The Spinning Wheel

Did you notice the bald-headed, pimply-faced old egg with the fade-away chin that was talking to the boss just as you come in, a half or three-quarters of an hour ago? I’d like to heard what the boss told him; I bet it was plenty! He was lucky to escape without a bust in the jaw. Probably not having no jaw was what saved him.

That fella is a director in one of the biggest banks in New York City. They’s been articles printed about his brains, how they made him what he is today⁠—a giant of finance and a fella that the Morgans call him up and ask his opinion before they buy a new package of pipe-cleaners.

Well, he blew in here three nights ago and he come to this table and bought a hundred dollars’ worth of five-dollar checks. He didn’t play till I’d made ten or a dozen rolls, but he marked down the colors as they come up. Then he played two checks on the red, and it was black, so he doubled up, and it was red, and he kept going along that way till he was two hundred winner, and he quit. The next night he done the same thing over there at Harry’s table, only he win three hundred instead of two.

I suppose he went back to the hotel pretty near kissing himself for discovering a system that couldn’t lose and planning what he was going to do to us with it. He figured: They’s just as many red numbers as they is black numbers, so the red is bound to come as often as the black, and if you keep doubling up every time the red don’t come, why, you’re bound to be ahead at the finish. I guess it was Columbus that played this system first and that’s why he didn’t have money enough to pay his own way over here. Personally I’ve seen the black come nineteen times in succession and with people playing it most of the time, too.

Last night in strolled our friend⁠—Macomber’s his name⁠—and he brought a couple of ladies with him to witness the big coup. He probably thought I and Harry would be scared of him and not let him play, and he went to the table in that corner, where Joe was dealing. This time he didn’t buy no checks, but he waited till the black had come twice in a row and then laid a hundred-dollar bill on the red. Joe rolled a single O. Macomber played two hundred on the red, and it come black. Then he played four hundred on the red, and it was black again. He bet eight hundred, and it come single O.

Then he said to Joe: “I’m out of ready money,” he said, “but I guess my credit’s good. I’m betting sixteen hundred on the red.”

“Your credit’s fine,” said Joe, “but the limit is a thousand dollars.”

The ball was spinning and they wasn’t no time to argue.

“All right,” says Macomber. “A thousand on the red.”

“Thirteen, black,” said Joe, and Mr. Macomber and his cheerleaders walked out on us.

Well, Joe was playing golf this morning and Macomber seen him and recognized him. He says:

“I don’t know whether to speak to you or not.”

“What do you mean?” says Joe.

“That business last night didn’t look good to me,” says Macomber. “When they’s just as many red numbers as black numbers, it seems to me like red ought to show up on an average of every other time.”

“In the town in Georgia where I come from,” says Joe, “they’s just as many white people as they is colored people. But lots of times I’ve walked two and three blocks and met nothing but dinges.”

“That’s very cute,” said Macomber. “Just the same, it’s my opinion that I was fleeced.”

“I’m going to see that the boss hears that,” said Joe.

“Don’t say a word to him!” says Macomber. “If you do, I’ll deny I ever talked to you.”

“I think he’ll believe me,” says Joe, and went on with his golf game.

So Joe told the boss and the boss was madder than hades, the more so because Macomber’s supposed to be stoop-shouldered from holding up them brains of his.

“I’ll give him an earful,” he told Joe.

“Go as far as you like,” said Joe, “but get the thousand he owes us first.”

Well, I don’t know if Macomber paid the thousand or not, but I do know that he got called something besides Mr. Macomber. When the boss is really sore, he can think of more funny short words than one of these here puzzle experts.

Macomber might be interested in how Jarvis Ralston, the automobile man, got “fleeced” here last month; at the same table, too, with Joe dealing. Ralston was playing twenty-five-dollar checks. He played for an hour, lost fifteen thousand dollars and started away. They was one check that he’d overlooked, or maybe he’d meant to play it on the thirty-six, because it was close to the thirty-six, but it was off the board, not on no number or nothing. Joe called to him about it and Ralston says:

“All right. Play it on Number Eleven.”

So Joe put the check on No. 11, and No. 11 come up. Ralston begin to play again and in twenty minutes he had his fifteen thousand back and five hundred more, and he quit.

Ralston, though, is a nice fella and even the boss didn’t mind much seeing him get better than even after he was so far out. But if he hadn’t got even, you wouldn’t of heard no squawk from him. He’s been around too long to talk about being fleeced in a roulette game.

