The mug's game
The stout jovial gentleman in the shapeless suit pulled a card out of his wallet and pushed it across the table. The printing on it said "Mr. J. J. Naskill."
The Saint looked at it and offered his cigarette case.
"I'm afraid I don't carry any cards," he said. "But my name is Simon Templar."
Mr. Naskill beamed, held out a large moist hand to be shaken, took a cigarette, mopped his glistening forehead and beamed again.
"Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Templar," he said heartily. "I get bored with my own company on these long journeys and it hurts my eyes to read on a train. Hate travelling, anyway. It's a good thing my business keeps me in one place most of the time. What's your job, by the way?"
Simon took a pull at his cigarette while he gave a moment's consideration to his answer. It was one of the few questions that ever embarrassed him. It wasn't that he had any real objection to telling the truth, but that the truth tended to disturb the tranquil flow of ordinary casual conversation. Without causing a certain amount of commotion, he couldn't say to a perfect stranger, "I'm a sort of benevolent brigand. I raise hell for crooks and racketeers of all kinds, and make life miserable for policemen, and rescue damsels in distress and all that sort of thing." The Saint had often thought of it as a deplorable commentary on the stodgy un-adventurousness of the average mortal's mind; but he knew that it was beyond his power to alter.
He said apologetically: "I'm just one of those lazy people. I believe they call it 'independent means.' "
This was true enough for an idle moment. The Saint could have exhibited a bank account that would have' dazzled many men who called themselves wealthy, but it was on the subject of how that wealth had been accumulated that several persons who lived by what they had previously called their wits were inclined to wax profane.
Mr. Naskill sighed.
"I don't blame you," he said. "Why work if you don',t have to? Wish I was in your shoes myself. Wasn't born lucky, that's all. Still, I've got a good business now, so I shouldn't complain. Expect you recognize the name."
"Naskill?" The Saint frowned slightly. When he repeated it, it did have a faintly familiar ring. "It sounds as if I ought to know it—"
The other nodded.
"Some people call it No-skill," he said. "They're about right, too. That's what it is. Magic for amateurs. Look."
He flicked a card out of his pocket on to the table between them. It was the ace of diamonds. He turned it over and immediately faced it again. It was the nine of clubs. He turned it over again and it was the queen of hearts. He left it lying face down on the cloth and Simon picked it up curiously and examined it. It was the three of spades, but there was nothing else remarkable about it.
"Used to be a conjuror myself," Naskill explained. "Then I got rheumatism in my hands, and I was on the rocks. Didn't know any other job, so I had to make a living teaching other people tricks. Most of 'em haven't the patience to practise sleight of hand, so I made it easy for 'em. Got a fine trade now, and a two-hundred-page catalogue. I can make anybody into just as good a magician as the money they like to spend, and they needn't practise for five minutes. Look."
He took the card that the Saint was still holding, tore it into small pieces, folded his plump fingers on them for a moment and spread out his hands — empty. Then he broke open the cigarette he was smoking and inside it was a three of spades rolled into a tight cylinder, crumpled but intact.
"You can buy that one for a dollar and a half," he said. "The first one I showed you is two dollars. It's daylight robbery, really, but some people like to show off at parties, and they give me a living."
Simon slid back his sleeve from his wrist watch and glanced out of the window at the speeding landscape. There was still about an hour to go before they would be in Miami, and he had nothing else to take up his time. Besides, Mr. Naskill was something novel and interesting in his experience; and it was part of the Saint's creed that a modern brigand could never know too much about the queerer things that went on in the world.
He caught the eye of a waiter at the other end of the dining car and beckoned him over.
"Could you stand a drink?" he suggested.
"Scotch for me," said Mr. Naskill gratefully. He wiped his face again while Simon duplicated the order. "But I'm still talking about myself. If I'm boring you—"
"Not a bit of it." The Saint was perfectly sincere. "I don't often meet anyone with an unusual job like yours. Do you know any more tricks?"
Mr. Naskill polished a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, fitted them on his nose and hitched himself forward.
"Look," he said eagerly.
He was like a child with a new collection of toys. He dug into another of his sagging pockets, which Simon was now deciding were probably loaded with enough portable equipment to stage a complete show, and hauled out a pack of cards which he pushed over to the Saint.
"You take 'em. Look 'em over as much as you like. See if you can find anything wrong with 'em… All right. Now shuffle 'em. Shuffle 'em all you want." He waited. "Now spread 'em out on the table. You're doing this trick, not me. Take any card you like. Look at it — don't let me see it. All right. Now, I haven't touched the cards at all, have I, except to give 'em to you? You shuffled 'em and you picked a card without me helping you. I couldn't have forced it on you or anything. Eh? All right. Well, I could put any trimmings I wanted on this trick — any fancy stunts I could think up to make it look more mysterious. They'd all be easy because I know what card you've got all the time. You've got the six of diamonds."
