“That’s right.”

“I’m lucky,” Foster said. “I got the money to pay him. Sammy is a hard man when you don’t pay off.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the bartender said. “Excuse me.”

He moved off to take care of a couple of vodka collinses.

“So you hate me too,” Foster said, and, picking up his drink, wandered away from the bar.

He was surprised to see Betty sitting alone in a booth, watching him. But he was not at all surprised to see that her blond hair, her limpid eyes, her pink-and-white skin had lost all attraction for him. She bored him. Also, she was going to make a nuisance of herself.

Foster ignored the girl and went further back, to where a bulky oblong object was glowing in polychromatic colors against the far wall. It was what the manufacturers insist on terming an automatic phonograph, in spite of the more aptly descriptive word juke-box.

This was a lovely juke-box. It had lots of lights and colors. Moreover, it wasn’t watching Foster, and it kept its mouth shut.

Foster draped himself over the juke-box and patted its sleek sides.

“You’re my girl,” he announced. “You’re beautiful. I love you madly, do you hear? Madly.”

He could feel Betty’s gaze on his back. He swigged his drink and smoothed the juke-box’s flanks, glibly protesting his sudden affection for the object. Once he glanced around. Betty was starting to get up.

Foster hastily found a nickel in his pocket and slipped it into the coin-lever, but before he could push it in, a stocky, dark man wearing horn-rimmed glasses entered the bar, nodded at Foster, and moved quickly to a booth where a fat person in tweeds was sitting. There was a short consultation, during which money changed hands, and the stocky man made a note in a small book he brought from his pocket.

Foster took out his wallet. He had had trouble with Sammy before, and wanted no more. The bookie was insistent on his pound of flesh. Foster counted his money, blinked, and counted it again, while his stomach fell several feet. Either he had been short-changed, or he had lost some dough. He was short.

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