And yet, being a nice fella and a smart fella, too, don’t seem to mean nothing when it comes to roulette. You will hear sixty percent of all the men you know, smart or otherwise, and ninety-five percent of the women, talking about crooked wheels, and how so-and-so was “robbed” of so much at such and such a place. They’ll lose their shirt on a championship fight that’s been in the bag for a year, and never question it, no matter how raw it looks.

But let them see the black come up four times running, while they’re playing the red, and it’s “wrong.” Or let somebody tell them about this or that roulette house being crooked and they swallow it whole.

Here’s one thing that always gets them. We’ll say you’ve been playing the numbers and winning or losing a little, and you decide to make a good bet and you put, say, $25 on No. 28. I spin the ball and it lights in No. 28 and jumps out again and lights somewheres else and stays there. Then they’re all convinced that the ball belonged in No. 28 and wanted to be let alone, but I made a face at it or something and frightened it to wherever it finally stayed. They don’t seem to realize that ninety-eight times out of a hundred the ball jumps out of the first number it lands in. And oftener than not, it comes to rest in a number that’s a mile from where it lit first.

Listen: I’m fifty-six years old and I’ve been dealing for thirty years. I’ve dealt at Palm Beach, Miami, Havana, New York, French Lick, Saratoga and here, and I never yet seen a crooked wheel. Furthermore, I don’t know how you’d go about it to make it “wrong.” I’ve dealt for some fellas that would steal if they could, but they couldn’t for several reasons: They didn’t know how; they’d be at the mercy of their employees, who they’d have to take into the secret; they’d be closed up the minute they was suspected, even in places where they pay out pretty near a quarter of their receipts in graft.

Why, I worked a while in Cuba for a fella that would of used a blackjack if he hadn’t been able to make a big living out of his game. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. I knew he was a crook at heart, but I also knew his wheels was straight because they couldn’t be nothing else.

Well, one night they was a drunk in the place and he was playing hazard and squawking all the time and we all wanted him to lose his dough and go home. Finally he quit the hazard game and come to my table and put three one-hundred-dollar bills on No. 32. He asked me could he play that much. I said no, the limit was twenty-five.

Then he says to let him play it just once, so I looked up at the boss, who was standing near, and he nodded his head yes, to let her go. No. 32 it was, and the drunk staggered out with $10,500 of “our” money. The boss was wild and denied that he had ever give me the nod. I talked back to him and then he fired me.

Mind, I ain’t recommending you or nobody else to try and beat roulette. It’s a tough game, so tough that we wouldn’t have to cheat even if we could. But I’m saying that when you hear talk about some wheel somewheres being crooked, you can put it down as apple sauce and whoever’s telling it to you belongs at the County Goose Farm.

I’ll admit I’ve seen cheating, but it’s all done on your side of the table. We had a tricky pair, a man and a woman, here last season who was way ahead of the game before the boss give them the air. The man done the playing and the woman watched the ball. Here was their gag:

You’ll notice that the numbers 16, 19, 18, 21, 31 and 33 is all right close together on the wheel. Well, the fella would play a full stack of dollar checks between the 16 and 19, another stack between the 18 and 21 and a full stack each on 31 and 33. The gal would keep her eye on the ball till it was slowed down pretty near ready to drop. If it wasn’t going to drop in that section, she’d give the man the office and quick as a flash he’d grab all but three or four checks off each of the stacks he’d bet. If it was going to drop in that section, why of course he’d leave them all ride and make a nice profit.

I could name you a dozen ways that people like that try to beat us, and get away with it lots of times, too. To say nothing of the players, mostly women, who would be surprised and hurt if anybody questioned their honesty, but who will quietly sneak a check off a losing number or sneak one on a winning number after the ball has stopped rolling.

But now I’m going to tell you about a woman that cheated herself and her friends, and it happened right at this table the night after we opened up. The woman was a Mrs. Walter Hunt from Boston. It was her birthday and her husband give her a big dinner-party over at the hotel.

The party must of been wringing wet because everybody was feeling great when they got here.

Mrs. Hunt and three or four of her friends bought checks and for a while the game went along as usual with none of them winning or losing much. Then Hunt, who was playing at Joe’s table, sent some drinks over to his wife’s crowd and after they’d drunk them, they seemed to have a little more courage. One of the men in the gang said to Mrs. Hunt, he said:

“I’ve got an idear. Instead of us all piking along with dollar checks, let’s the five of us buy a couple of stacks of five-dollar checks and you play them and we will split.”