Simon turned the card over. It was the six of diamonds.
"How's that?" Naskill demanded gleefully.
The Saint grinned. He drew a handful of cards towards him, face downwards as they lay, and pored over the backs for two or three minutes before he sat back again with a rueful shrug.
Mr. Naskill chortled.
"There's nothing wrong with your eyes," he said. "You could go over 'em with a microscope and not find anything. All the same, I'll tell you what you've got. The king of spades, the two of spades, the ten of hearts—"
"I'll take your word for it," said the Saint resignedly. "But how on earth do you do it?"
Naskill glowed delightedly.
"Look," he said.
He took off his glasses and passed them over. Under the flat lenses Simon could see the notations clearly printed in the corners of each card — KS, 2S, 10H. They vanished as soon as he moved the glasses and it was impossible to find a trace of them with the naked eye.
"I've heard of that being done with coloured glasses," said the Saint slowly, "but I noticed that yours weren't coloured."
Naskill shook his head.
"Coloured glasses are old stuff. Too crude. Used to be used a lot by sharpers but too many people got to hear about 'em. You couldn't get into a card game with coloured glasses these days. No good for conjuring, either. But this is good. Invented it myself. Special ink and special kind of glass. There is a tint in it, of course, but it's too faint to notice." He shoved the cards over the cloth. "Here. Keep the lot for a souvenir. You can have some fun with your friends. But don't go asking 'em in for a game of poker, mind."
Simon gathered the cards together.
"It would be rather a temptation," he admitted. "But don't you get a lot of customers who buy them just for that?"
"Sure. A lot of professionals use my stuff. I know 'em all. Often see 'em in the shop. Good customers — they buy by the dozen. Can't refuse to serve 'em — they'd only get 'em some other way or buy somewhere else. I call it a compliment to the goods I sell. Never bothers my conscience. Anybody who plays cards with strangers is asking for trouble, anyway. It isn't only professionals, either. You'd be surprised at some of the people I've had come in and ask for a deck of readers — that's the trade name for 'em. I remember one fellow…"
He launched into a series of anecdotes that filled up the time until they had to separate to their compartments to collect their luggage. Mr. Naskill's pining for company was understandable after only a few minutes' acquaintance; it was clear that he was constitutionally incapable of surviving for long without an audience.
Simon Templar was not bored. He had already had his money's worth. Whether his friends would allow him to get very far with a programme of card tricks if he appeared before them in an unaccustomed set of horn-rimmed windows was highly doubtful; but the trick was worth knowing, just the same.
Almost every kind of craftsman has specialized journals to inform him of the latest inventions and discoveries and technical advances in his trade, but there is as yet no publication called the Grafter's Gazette and Weekly Skulldugger to keep a professional freebooter abreast of the newest devices for separating the sucker from his dough, and the Saint was largely dependent on his own researches for the encyclopedic knowledge of the wiles of the ungodly that had brought so much woe to the chevaliers d'industrie of two hemispheres. Mr. Naskill's conversation had yielded a scrap of information that would be filed away in the Saint's well-stocked memory against the day when it would be useful. It might lie fallow for a month, a year, five years, before it produced its harvest: the Saint was in no hurry. In the fulness of time he would collect his dividend — it was one of the cardinal articles of his faith that nothing of that kind ever crossed his path without a rendezvous for the future, however distant that future might be. But one of the things that always gave the Saint a particular affection for this story was the promptness with which his expectations were fulfilled.
There were some episodes in Simon Templar's life when all the component parts of a perfectly rounded diagram fell into place one by one with such a sweetly definitive succession of crisp clicks that mere coincidence was too pallid and anemic a theory with which to account for them — when he almost felt as if he was reclining passively in an armchair and watching the oiled wheels of Fate roll smoothly through the convolutions of a supernaturally engineered machine.
Two days later he was relaxing his long lean body on the private beach of the Roney Plaza, revelling in the clean sharp bite of the sun on his brown skin and lazily debating the comparative attractions of iced beer or a tinkling highball as a noon refresher, when two voices reached him sufficiently clearly to force themselves into his drowsy consciousness. They belonged to a man and a girl, and it was obvious that they were quarrelling.
Simon wasn't interested. He was at peace with the world. He concentrated on digging up a small sand castle with his toes and tried to shut them out. And then he heard the girl say: "My God, are you so dumb that you can't see that they must be crooks?"
