A well-directed blow shattered the mechanism of the
delicate wheel.
"DeLong," he said, "I'm not going to talk to you like your old
professor at the university, nor like your recent friend, the
Frenchman with a system. This is what you have been up against, my
boy. Look."
His forefinger indicated an ingenious, but now tangled and twisted,
series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the broken wheel before
us. Delicate brushes led the current into the wheel. With another blow
of his axe, Craig disclosed wires running down through the leg of the
table to the floor and under the carpet to buttons operated by the man
who ran the game.
"Wh-what does it mean?" asked DeLong blankly.
"It means that you had little enough chance to win at a straight game
of roulette. But the wheel is very rarely straight, even with all the
odds in favor of the bank, as they are. This game was electrically
controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what is sometimes
called the 'mule's ear,' and other devices. You _can't_ win. There
wires and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any
pocket the operator desires. Each one of those pockets contains a
little electro-magnet. One set of magnets in the red pockets is
connected with one button under the carpet and a battery. The other
set in the black pockets is connected with another button and
the battery. This ball is not really of platinum. Platinum is
non-magnetic. It is simply a soft iron hollow ball, plated with
platinum.
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