woman comes along
whose attractions are genuinely dangerous to male peace of mind.

"Make your plays," warned the croupier dispassionately, holding the ball
between pallid thumb and forefinger while he prepared to spin the wheel
again.

The four couples placed bets. Madame Sin watched out of dark, exotic
eyes. She turned slowly, with her gold-link purse casually held in her
left hand; turned so that she made a complete, leisurely circle, as
though searching for someone. Then, with her red lips still shaped in a
smile, she faced the table again.

The croupier spun the wheel, snapped the ball into it. The eight players
leaned to watch it....

And in that position they remained. There was no movement of any sort
from any one of them. It was as though they had been frozen to blocks of
ice by a sudden blast of the cold of outer space; or as though a motion
picture had been stopped on its reel so that abruptly it became a
still-life, with all the actors in mid-move and with half-formed
expressions on their faces.

A tall blond girl was bent far over the table, with her left hand
hovering over her bet, on number twenty-nine. Beside her a man had a
cigarette in his lips and a lighter in his left hand which he had been
about to flick. Two other men were half facing each other with the lips
of one parted for a remark he had begun to make. The rest of the eight
were gazing at the wheel with arms hanging beside them.

And exactly in these positions they remained, for minute after minute.

During that time Madame Sin looked at them; and her smile now was a
thing to chill the blood. You couldn't have told why. Her face was as
serene-looking as ever, and there were no tangible lines of cruelty in
evidence in her face. Yet she looked like a she-fiend as she stared
around.

She walked to the croupier, who stood gazing at his wheel, with his
mouth open in the beginning of a yawn.

Down the hall came the clang of elevator doors, and the sound of
laughter and voices. Madame Sin glided toward the door. There she
paused, then went purposefully back to the table. She went swiftly from
one to another of the frozen, stark figures in their life-like but
utterly rigid positions, then back to the door.

Smiling, she left the room, passing five or six people who were about to
enter it for a little gambling. She was almost to the elevator shafts
when she heard a woman's scream knife the air, followed by a man's
hoarse shout that expres