Mr. Dennithy, the manager plucked an imperfect petal from his buttonhole carnation and reluctantly pointed out. "These machines are vending, not gambling devices. They issue medical advice—on a limited scale," he added hurriedly.

"What!" I yelled in his face. "Let's go see this."

The tastefully decorated lounge was jammed with females, many of whom were bunched in little chirping bevies along the west wall. Stubby queues of women gave the place the look of a pari-mutuel stand, but the cheerful, tinkly chatter had nothing of the grim spirit of betting.

The three women attendants threw up their hands in despair when I told them to clear the room. "We can hardly get them to leave at night so we can clean up the place," one complained.

Impatiently I barged in, flashed my gold and platinum serpent-and-staff badge, and shouted. "These machines are illegal. This is a raid! Stand where you are, every last one of you!"

That did it. I almost got trampled in the stampede of high heels. Score one for my specialty in applied psychology and semantics. I learned later that, compared to one John Cunningham, I was a babe in the maternity ward.

Of this I got my first inkling when I examined one of the ten machines along the wall. It had a slot for a quarter. It was only two feet across by seven feet high and one foot thick. A circular mirror at eye level drew the female attention, and alongside was the slogan in large orange print:

"DO YOU REALLY FEEL WELL? Have you pains in your abdomen? Answer correctly the following questions and learn the truth from the Appendicitis Symptometer."

The next machine was named a "Kidney Stone Symptometer." The next advised about allergies, the next, pulmonary tuberculosis, and so on down to the one on the far end. Before this somewhat larger machine was the densest litter of carmine-tipped cigarette butts, some still smoldering on the carpet. This evident number-one favorite on the Symptometer Hit Parade asked disturbingly:

"COULD IT BE YOU ARE PREGNANT?"

Each machine had a bank of detailed questions to answer, each so couched that it could be satisfied by pressing one of three buttons. The instruction read: "Push the Red Button to answer YES, the White Button for NO, and the Yellow Button for SORT OF." This machine required a dollar.

To say that I 

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