.
The skill of the game comes in predicting the kind of pattern that will
be the winning one. You've got to keep listening to the numbers that the
croupier calls off, and fit them into your sequence."

Suddenly a bell rang loudly, and the board went dead. Alan looked around
and saw that all the other boards in the hall were dark as well.

The man on the rostrum in the center of the hall cleared his throat and
sang out, "Table 403 hits us for a hundred! 403! One hundred!"

A pasty-faced bald man at a table near theirs rose with a broad grin on
his face and went forward to collect. Hawkes rapped sharply on the side
of the table to get Alan's attention.

"Look here, now. You have to get a head start. As soon as the boards
light up again, I have to begin setting up my pattern. I'm competing
against everyone else here, you see. And the quickest man wins, usually.
Of course, blind luck sometimes brings you a winner--but not very
often."

Alan nodded and watched carefully as Hawkes' fingers flew nimbly over
the controlling studs the instant the tables lit for the next round. The
others nearby were busy doing the same thing, but few of them set about
it with the air of cocky jauntiness that Hawkes wore.

Finally he stared at the board in satisfaction and sat back. The
croupier pounded three times with a little gavel and said, "103
sub-prime 5."

Has