The game opened slowly. The first, second, and third hands were won by Jerry Smith. He tucked away his chips with a smile of satisfaction, as if the three hands were significant of the whole progress of the game. But Ronicky Doone pocketed his losses without either smile or sneer. He had played too often in games in the West which ran to huge prices. Miners had come in with their belts loaded with dust, eager to bet the entire sum of their winnings at once. Ranchers, fat with the profits of a good sale of cattle, had wagered the whole amount of it in a single evening. As far as large losses and large gains were concerned, Ronicky Doone was ready to handle the bets of anyone, other than millionaires, without a smile or a wince.
The trouble with McKeever was that he was playing the game too closely. Long before, it had been a maxim with the chief that a good gambler should only lose by a small margin. That maxim McKeever, playing for the first time for what he felt were important stakes in the eyes of Fernand, followed too closely. Stacking the cards, with the adeptness which years of practice had given to him, he never raised the amount of his opponent's hand beyond its own order. A pair was beaten by a pair, three of a kind was simply beaten by three of a kind of a higher order; and, when a full house was permitted by his expert dealing to appear to excite the other gamblers, he himself indulged in no more than a superior grade of three of a kind.
Half a dozen times these coincidences happened without calling for any distrust on the part of Ronicky Doone, but eventually he began to think. Steady training enabled his eyes to do what the eyes of the ordinary man could not achieve, and, while to Jerry Smith all that happened in the deals of McKeever was the height of correctness, Ronicky Doone, at the seventh deal, awakened to the fact that something was wrong.
He hardly dared to allow himself to think of anything for a time, but waited and watched, hoping against hope that Jerry Smith himself would discover the fraud which was being perpetrated on them. But Jerry Smith maintained a bland interest in the game. He had won between two and three hundred, and these winnings had been allowed by McKeever to accumulate in little runs, here and there. For nothing encourages a gambler toward reckless betting so much as a few series of high hands. He then begins to believe that he can tell, by some mysterious feeling inside, that one good hand presages another. Jerry Smith had not been brought to the point where he was willing to plunge, but he was very close to it.
McKeever was gathering the youngster in the hollow of his hand, and Ronicky Doone, fully awake and aware of all that was happening, felt a gathering rage accumulate in him. There was something doubly horrible in this cheating in this place. Ronicky set his teeth and watched. Plainly he was the chosen victim. The winnings of Jerry Smith were carefully balanced against the losses of Ronicky Doone. Hatred for this smooth-faced McKeever was waxing in him, and hatred in Ronicky Doone meant battle.
An interruption came to him from the side. It came in the form of a brief rustling of silk, like the stir of wind, and then Ruth Tolliver's coppery hair and green-blue eyes were before him--Ruth Tolliver in an evening gown and wonderful to look at. Ronicky Doone indulged himself with staring eyes, as he rose to greet her. This, then, was her chosen work under the régime of John Mark. It was as a gambler that she was great. The uneasy fire was in her eyes, the same fire that he had seen in Western gold camps, in Western gaming houses. And the delicate, nervous fingers now took on a new meaning to him.
That she had won heavily this evening he saw at once. The dangerous and impalpable flush of the gamester was on her face, and behind it burned a glow and radiance. She looked as if, having defeated men by the coolness of her wits and the favor of luck, she had begun to think that she could now outguess the world. Two men trailed behind her, stirring uneasily about when she paused at Ronicky's alcove table.
"You've found the place so soon?" she asked. "How is your luck?"
"Not nearly as good tonight as yours."
"Oh, I can't help winning. Every card I touch turns into gold this evening. I think I have the formula for it."
"Tell me, then," said Ronicky quickly enough, for there was just the shadow of a backward nod of her head.
"Just step aside. I'll spoil Mr. McKeever's game for him, I'm afraid."
Ronicky excused himself with a nod to the other two and followed the girl into the next room.
"I have bad news," she whispered instantly, "but keep smiling. Laugh if you can. The two men with me I don't know. They may be his spies for all we can tell. Ronicky Doone, John Mark is out for you. Why, in Heaven's name, are you interfering with Caroline Smith and her affairs? It will be your death, I promise you. John Mark has arrived and has placed men around the house. Ronicky Doone, he means business. Help yourself if you can. I'm unable to lift a hand for you. If I were you I should leave, and I should leave at once. Laugh, Ronicky Doone!"
He obeyed, laughing until the tears were glittering in his eyes, until the girl laughed with him.
"Good!" she whispered. "Good-by, Ronicky, and good luck."
He watched her going, saw the smiles of the two men, as they greeted her again and closed in beside her, and watched the light flash on her shoulders, as she shrugged away some shadow from her mind--perhaps the small care she had given about him. But no matter how cold-hearted she might be, how thoroughly in tune with this hard, bright world of New York, she at least was generous and had courage. Who could tell how much she risked by giving him that warning?
Ronicky went back to his place at the table, still laughing in apparent enjoyment of the jest he had just heard. He saw McKeever's ferretlike glance of interrogation and distrust--a thief's distrust of an honest man--but Ronicky's good nature did not falter in outward seeming for an instant. He swept up his hand, bet a hundred, with apparently foolish recklessness, on three sevens, and then had to buy fresh chips from McKeever.
