hips. Sometimes
more sure than others, she occasionally let a winning stack ride. On
other rolls, she keened and chanted oddly to herself, eyes closed, and
pinched down most of the stock. But she was never on the wrong side of
the "Pass" line. I kept track, not wanting my stack to build up past the
thousand with which I had started. Most of all, I watched the skinny gal
dope the dice, sniffle and wipe the end of her nose. She was one homely
sharecropper, that was a fact, but she had a nice feel for Lady Luck. Or
for what I planned next.

* * * * *

Wanting to come out with an even thousand, I adjusted the size of her
last bet. When I won it, I pulled my chips off the table, which Sniffles
didn't resist. She used the lull to grab a handful of sandwiches from
another waiter's tray. A gambler at the far end of the table came out,
calling loudly to the dice. The cubes made the length of the table,
bounced off the rail and came to a stop dead center, between me and the
three stick-men in the black aprons. That's the instant when every eye
is on the dice, trying to read the spots. And that's when the dice
jumped straight up off the baize, a good six-inch hop into the air, and
came down Snake Eyes, the old signal. Wow! I'd had it!

"TK!" somebody yelled. He might as well have screamed, "Fire!" the way
that mob of gamblers scuttled away from the table.

"No dice," one of the dealers said automatically. He raked the hopping
cubes sadly to him with his hoe-shaped dice-stick.

I made a break for it with the rest of the crowd, trying to keep my eye
on Sniffles. But she had the sure-loser's touch of slipping away from
any authority. She vanished into the milling mob. My last glimpse had
been of a skinny arm reaching up to pluck some more free _hors
d'oeuvres_ from a tray as she fled.

I should have saved myself the trouble. They had a bouncer on each of my
elbows before I had moved five feet. They carried more than dragged me
into a private dining room behind the bar. It went along with the ersatz
rustic _decor_ of the rest of the Sky Hi Club. There was sawdust on the
genuine wood floor, big brass spittoons and a life-sized oil-color of a
reclining nude, done with meaty attention to detail, behind a small
mahogany topped bar. Stacks of clean glasses vied for space with labeled
bottles on the back-bar.

One of the stick-men followed us into the room, taking his apron off as
he closed the door be