It was the word "crooks" that did it. When the Saint heard that word, he could no more have concentrated on sand castles than a rabid egyptologist could have remained aloof while gossip of scarabs and sarcophagi shuttled across his head. A private squabble was one thing, but this was something else that to the Saint made eavesdropping not only pardonable but almost a moral obligation.
He rolled over and looked at the girl. She was only a few feet from him and even at that range it was easier to go on looking than to look away. From her loose raven hair down to her daintily enamelled toenails there wasn't an inch of her that didn't make its own demoralizing demands on the eye, and the clinging silk swimsuit she wore left very few inches any secrets.
"Why must they be crooks?" asked the man stubbornly. He was young and tow-headed but the Saint's keen survey traced hard and haggard lines in his face. "Just because I've been out of luck—"
"Luck!" The girl's voice was scornful and impatient. "You were out of luck when you met them. Two men that you know nothing about, who pick you up in a bar and suddenly discover that you're the bosom pal they've been looking for all their lives — who want to take you out to dinner every night, and take you out fishing every day, and buy you drinks and show you the town — and you talk about luck! D'you think they'd do all that if they didn't know they could get you to play cards with them every night and make you lose enough to pay them back a hundred times over?"
"I won plenty from them to begin with."
"Of course you did! They let you win — just to encourage you to play higher. And now you've lost all that back and a lot more that you can't afford to lose. And you're still going on, making it worse and worse." She caught his arm impulsively and her voice softened. "Oh, Eddie, I hate fighting with you like this, but can't you see what a fool you're being?"
"Well, why don't you leave me alone if you hate fighting? Anyone might think I was a kid straight out of school."
He shrugged himself angrily away from her, and as he turned he looked straight into the Saint's eyes. Simon was so interested that the movement caught him unprepared, still watching them, as if he had been hiding behind a curtain and it had been abruptly torn down.
It was so much too late for Simon to switch his eyes away without looking even guiltier that he had to go on watching, and the young man went on scowling, at him and said uncomfortably: "We aren't really going to cut each other's throats, but there are some things that women can't understand."
"If a man told him that elephants laid eggs he'd believe it, just because it was a man who told him," said the girl petulantly, and she also looked at the Saint. "Perhaps if you told him—"
"The trouble is, she won't give me credit for having any sense—"
"He's such a baby—"
"If she didn't read so many detective stories—"
"He's so damned pig-headed—"
The Saint held up his hands.
"Wait a minute," he pleaded. "Don't shoot the referee — he doesn't know what it's all about. I couldn't help hearing what you were saying, but it isn't my fight."
The young man rubbed his head shamefacedly, and the girl bit her lip.
Then she said quickly: "Well, please, won't you be a referee? Perhaps he'd listen to you. He's lost fifteen thousand dollars already, and it isn't all his own money—"
"For God's sake," the man burst out savagely, "are you trying to make me look a complete heel?"
The girl caught her breath, and her lip trembled. And then, with a sort of sob, she picked herself up and walked quickly away without another word.
The young man gazed after her in silence, and his fist clenched on a handful of sand as if he would have liked to hurt it.
"Oh hell," he said expressively.
Simon drew a cigarette out of the packet beside him and tapped it meditatively on his thumbnail while the awkward hiatus made itself at home. His eyes seemed to be intent on following the movements of a small fishing cruiser far out on the emerald waters of the Gulf Stream.
"It's none of my damn business," he remarked at length, "but isn't there just a chance that the girl friend may be right? It's happened before; and a resort like this is rather a happy hunting ground for all kinds of crooks."
"I know it is," said the other sourly. He turned and looked at the Saint again miserably. "But I am pigheaded, and I can't bear to admit to her that I could have been such a mug. She's my fiancée — I suppose you guessed that. My name's Mercer."
"Simon Templar is mine."
The name had a significance for Mercer that it apparently had not had for Mr. Naskill. His eyes opened wide.
"Good God, you don't mean — You're not the Saint?"
Simon smiled. He was still immodest enough to enjoy the sensation that his name could sometimes cause.
"That's what they call me."
"Of course I've read about you, but — Well, it sort of… " The young man petered out incoherently. "And I'd have argued with you about crooks!.. But — well, you ought to know. Do you think I've been a mug?"
The Saint's brows slanted sympathetically.
"If you took my advice," he answered, "you'd let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it off to experience, and don't do it again."
"But I can't!" Mercer's response was desperate. "She — she was telling the truth. I've lost money that wasn't mine. I've only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn't pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They've found me a better job here, starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us twenty thousand dollars to buy it and furnish it, and that's the money I've been playing with. Don't you see? I've got to go on and win it back!"
