"Freak?" I said, laying it on his mitral valve. After his heart had missed about eight beats, he started to sink, and I quit the lift. "Be polite, Simonetti," I said to the panic in his yellowish face. "Next time I'll pinch down tight. The coroner will call it heart failure. Tough." He wanted his stiletto. He needed it. He was sorry he had ever quit carrying it. A couple seconds of reflection told him I was too tough for him. He went for his partner, his face darkening with rage now that his heart could get some blood to it. He had his hands out, for Rose's throat, I guess. For my dough it took guts to put fingers that close to all those teeth. But he never got a chance to try it. An ashtray, one of those things with a shot-loaded cloth bag under it, flew off a desk, smacked him in the back of the head, and dropped to the floor with a thump. It wasn't a hard blow, but an upsetting one. Fowler Smythe grinned at him from where he was sitting in one of the leather divans. "Sit down and shut up, Sime," he suggested coolly. Simonetti sagged with defeat. "Look, Rose," he gasped. "I want out. Bad enough that our losses can't be stopped by this creep Smythe. Now you drag in another TK. Buy me out!" "What's a business worth that's losing its shirt?" Rose sneered. "We were in clover, you fool, till this cross-roader got to us. This is our only chance to get even." That finished Simonetti. He went back to his desk and slumped against it, scowling at the points of his handtooled boots. * * * * * Rose looked over at me. "Let's make sense," he said quietly. "We watched you on the TV monitor from the time you came in." "Sure," I said. "What about it?" he demanded. I shrugged. "I had my way with the dice, Peno. I dropped nine yards as fast as I could, then won it back. The spots came up for me every single roll but two, when I had my eye on something else." He snickered. "We saw her," he said. "How about it, Fowler?" I asked my Lodge Brother. "Was a worker tipping the dice tonight?" "I never felt it," he said. "But the table had dropped nearly forty grand during the shift, which was about over when you started to play. He's too good for me, Wally." "But you felt _my_ lifts," I protested. "You called 'TK' on the table." Smythe shrugged and took off his glasses. "I thought I felt you tipping when you first came to the layout," he said, waving them around. I nodded confirmation. "But it was smooth work, and I could hardly be sure. Most of these maverick TK's strong-arm the dice, and they skid across the layout with their spots up. You're way ahead of that--you don't touch them till the final few tumbles. And then, you were losing, and I couldn't see that the table was being hit." "I thought it was the smart move." I explained. "I was still controlling the dice, and if there'd been a cross-roader working, I should have felt him skidding them."