THE CROOKED GAME
"Clickity-click, clickity-click, clickity-click," the monotonous song
of the rails told off the miles as the heavy train rushed westward
between the endless cornfields of a flat middle State. To the
well-built athletic young man who was one of the four occupants of the
little end-room, smoking compartment, the outlook was anything but
cheerful.
As far as the eye could reach long rows of shriveled husks, from which
the season's crop of yellow ears had been torn, flapped dejectedly
against their dried and broken stalks. Here and there a square of rich,
black loam, freshly turned, bespoke the forehanded farmer; while in the
fields of his neighbors straggling groups of cattle and hogs gleaned
half-heartedly in the standing roughage.
"Not much for scenery, is it?" The offensively garrulous passenger
directed his remarks to the young man, who abstractedly surveyed the
landscape. "No, sir," he continued, "you've got to go West for Scenery.
Ever been West?"
The young man nodded without removing his gaze from the window.
"I live in Colo_ray_do," the other persisted. "Went out there for my
health--and I stayed. Johnson's my name. I'm in the mining business."
His eyes swept the compartment to include the others in the too evident
geniality of their glance.
"Now that we're all acquainted," he ventured--"how about a little game
of seven-up, just to pass away the time? How about you, dad?"
Thus flippantly he addressed the ruddy-faced, middle-aged gentleman in
gray tweeds, whose attention was apparently concentrated upon the
lengthening ash of his cigar.
With enthusiasm undampened by the curtness of the latter's refusal, he
turned to the remaining passenger--a youth upon whose lip sprouted a
tenderly pruned mustache, so obviously new that it looked itchy.
"How about you, captain?" The top-heavy youth closed his magazine and
unlocked a brain-cell.
"I don't mind." He ostentatiously consulted a very gold watch. "Must be
in Chicago this evening," he muttered quite audibly, pulling a ten,
twent, thirt frown that caused his labial foliage to rustle with
importance.
He drew from his pocket a card upon which the ink was scarcely dry and
handed it to the effervescent Johnson, who read aloud:
Mr. LINCOLN S. TARBEL
Municipal Investigator
"You see," explained its owner, "it has reached the ears of the
managing editor of my paper in South Bend that vice in various forms
flourishes in Chicago! Thereupon he immediately sent for me and ordered
a sweeping investigation."
Further information was forestalled by the entrance of a suave-mannered
individual who introduced himself as a cigar salesman, and who was
readily induced to take a hand in the game.
The lightning-like glances that passed between the newcomer and the
Western Mr. Johnson, while entirely unnoted by the investigator of
municipal vice, aroused the interest of the athletic young man to the
point of assenting to make the fourth. Here, evidently, was something
about to be pulled off, and he decided to be actively among those
present.
The game progressed through several uneventful deals. Suddenly Johnson,
scrutinizing a hand dealt him by the cigar salesman, emitted a low
whistle.
"If we were playing poker now I'd have something to say!"
"Oh, I don't know! I've got some poker hand myself," opined the dealer.
"Discard one, to make a five-card hand, and I bet you five dollars I
beat you."
"You're on!" Each produced a bill which he handed to the athletic young
man to hold.
"Three eights and a pair of deuces," boasted the Westerner, exposing
the full hand upon the board.
"Beats three kings," admitted the other, ruefully laying down his hand.
The winner pocketed the money with an exaggerated wink in the direction
of the newspaper youth who had been an interested spectator.
The game progressed, and before many deals another challenge was passed
and accepted between the two. This time it was the salesman who
profited to the extent of twenty-five dollars which he received from
the stakeholder with the remark that he would bet his whole roll on a
jack full any old day.
The elderly gentleman smoked in silence and amused himself by mentally
cataloguing the players. Suddenly his attention became riveted.
What he saw jarred harshly upon his estimate of the athletic young man
who, at the conclusion of his deal, dexterously slipped some cards
beneath the table from his pile of tricks, then, bunching the pack,
passed it to the Westerner for the next deal.