"Or go on and lose the rest."
"Oh, I know. But I thought the luck must change before that. And yet — But everybody who plays cards isn't a crook, is he? And I don't see how they could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them. I've been looking for it. And I couldn't catch them making a single move that wasn't above-board. Then I began to think about marked cards — we've always played with their cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I've been looking at it this morning. I'll swear there isn't a mark on it. Here, I can show you."
He fumbled feverishly in a pocket of his beach robe and pulled out a pack of cards. Simon glanced through them. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see; and it was then that he remembered Mr. J. J. Naskill.
"Does either of these birds wear glasses?" he asked.
"One of them wears pince-nez," replied the mystified young man. "But—"
"I'm afraid," said the Saint thoughtfully, "that it looks as if you are a mug."
Mercer swallowed.
"If I am," he said helplessly, "what on earth am I going to do?"
Simon hitched himself up.
"Personally, I'm going to have a dip in the pool. And you're going to be so busy apologizing to your fiancee and making friends again that you won't have time to think about anything else. I'll keep these cards and make sure about them, if you don't mind. Then suppose we meet in the bar for a cocktail about six o'clock, and maybe I'll be able to tell you something."
When he returned to his own room the Saint put on Mr. Naskill's horn-rimmed glasses and examined the cards again. Every one of them was clearly marked in the diagonally opposite corners with the value of the card and the initial of the suit, exactly like the deck that Naskill had given him; and it was then that the Saint knew that his faith in Destiny was justified again.
Shortly after six o'clock he strolled into the bar and saw that Mercer and the girl were already there. It was clear that they had buried their quarrel.
Mercer introduced her: "Miss Grange — or you can just call her Josephine."
She was wearing something in black and white taffeta, with a black and white hat and black and white gloves and a black and white bag, and she looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion plate. She said: "We're both ashamed of ourselves for having a scene in front of you this afternoon, but I'm glad we did. You've done Eddie a lot of good."
"I hadn't any right to blurt out all my troubles like that," Mercer said sheepishly. "You were damned nice about it."
The Saint grinned.
"I'm a pretty nice guy," he murmured. "And now I've got something to show you. Here are your cards."
He spread the deck out on the table and then he took the horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and held them over the cards so that the other two could look through them. He slid the cards under the lenses one by one, face downwards, and turned them over afterwards, and for a little while they stared in breathless silence.
The girl gasped.
"I told you so!"
Mercer's fists clenched.
"By God, if I don't murder those swine—"
She caught his wrist as he almost jumped up from the table.
"Eddie, that won't do you any good."
"It won't do them any good either! When I've finished with them—"
"But that won't get any of the money back."
"I'll beat it out of them."
"But that'll only get you in trouble with the police. That wouldn't help. Wait!" She clung to him frantically. "I've got it. You could borrow Mr. Templar's glasses and play them at their own game. You could break Yoring's glasses — sort of accidentally. They wouldn't dare to stop playing on account of that. They'd just have to trust to luck, like you've been doing, and anyway, they'd feel sure they were going to get it all back again later. And you could win everything back and never see them again." She shook his arm in her excitement. "Go on, Eddie. It 'd serve them right. I'll let you play just once more if you'll do that!"
Mercer's eyes turned to the Saint, and Simon pushed the glasses across the table towards him.
The young man picked them up slowly, looked at the cards through them again. His mouth twitched. And then, with a sudden hopeless gesture, he thrust them away and passed a shaky hand over his eyes.
"It's no good," he said wretchedly. "I couldn't do it. They know I don't wear glasses. And I–I've never done anything like that before. I'd only make a mess of it. They'd spot me in five minutes. And then there wouldn't be anything I could say. I–I wouldn't have the nerve. I suppose I'm just a mug after all…"
The Saint leaned back and put a light to a cigarette and sent a smoke ring spinning through the fronds of a potted palm. In all his life he had never missed a cue, and it seemed that this was very much like a cue. He had come to Miami to bask in the sun and be good, but it wasn't his fault if business was thrust upon him.
"Maybe someone with a bit of experience could do it better," he said. "Suppose you let me meet your friends."
Mercer looked at him, first blankly, then incredulously; and the girl's dark eyes slowly lighted up.
Her slim fingers reached impetuously for the Saint's hand.
"You wouldn't really do that — help Eddie to win back what he's lost—"
"What would you expect Robin Hood to do?" asked the Saint quizzically. "I've got a reputation to keep up — and I might even pay my own expenses while I'm doing it." He drew the revealing glasses towards him and tucked them back in his pocket. "Let's go and have some dinner and organize the details."