So Mrs. Hunt asked why she should play them and he said because it was her birthday.

“All right,” she said, “but don’t get mad at me if I lose your money.”

So they bought two stacks of five-dollar checks and she was going to play ten dollars on the red, but they stopped her.

“Play numbers,” they told her. “That’s the only way to get action.”

“But I don’t know what numbers to play,” she said.

Then another fella in her crowd spoke up.

“Play your age,” he says. “You wouldn’t tell us at dinner how old you are. But you just play number twenty-seven or twenty-eight or whatever it is and I bet it’ll come for you.”

The others said it was a great hunch.

“But you’re flattering me,” says Mrs. Hunt. “I hate to confess it, but I’ll have to play Number Thirty.”

So she put two five-dollar checks on No. 30. The ball stopped in No. 34.

“Double up on ’em,” says the fella that had had the hunch.

So she played twenty dollars on No. 30 and No. 34 repeated. Then she begin playing twenty-five dollars at a crack, always on No. 30, and she kept playing it till the first two stacks and two more was all gone. In all, she made fifteen plays. No. 30 never showed up, and No. 34 come five times. She and the four people with her quit and went out in the other room to have some more drinks and play bridge or something.

After a while her husband and another man in the party left Joe’s table and come to mine.

“I won’t bother you long,” Hunt says to me. “I’ve got fifty dollars left and I’m only going to make two plays.”

I gave him two twenty-five-dollar checks and he turned to the fella with him.

“What shall I play?” he says.

“Well,” says the fella, “this is your wife’s birthday. Why don’t you play her age?”

“That’s a good idear,” says Hunt, and he laid a check on No. 34. Plop! went the ball into No. 34 and Hunt was $875 ahead, probably four or five times as much as the party had cost him. And right there he cashed and quit and went out to tell the news to Mrs. Hunt and the four that had been “in” with her.

You asked me a while ago what had think became of Jess Dorsey. I told you he wasn’t dealing anymore, but I didn’t want to tell you, in front of them other people, what stopped him.

Jess never had no business behind a wheel. He was all right if some millionaire was playing, but he hated to see anybody lose that he thought couldn’t afford it. Many is the night he laid awake worrying because somebody, usually a dame, had dropped fifty or sixty dollars at his table and acted like it hurt them. He wouldn’t of lasted much longer at this game anyway, but the thing that happened to him was enough to break fellas a lot harder-boiled than Jess.

You know he never was a very cheerful fella and he had the blues so bad when his wife died, three years ago, that we used to take turns sitting up with him and trying to keep him entertained after working hours.

We was scared he’d do something to himself if he was left alone too much.

Well, the season before last started out terribly dull. The hotel was less than half full and except one or two nights a week, all we done was play pinochle there in the other room. Only for a couple of live regulars, like Jarvis Ralston, the boss might of been tempted to let us all go and close the house.

One night early a beautiful young gal come in and registered and got her card at the desk. We all scurried to our tables. She glanced around the room and then went to the table where Jess was dealing. It was his good looks that drew them. She bought ten dollars’ worth of fifty-cent checks, made them last about half an hour and then sat for half an hour more, talking to Jess.

She was a gal about twenty-two or twenty-three, kind of quiet and soft-spoken, and, as I say, beautiful, especially her eyes. She used them for all they was worth and when she looked right at you in a kind of a pleading way, well, you couldn’t help liking her and feeling sorry for her, though for all we knew, she didn’t need no sympathy from us or anybody else.

She showed up again the next night, lost another ten dollars and spent some more time talking. We asked Jess what they talked about and he said just the climate and the bathing and different places they’d both been, and so forth.

“Her name is Bennett, Amy Bennett,” said Jess. “She’s here all alone.”

“Well, you can fix that for her,” I said.

“No,” says Jess. “She wouldn’t have nothing to do with a fella like me. But I like to have her around. She reminds me of my wife.”

After he’d said that, none of us felt like kidding him about her, and when she’d come in nights and play, we’d leave them to themselves.

She come in every night for almost a week and went through the same performance, losing her ten dollars and then sitting there, talking.

Towards the end of the week, he made a date to meet her on the beach one morning and when he showed up for work that night, he acted like he was still under water.

I said to him: “Jess,” I said, “are you falling in love?”

“It’s past that,” he says. “I’ve already fell. I didn’t think I’d ever be interested in a woman again, but this one is different than any I ever met, except my wife.”

“What do you know about her?” I asked him.

“They ain’t much to know,” he said.