The coming of the girl seemed to have completely upset his equilibrium as a gambler--certainly it made him bet with the recklessness of a madman. And Frederic Fernand, glancing in from time to time, watched the demolition of Ronicky's pile of chips, with growing complacence.
Ronicky Doone had allowed himself to take heed of the room about him, and Frederic Fernand liked him for it. His beautiful rooms were pearls cast before swine, so far as most of his visitors were concerned. A moment later Ronicky had risen, went toward the wall and drew a dagger from its sheath.
It was a full twelve inches in length, that blade, and it came to a point drawn out thinner than the eye could follow. The end was merely a long glint of light. As for Ronicky Doone, he cried out in surprise and then sat down, balancing the weapon in his hand and looking down at it, with the silent happiness of a child with a satisfying toy.
Frederic Fernand was observing him. There was something remarkably likable in young Doone, he decided. No matter what John Mark had said--no matter if John Mark was a genius in reading the characters of men--every genius could make mistakes. This, no doubt, was one of John Mark's mistakes. There was the free and careless thoughtlessness of a boy about this young fellow. And, though he glanced down the glimmering blade of the weapon, with a sort of sinister joy, Frederic Fernand did not greatly care. There was more to admire in the workmanship of the hilt than in a thousand such blades, but a Westerner would have his eye on the useful part of a thing.
"How much d'you think that's worth?" asked McKeever.
"Dunno," said Ronicky. "That's good steel."
He tried the point, then he snapped it under his thumb nail and a little shiver of a ringing sound reached as far as Frederic Fernand.
Then he saw Ronicky Doone suddenly lean a little across the table, pointing toward the hand in which McKeever held the pack, ready for the deal.
McKeever shook his head and gripped the pack more closely.
"Do you suspect me of crooked work?" asked McKeever. He pushed back his chair. Fernand, studying his lieutenant in this crisis, approved of him thoroughly. He himself was in a quandary. Westerners fight, and a fight would be most embarrassing. "Do you think--" began McKeever.
"I think you'll keep that hand and that same pack of cards on the table till I've had it looked over," said Ronicky Doone. "I've dropped a cold thousand to you, and you're winning it with stacked decks, McKeever."
There was a stifled oath from McKeever, as he jerked his hand back. Frederic Fernand was beginning to draw one breath of joy at the thought that McKeever would escape without having that pack, of all packs, examined, when the long dagger flashed in the hand of Ronicky Doone.
He struck as a cat strikes when it hooks the fish out of the stream--he struck as the snapper on the end of a whiplash doubles back. And well and truly did that steel uphold its fame.
The dull, chopping sound of the blow stood by itself for an instant. Then McKeever, looking down in horror at his hand, screamed and fell back in his chair.
That was the instant when Frederic Fernand judged his lieutenant and found him wanting. A man who fainted in such a crisis as this was beyond the pale.
Other people crowded past him. Frightened, desperate, he pushed on. At length his weight enabled him to squeeze through the rapidly gathering crowd of gamblers.
The only nonchalant man of the lot was he who had actually used the weapon. For Ronicky Doone stood with his shoulders propped against the wall, his hands clasped lightly behind him. For all that, it was plain that he was not unarmed. A certain calm insolence about his expression told Frederic Fernand that the teeth of the dragon were not drawn.
"Gents," he was saying, in his mild voice, while his eyes ran restlessly from face to face, "I sure do hate to bust up a nice little party like this one has been, but I figure them cards are stacked. I got a pile of reasons for knowing, and I want somebody to look over them cards--somebody that knows stacked cards when he sees 'em. Mostly it ain't hard to get onto the order of them being run up. I'll leave it, gents, to the man that runs this dump."
And, leaning across the table, he pushed the pack straight to Frederic Fernand. The latter set his teeth. It was very cunningly done to trap him. If he said the cards were straight they might be examined afterward; and, if he were discovered in a lie, it would mean more than the loss of McKeever--it would mean the ruin of everything. Did he dare take the chance? Must he give up McKeever? The work of years of careful education had been squandered on McKeever.
Fernand looked up, and his eyes rested on the calm face of Ronicky Doone. Why had he never met a man like that before? There was an assistant! There was a fellow with steel-cold nerve--worth a thousand trained McKeevers! Then he glanced at the wounded man, cowering and bunched in his chair. At that moment the gambler made up his mind to play the game in the big way and pocket his losses.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said sadly, placing the cards back on the edge of the table, "I am sorry to say that Mr. Doone is right. The pack has been run up. There it is for any of you to examine it. I don't pretend to understand. Most of you know that McKeever has been with me for years. Needless to say, he will be with me no more." And, turning on his heel, the old fellow walked slowly away, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed.
And the crowd poured after him to shake his hand and tell him of their unshakable confidence in his honesty. McKeever was ruined, but the house of Frederic Fernand was more firmly established than ever, after the trial of the night.
