Eddie shifted his position, began to fish for another dime to drop into the record player. But Skip grabbed his wrist and held it, his finger digging into his flesh. “They give you a form to fill in, see? Every year for the past five years——” With his free hand Skip sketched five imaginary lines on the counter. His lips were pulled off his teeth in a fierce, foxy grin. “Where were you last year, friend? And the year before that? Weren’t you in some kind of little trouble? Would you care to give us your former address? Wasn’t it out in the country and weren’t you sort of working for the state?”

Skip released Eddie’s hand suddenly and Eddie sat huddled, wondering who had been watching.

After a minute in a low tone Eddie said, “Look, Skip, I’ve told you I didn’t——”

“You mean they took those two years for nothing?”

“Yes.”

“That’s kind of expensive nothing. Don’t you think you might have some change coming?” The waitress came and put down the food and the coffee, and there was silence while they dug out the money to pay her. “Now look. Afterwards, when we’re swamping dirty crockery, we can’t say we never had a chance. We had a big one. We had four cherries and a bell going bong-bong-bong and everybody screaming jackpot. We just pushed it away, that’s all.”

“Who’s pushing it away? I’m not,” Eddie said humbly.

“You’re not?”

They began to eat. Eddie wondered why Skip had the recurring urge to test and torment him. He ate and thought. Under the uneasiness he knew that Skip was right; there were freakish circumstances here which wouldn’t be apt to happen again. How often did you run into a girl like Karen, an odd ball, trusting Skip and telling him all that stuff about the old woman and the guy from Las Vegas and the money? In some ways Karen must be a dope, because what did she know about Skip? If she had known the truth, she wouldn’t have told Skip a word about anything bigger than a nickel.

Skip chewed slowly and then he said, “What we ought to do now is to go back to the house and scout around. It’ll be dark. With lights on inside we might see something.”

Eddie looked at him. Skip was all right again, friendly, sure of himself. “What about classes?”

“So we’re fifteen minutes late.” Skip shrugged.