But actually there were hardly any details left to organize, for Josephine Grange's inspiration had been practically complete in its first outline. The Saint, who never believed in expending any superfluous effort, devoted most of his attention to some excellent lobster thermidor; but he had a pleasant sense of anticipation that lent an edge to his appetite. He knew, even then, that all those interludes of virtue in which he had so often tried to indulge, those brief intervals in which he played at being an ordinary respectable citizen and promised himself to forget that there was such a thing as crime, were only harmless self-deceptions — that for him the only complete life was still the ceaseless hair-trigger battle in which he had found so much delight. And this episode had everything that he asked to make a perfect cameo.
He felt like a star actor waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act of an obviously triumphant first night when they left the girl at the Roney Plaza and walked over to the Riptide — "that's where we usually meet," Mercer explained. And a few minutes later he was being introduced to the other two members of the cast.
Mr. Yoring, who wore the pince-nez, was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit, with white hair and bloodhound jowls and a pathetically frustrated expression. He looked like a retired businessman whose wife took him to the opera. Mr. Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner: he looked like the kind of man that men like Mr. Yoring wish they could be. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Mr. Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.
"Having a good time here, Mr. Templar?"
"Pretty good."
"Ain't we all having a good time?" crowed Mr. Yoring. "I'm gonna buy a drink."
"I've just ordered a drink," said Mr. Kilgarry.
"Well, I'm gonna order another," said Mr. Yoring defiantly. No wife was going to take him to the opera tonight. "Who said there was a Depression? What do you think, Mr. Templar?"
"I haven't found any in my affairs lately," Simon answered truthfully.
"You in business, Mr. Templar?" asked Mr. Kilgarry interestedly.
The Saint smiled.
"My business is letting other people make money for me," he said, continuing strictly in the vein of truth. He patted his pockets significantly. "The market's been doing pretty well these days."
Mr. Kilgarry and Mr. Yoring exchanged glances, while the Saint picked up his drink. It wasn't his fault if they misunderstood him; but it had been rather obvious that the conversation was doomed to launch some tactful feelers into his financial status, and Simon saw no need to add to their coming troubles by making them work hard for their information.
"Well, that's fine," said Mr. Yoring happily. "I'm gonna buy another drink."
"You can't," said Mr. Kilgarry. "It's my turn."
Mr. Yoring looked wistful, like a small boy who has been told that he can't go out and play with his new air gun. Then he wrapped an arm around Mercer's shoulders.
"You gonna play tonight, Eddie?"
"I don't know," Mercer said hesitantly. "I've just been having some dinner with Mr. Templar—"
"Bring him along," boomed Mr. Kilgarry heartily. "What's the difference? Four's better than three, any day. D'you play cards, Mr. Templar?"
"Most games," said the Saint cheerfully.
"That's fine," said Mr. Kilgarry. "Fine," he repeated, as if he wanted to leave no doubt that he thought it was fine.
Mr. Yoring looked dubious.
"I dunno. We play rather high stakes, Mr. Templar."
"They can't be too high for me," said the Saint boastfully.
"Fine," said Mr. Kilgarry again, removing the last vestige of uncertainty about his personal opinion. "Then that's settled. What's holding us back?"
There was really nothing holding them back except the drinks that were lined up on the bar, and that deterrent was eliminated with a discreetly persuasive briskness. Under Mr. Kilgarry's breezy leadership they piled into a taxi and headed for one of the smaller hotels on Ocean Drive, where Mr. Yoring proclaimed that he had a bottle of scotch that would save them from the agonies of thirst while they were playing. As they rode up in the elevator he hooked his arm affectionately through the Saint's.
"Say, you're awright, ole man," he announced. "I like to meet a young feller like you. You oughta come out fishin' with us. Got our own boat here, hired for the season, an' we just take out fellers we like. You like fishin'?"
"I like catching sharks," said the Saint, with unblinking innocence.
"You ought to come out with us," said Mr. Kilgarry hospitably.
The room was large and uncomfortable, cluttered with that hideous hodgepodge of gilt and lacquer and brocade, assembled without regard to any harmony of style or period, which passes for the height of luxury in American hotel furnishing. In the centre of the room there was a card table already set up, adding one more discordant note to the cacophony of junk, but still looking as if it belonged there. There were bottles and a pail of ice on a pea-green and old-rose butterfly table of incredible awfulness.
Mr. Kilgarry brought up chairs, and Mr. Yoring patted Mercer on the shoulder.
"You fix a drink, Eddie," he said. "Let's all make ourselves at home."
He lowered himself into a place at the table, took off his pince-nez, breathed on them and began to polish them with his handkerchief.