He was on the point of exposing this cheap bit of knavery when the
young man glanced in his direction. Something in the steady gaze of the
gray eyes, though for the life of him he could not have told what,
stayed his purpose, and he settled into his seat, more puzzled than
before.
"If it had been any one of the others," he thought to himself; "and
then to think that he turns around and with a look virtually makes me a
party to his tuppenny trickery!"
His reflections were cut short by a sharp exclamation from the
investigator of vice who, in spite of his desire to appear composed,
was evidently laboring under great excitement.
"I'll bet twenty-five dollars I've got the best poker hand this time!"
He was staring at his tight-gripped cards. Johnson looked his hand
over--and with a careless:
"Here's where I get even," tossed the amount to the athletic young man,
who laid his cards upon the table. The cigar salesman broke in:
"Hold on! I'm in on this, too! Got a pretty fair hand myself. And just
to show you sports I'm game, I'll make it a hundred."
He passed a handful of bills to the stakeholder and glared defiantly at
the newspaper person who was in the act of returning a bill-fold to his
pocket.
"Why, that is all I've got!" he gasped, "and it's expense-money!"
"Well, of course," the other replied, "if you don't care to see my
hand, and I don't mind telling you it's more than a middling good
one----"
"I'll bet"--the hand that extracted the neatly folded bills from the
leather case shook and the voice rose to a ludicrous falsetto--"I've
got you beat, and if I had any more money with me I'd come back at
you."
"You've got a watch there," remarked Mr. Johnson. "Let's see it. I
ain't going to stay for the raise. My three sevens don't look as good
as they did."
"I paid fifty dollars for it!" piped the youth, passing the watch
across the board. Both men examined it.
"Oh, well, I don't know anything about watches, but I'll take your word
for it. Stick her up--here's the fifty."
"I've got _four_ aces!" squealed the reporter as he spread them out
face upward. He stared wildly at the other, and his hands made wet
marks where they touched the board.
"No good," remarked his opponent blandly. "Mine's hearts--all in a row,
with the jack at the top." One by one he laid them down--a straight
flush. South Bend stared incredulously at the cards.
"All right, Mr. Stakeholder," laughed the salesman, "pass over the
kale. Just slip out a five for your trouble."
"Just a minute." The voice of the stakeholder was quiet and his lips
smiled. The two across the board bristled aggressively and the plucked
one sniffled.
"Well"--there was an ugly note in the cigar salesman's voice--"a
straight flush beats four aces, don't it?"
"Oh, yes, there is no question as to that. Are these the same cards we
have been using?"
"Of course they are! What do you mean?" asked the dealer.
"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know. Our friend here has the right to
know that he got a square deal. Count the cards." The look of
apprehension on the faces of the two men faded into smiles.
"Sure thing. That's fair enough," acquiesced the dealer, proceeding to
gather the cards from the board. Slowly and deliberately he counted;
"fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two," he finished. "Here, captain, count them
yourself." He handed them to the youth, who mechanically ran them
through.
"They are all here," he admitted.
"Now, that is funny," smiled the stakeholder, "because last deal I
dropped several cards onto the floor. This gentleman saw me do it."
He nodded toward the elderly gentleman, who was now keenly interested,
and reached under the table.
"See--here they are. And, by the way, the nine and ten of hearts are
among them. And now, you cheap crooks," he added as he flung a handful
of bills onto the board, "take your money and beat it!"
The two men opposite looked for an instant into the narrowing gray
eyes, noted a certain tightening of the square jaw and the clenching of
a pair of very capable fists, and tarried not upon further orders.
Sweeping the money into their pockets they quit the compartment,
casting venomous back glances toward the young man whose lips could
smile while his eyes threatened.
"Here is yours, kid. And let me put you wise to something. The first
thing you do when you strike Chicago, buy a ticket to South Bend. They
are waiting for you in the wicked town--they can see you coming. The
next ones will spring a real live game, green goods, or wire tapping.
They will roll you before you can locate a rescue mission. About the
only form of vice they will give you time to investigate will be what
the taxi boy does to you.
"The cold-deck stunt you just fell for, sonny, is so old it totters. It
is the identical trick that started the coolness between Brutus and
Julius Caesar."