“She lives in Hartford, and she ain’t got much money.”

“Well,” I says, “she won’t have as much as she’s got if she keeps playing roulette. Ten dollars a night runs into important figures if you stick at it long enough.”

“I’ve told her she ought not to play,” he said, “but she likes the excitement and she always thinks her luck is going to change. And besides,” he said, “it wouldn’t look good, her coming here and not playing.”

Well, she interrupted us herself and after she’d lost a couple of bets, she asked Jess to pick out some number for her to play.

He says, “Try Number thirty-five.” She put two checks on No. 35, and No. 35 it was.

And that’s the worst thing in the world that could of happened.

Jess told her she’d better quit for that time, as he couldn’t be expected to guess as lucky for her again. So she smiled and said thanks and cashed in.

She talked to him a while, as usual, and made another date to meet him on the beach.

The devil was still playing tricks on Jess that night and when she asked him what to bet on, he told her to split the O’s.

The most she’d bet before was a dollar at a crack, but this time she stuck six half-dollar checks between the O’s and the single O come.

Well, you take a normal woman and if a thing like that had happened, they’d scream or at least show some signs of excitement. But this dame just looked at Jess and said: “You’re a darling!” without raising her voice. He made her quit again and now she was seventy or eighty dollars to the good.

“I wish I’d been playing more,” she said. “It seems silly to just be piking when I can’t lose.”

“Can’t lose!” says Jess. “Don’t get that idear into your head! I’ve picked you a winner two nights in succession, that’s as much as you can hope for. You better quit while you’re winner.”

“You like me, don’t you?” she said.

“You know I do,” said Jess.

“Well, then,” said the gal, “I know you’ll keep picking them right. You see you can’t fool me.”

Jess said he didn’t realize then what she meant; he was too far gone to really think.

He asked her if she’d go swimming with him in the morning. She said no, that her brother was coming on the boat and she had to meet him.

“But listen,” she says: “If you’re awfully good to me tomorrow night, even better than tonight or last, why, I’ll run away from my brother the day after tomorrow and we’ll have a party all to ourselves.”

She started to leave, but changed her mind and sat down again.

“Isn’t there some kind of a limit in roulette?” she asked im.

“Yes,” says Jess. “We have a limit of twenty-five dollars flat on a number, but you can star it or make a wall around it, and besides that, you can play big on the color and the odd or even, and so forth, to say nothing of bets on the three numbers, across the board, that includes your number, and the five numbers that surrounds your number on all sides. But I hope you ain’t going to plunge like that.”

“Not me,” said the gal. “But my brother might. And I want you to remember that he’s my brother.”

“I wish him luck,” says Jess.

“He’ll have it if you wish it,” says the gal.

Then she made him lay out the checks so as they’d be placed right for a limit bet. He took No. 26 as an example and used twenty-five-dollar checks.

He put one flat on 26 and “walled” it with eight more.

He laid three checks on the line here, covering the numbers 25, 26, and 27. And six checks each on these two spots, covering besides them three numbers, the 22, 23, and 24, and the 28, 29, and 30.

“That’s all,” he says, “except that you can play a thousand on the even, a thousand on the black, another thousand on the last eighteen, five hundred on the third dozen and five hundred more on the middle column. Altogether, you’re playing $4,600 and you stand to win $10,700.”

“And do you think,” she says, “that twenty-six will be a good number tomorrow night?”

“As good as any,” said Jess. “However, don’t ever imagine that that kind of playing is for you.”

“Of course not,” said the dame. “But I can’t control my brother and he always splits with me.”

And she smiled and walked out.

You know how it’s going to wind up. The fella wasn’t no more her brother than I am, and anybody but poor, simple Jess would of guessed it as soon as you seen them together. But whoever he was, he had the snappy idear lots of people gets⁠—that the dealer can spin any number he wants⁠—and he believed the gal when she told him Jess was so stuck on her that they was no chance for them to lose.

The moron didn’t lay the big bets on the even, the black, the last eighteen, and so on. But he bought enough twenty-five-dollar checks to cover No. 26 in every other way. His investment was $600 and his winnings was $5,700. That is, they would of been $5,700 if the ball hadn’t dropped in No. 4.

Before we had wrestled them out of the place, the gal had just missed poor Jess’s head with a heavy glass ashtray and had called him names that she’d never learned from a brother.

That’s how Jess come to quit dealing. I heard he was starting elevators in some office building way down on lower Broadway. I forget the address. Maybe it’s No. 26.