is seat on the bench. A
stopwatch clicked. A great silence settled over the watchers. This
lasted for thirty seconds after which the watch clicked again. The man
got up from the bench eighteen thousand dollars poorer.

The vault had not opened.

Nor did it open the next day, the next, nor the next. A week passed, a
month, six months. And at the end of that time it was estimated that
more than twenty-five thousand people had tried their luck and failed.

Each failure was greeted with a public sigh of relief--relief from both
those who were waiting for a turn and those who were getting rich from
the commercial enterprises abutting upon the Chipfellow estate.

There was a motel, a hotel, a few night clubs, a lot of restaurants, a
hastily constructed bus terminal, an airport and several turned into
parking lots at a dollar a head.

The line was a permanent thing and it was soon necessary to build a
cement walk because the ever-present hopeful were standing in a ditch a
foot deep.

There also continued to be an active business in positions, a group of
professional standers having sprung up, each with an assistant to bring
food and coffee and keep track of the ever fluctuating market in
positions.

And still no one opened Chipfellow's vault.

It was conceded that the big endowment funds had the inside track
because they had the money to hire the best brains in the world; men who
were almost as able scientifically as had been Chipfellow himself but
unfortunately hadn't made as much money. The monied interests also had
access to the robot calculators that turned out far more plausible
thoughts than there were positions in the line.

A year passed. The vault remained locked.

* * * * *

By that time the number of those who had tried and failed, and were
naturally disgruntled, was large enough to be heard, so a rumor got
about that the whole thing was a vast hoax--a mean joke perpetrated upon
the helpless public by a lousy old crook who hadn't any money in the
first place.

Vituperative editorials were written--by editors who had stood in line
and thrown futile thoughts at the great door. These editorials were
vigorously rebutted by editors and columnists who as yet had not had a
chance to try for the jackpot.

One senator, who had tried and missed, introduced a law making it
illegal to sit on a stone bench and hurl a thought at a door.

There were enough congressional failures to