Part 19

The dealer held up the three cards face out.

“What kind of an eye have you got, bub?” he asked.

“Oh, I don't know. A pretty fair eye. Why?”

“Do you think you could pick out the jack when I throw them out like this?” asked the dealer.

“Sure! She's that one.”

“Well,” exclaimed the gambler with a pretence of disgust, “damn if you didn't! I bet you five dollars you can't do it again.”

“Take you!” replied Orde. “Put up your five.”

Again Orde was permitted to pick the jack.

“You've got the best eye that's been in this place since I got here,” claimed the dealer admiringly. “Here, Dennis,” said he to his partner, “try if you can fool this fellow.”

Dennis obligingly took the cards, threw them, and lost. By this time the men, augmented by the idlers not busy with the card games, had drawn close.

“Sail into 'em, bub,” encouraged one.

Whether it was that the gamblers, expert in the reading of a man's mood and intentions, sensed the fact that Orde might be led to plunge, or whether, more simply, they were using him as a capper to draw the crowd into their game, it would be difficult to say, but twice more they bungled the throw and permitted him to win.

Newmark plucked him at the sleeve.

“You're twenty dollars ahead,” he muttered. “Quit it! I never saw anybody beat this game that much before.”

Orde merely shrugged him off with an appearance of growing excitement, while an HABITUE of the place, probably one of the hired fighters, growled into Newmark's ear.

“Shut up, you damn dude!” warned this man. “Keep out of what ain't none of your business.”

“What limit do you put on this game, anyway?” Orde leaned forward, his eyes alight.

The two gamblers spoke swiftly apart.

“How much do you want to bet?” asked one.

“Would you stand for five hundred dollars?” asked Orde.

A dead silence fell on the group. Plainly could be heard the men's quickened breathing. The shouts and noise from the card parties blundered through the stillness. Some one tiptoed across and whispered in the ear of the nearest player. A moment later the chairs at the two tables scraped back. One of them fell violently to the floor. Their occupants joined the tense group about the monte game. All the girls drew near. Only behind the bar the white-aproned bartenders wiped their glasses with apparent imperturbability, their eyes, however, on their brass knuckles hanging just beneath the counter, their ears pricked up for the riot call.

The gambler pretended to deliberate, his cool, shifty eyes running over the group before him. A small door immediately behind him swung slowly ajar an inch or so.

“Got the money?” he asked.

“Have you?” countered Orde.

Apparently satisfied, the man nodded.

“I'll go you, bub, if I lose,” said he. “Lay out your money.”

Orde counted out nine fifty-dollar bills and five tens. Probably no one in the group of men standing about had realised quite how much money five hundred dollars meant until they saw it thus tallied out before them.

“All right,” said the gambler, taking up the cards.