Mercer's tense gaze caught the Saint's for an instant. Simon nodded imperceptibly and settled his own glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose.
"How's the luck going to be tonight, Eddie?" chaffed Kilgarry, opening two new decks of cards and spilling them on the cloth.
"You'll be surprised," retorted the young man. "I'm going to give you two gasbags a beautiful beating tonight."
"Attaboy," chirped Yoring encouragingly.
Simon had taken one glance at the cards, and that had been enough to assure him that Mr. Naskill would have been proud to claim them as his product. After that, he had been watching Mercer's back as he worked over the drinks. Yoring was still polishing his pince-nez when Mercer turned to the table with a glass in each hand. He put one glass down beside Yoring, and as he reached over to place the other glass in front of the Saint the cuff of his coat sleeve flicked the pince-nez out of Yoring's fingers and sent them spinning. The Saint made a dive to catch them, missed, stumbled and brought his heel down on the exact spot where they were in the act of hitting the carpet. There was a dull scrunching sound, and after that there was a thick and stifling silence.
The Saint spoke first.
"That's torn it," he said weakly.
Yoring blinked at him as if he was going to burst into tears.
"I'm terribly sorry," said the Saint.
He bent down and tried to gather up some of the debris. Only the gold bridge of the pince-nez remained in one piece, and that was bent. He put it on the table, started to collect the scraps of glass and then gave up the hopeless task.
"I'll pay for them, of course," he said.
"I'll split it with you," said Mercer. "It was my fault. We'll take it out of my winnings."
Yoring looked from one to another with watery eyes.
"I–I don't think I can play without my glasses," he mumbled.
Mercer flopped into the vacant chair and raked in the cards.
"Come on," he said callously. "It isn't as bad as all that. You can show us your hand and we'll tell you what you've got."
"Can't you manage?" urged the Saint. "I was going to enjoy this game, and it won't be nearly so much fun with only three."
The silence came back, thicker than before. Yoring's eyes shifted despairingly from side to side. And then Kilgarry crushed his cigar butt violently into an ash tray.
"You can't back out now," he said, and there was an audible growl in the fruity tones of his voice.
He broke the other pack across the baize with a vicious jerk of his hand that was as eloquent as a movement could be.
"Straight poker — with the joker wild. Let's go."
To Simon Templar the game had the same dizzy unreality that it would have had if he had been supernaturally endowed with a genuine gift of clairvoyance. He knew the value of every card as it was dealt, knew what was in his own hand before he picked it up. Even though there was nothing mysterious about it, the effect of the glasses he was wearing gave him a sensation of weirdness that was too instinctive to overcome. It was mechanically childish, and yet it was an unforgettable experience. When he was out of the game, watching the others bet against each other, it was like being a cat watching two blind men looking for each other in the dark.
For nearly an hour, curiously enough, the play was fairly even: when he counted his chips he had only a couple of hundred dollars more than when he started. Mercer, throwing in his hand whenever the Saint warned him by a pressure of his foot under the table that the opposition was too strong, had done slightly better; but there was nothing sensational in their advantage. Even Mr. Naskill's magic lenses had no influence over the run of the cards, and the luck of the deals slightly favoured Yoring and Kilgarry. The Saint's clairvoyant knowledge saved him from making any disastrous errors, but now and again he had to bet out a hopeless hand to avoid giving too crude an impression of infallibility.
He played a steadily aggressive game, waiting patiently for the change that he knew must come as soon as the basis of the play had had time to settle down and establish itself. His nerves were cool and serene, and he smiled often with an air of faint amusement; but something inside him was poised and gathered like a panther crouched for a spring.
Presently Kilgarry called Mercer on the third raise and lost a small jackpot to three nines. Mercer scowled as he stacked the handful of chips.
"Hell, what's the matter with this game?" he protested. "This isn't the way we usually play. Let's get some life into it."
"It does seem a bit slow," Simon agreed. "How about raising the ante?"
"Make it a hundred dollars," Mercer said sharply. "I'm getting tired of this. Just because my luck's changed we don't have to start playing for peanuts."
Simon drew his cigarette to a bright glow.
"It suits me."
Yoring plucked at his lower lip with fingers that were still shaky.
"I dunno, ole man—"
"Okay." Kilgarry pushed out two fifty-dollar chips with a kind of fierce restraint. "I'll play for a hundred."
He had been playing all the time with grim concentration, his shoulders hunched as if he had to give some outlet to a seethe of violence in his muscles, his jaw thrust out and tightly clamped; and as the time went by he seemed to have been regaining confidence. "Maybe the game is on the level," was the idea expressed by every line of his body, "but I can still take a couple of mugs like this in any game."
