“I see,” the commander said, looking at her thoughtfully. “All right, I guess it’s up to me to return the favor. Do you see that man sitting at the far right on the end blackjack table? The pale one?”
Maxine craned her neck slightly, then nodded.
“Well, realizing your interest in collecting casinos, he’s someone you might want to watch out for in the future.”
“Really?” Max said, studying the indicated individual. “What is he? A card cheat?”
“Not hardly,” Phule said easily. “In fact, we’ve taken steps to screen out as many known cheats as possible-part of our job as security, you know. It might be of interest to you that we’ve already sent over a hundred of them back to the spaceport so far today.”
Maxine digested this news in silence for a few moments.
“That’s quite a claim, Captain,” she said at last, speaking slowly and carefully. “Might I inquire as to how you managed to detect them?”
“It wasn’t that difficult,” the commander said. “We had spotted most of them during the past week, along with the dealers who were feeding them bad deals and extra chips. Tullie Bascom, the new casino manager, helped us pick out the rest. It seems he knows most of them on sight. Once they were identified, it was just a matter of picking the right time to weed them out without disrupting the legitimate guests, and I felt today was the right time.”
“Tullie Bascom.” Max said the name as if it tasted bad. “I thought he had retired. For that matter, I was under the impression that Huey Martin was the manager.”