He said, almost with a resumption of his former heartiness:
"Are you staying long, Mr. Templar?"
"I expect I'll be here for quite a while."
"That's fine! Then after Mr. Yoring's got some new glasses we might have a better game."
"I shouldn't be surprised," said the Saint amiably.
He was holding two pairs. He took a card, and still had two pairs. Kilgarry stood pat on three kings. Mercer drew three cards to a pair, and was no better off afterwards. Yoring took two cards and filled a flush.
"One hundred," said Yoring nervously.
Mercer hesitated, threw in his hand.
"And two hundred," snapped Kilgarry.
"And five," said the Saint.
Yoring looked at them blearily. He took a long time to make up his mind. And then, with a sigh, he pushed his hand into the discard.
"See you," said Kilgarry.
With a wry grin, the Saint faced his hand. Kilgarry grinned also, with a sudden triumph, and faced his.
Yoring made a noise like a faint groan.
"Fix us another drink, Eddie," he said huskily.
He took the next pack and shuffled it clumsily. His fingers were like sausages strung together. Kilgarry's mouth opened on one side and he nudged the Saint as he made the cut.
"Lost his nerve," he said. "See what happens when they get old."
"Who's old?" said Mr. Yoring plaintively. "There ain't more 'n three years—"
"But you've got old ideas," Kilgarry jeered. "You could have beaten both of us."
"You never had to wear glasses—"
"Who said you wanted glasses to play poker? It isn't always the cards that win."
Kilgarry was smiling, but his eyes were almost glaring at Yoring as he spoke. Yoring avoided his gaze guiltily and squinted at the hand he had dealt himself. It contained the six, seven, eight and nine of diamonds, and the queen of spades. Simon held two pairs again but the card he drew made it a full house. He watched while Yoring discarded the queen of spades and felt again that sensation of supernatural omniscience as he saw that the top card of the pack, the card Yoring had to take, was the ten of hearts.
Yoring took it, fumbled his hand to the edge of the table, and turned up the corners to peep at them. For a second he sat quite still, with only his mouth working. And then, as if the accumulation of all his misfortunes had at last stung him to a wild and fearful reaction like the turning of a worm, a change seemed to come over him. He let the cards flatten out again with a defiant click and drew himself up. He began to count off hundred-dollar chips.
Mercer, with only a pair of sevens, bluffed recklessly for two rounds before he fell out in response to the Saint's kick under the table.
There were five thousand dollars in the pool before Kilgarry, with a straight, shrugged surrenderingly and dropped his hand in the discard.
The Saint counted two stacks of chips and pushed them in.
"Make it another two grand," he said.
Yoring looked at him waveringly. Then he pushed in two stacks of his own.
"There's your two grand." He counted the chips he had left, swept them with a sudden splash into the pile. "And twenty-nine hundred more," he said.
Simon had twelve hundred left in chips. He pushed them in, opened his wallet and added crisp new bills.
"Making three thousand more than that for you to see me," he said coolly.
Mercer sucked in his breath and whispered: "Oh boy!"
Kilgarry said nothing, hunching tensely over the table.
Yoring blinked at him.
"Len' me some chips, old man."
"Do you know what you're doing?" Kilgarry asked in a harsh strained voice.
Yoring picked up his glass and half emptied it. His hand wobbled so that some of it ran down his chin.
"I know," he snapped.
He reached out and raked Kilgarry's chips into the pile.
"Eighteen hunnerd," he said. "I gotta buy some more. I'll write you a check—"
Simon shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'm playing table stakes. We agreed on that when we started."
Yoring peered at him.
"You meanin' something insultin' about my check?"
"I don't mean that," Simon replied evenly. "It's just a matter of principle. I believe in sticking to the rules. I'll play you a credit game some other time. Tonight we're putting it on the line."
He made a slight gesture towards the cigar box where they had each deposited five thousand-dollar bills when they bought their chips.
"Now look here," Kilgarry began menacingly.
The Saint's clear blue eyes met his with sapphire smoothness.
"I said cash, brother. Is that clear?"
Yoring groped through his pockets. One by one he untangled crumpled bills from various hiding places until he had built his bet up to thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars. Then he glared at Kilgarry.
"Len' me what you've got."
"But—"
"All of it!"
Reluctantly Kilgarry passed over a roll. Yoring licked his thumb and numbered it through. It produced a total raise of four thousand one hundred and fifty dollars. He gulped down the rest of his drink and dribbled some more down his chin.
"Go on," he said thickly, staring at the Saint. "Raise that."
Simon counted out four thousand-dollar bills. He had one more, and he held it poised. Then he smiled.
"What's the use?" he said. "You couldn't meet it. I'll take the change and see you."
Yoring's hand went to his mouth. He didn't move for a moment, except for the wild swerve of his eyes.
Then he picked up his cards. With trembling slowness he turned them over one by one. The six, seven, eight, nine — and ten of diamonds.
Nobody spoke; and for some seconds the Saint sat quite still. He was summarizing the whole scenario for himself, in all its inspired ingenuity and mathematical precision, and it is a plain fact that he found it completely beautiful. He was aware that Mercer was shaking him inarticulately and that Yoring's rheumy eyes were opening wider on him with a flame of triumph.
And suddenly Kilgarry guffawed and thumped the table.
"Go to it," he said. "Pick it up, Yoring. I take it all back. You're not so old, either!"
Yoring opened both his arms to embrace the pool.
"Just a minute," said the Saint.
His voice was softer and gentler than ever, but it stunned the room to another immeasurable silence. Yoring froze as he moved, with his arms almost shaped into a ring. And the Saint smiled very kindly.
Certainly it had been a good trick, and an education, but the Saint didn't want the others to fall too hard. He had those moments of sympathy for the ungodly in their downfall.
He turned over his own cards, one by one. Aces. Four of them. Simon thought they looked pretty. He had collected them with considerable care, which may have prejudiced him. And the joker.
"My pot, I think," he remarked apologetically.
Kilgarry's chair was the first to grate back.
"Here," he snarled, "that's not—"
"The hand he dealt me?" The texture of Simon's mockery was like gossamer. "And he wasn't playing the hand I thought he had, either. I thought he'd have some fun when he got used to being without his glasses," he added cryptically.
He tipped up the cigar box and added its contents to the stack of currency in front of him, and stacked it into a neat sheaf.
"Well, I'm afraid that sort of kills the game for tonight," he murmured, and his hand was in his side pocket before Kilgarry's movement was half started. Otherwise he gave no sign of perturbation, and his languid self-possession was as smooth as velvet. "I suppose we'd better call it a day," he said without any superfluous emphasis.
Mercer recovered his voice first.
"That's right," he said jerkily. "You two have won plenty from me other nights. Now we've got some of it back. Let's get out of here, Templar."
They walked along Ocean Drive, past the variegated modernistic shapes of the hotels, with the rustle of the surf in their ears.
"How much did you win on that last hand?" asked the young man.
"About fourteen thousand dollars," said the Saint contentedly.
Mercer said awkwardly: "That's just about what I'd lost to them before… I don't know how I can ever thank you for getting it back. I'd never have had the nerve to do it alone… And then when Yoring turned up that straight flush — I don't know why — I had an awful moment thinking you'd made a mistake."
The Saint put a cigarette in his mouth and struck his lighter.
"I don't make a lot of mistakes," he said calmly. "That's where a lot of people go wrong. It makes me rather tired, sometimes. I suppose it's just professional pride, but I hate to be taken for a mug. And the funny thing is that with my reputation there are always people trying it. I suppose they think that my reactions are so easy to predict that it makes me quite a setup for any smart business." The Saint sighed, deploring the inexplicable optimism of those who should know better. "Of course I knew that a switch like that was coming — the whole idea was to make me feel so confident of the advantage I had with those glasses that I'd be an easy victim for any ordinary cardsharping. And then, of course, I wasn't supposed to be able to make any complaint because that would have meant admitting that I was cheating, too. It was a grand idea, Eddie — at least you can say that for it."
Mercer had taken several steps before all the implications of what the Saint had said really hit him.
"But wait a minute," he got out. "How do you mean they knew you were wearing trick glasses?"
"Why else do you imagine they planted that guy on the train to pretend he was J. J. Naskill?" asked the Saint patiently. "That isn't very bright of you, Eddie. Now, I'm nearly always bright. I was so bright that I smelt a rat directly you lugged that pack of marked cards out of your beach robe — that was really carrying it a bit too far, to have them all ready to produce after you'd got me to listen in on your little act with Josephine. I must say you all played your parts beautifully, otherwise; but it's little details like that that spoil the effect. I told you at the time that you were a mug," said the Saint reprovingly. "Now why don't you paddle off and try to comfort Yoring and Kilgarry? I'm afraid they're going to be rather hurt when they hear that you didn't manage to at least make the best of a bad job and get me to hand you my winnings."
But Mercer did not paddle off at once. He stared at the Saint for quite a long time, understanding why so many other men who had once thought themselves clever had learned to regard that cool and smiling privateer as something closely allied to the devil himself. And wondering, as they had, why the death penalty for murder had ever been invented.