Part 6 (1/2)
”All right, Mr. Stakeholder,” laughed the salesman, ”pa.s.s 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.”
CHAPTER VII
THE WRECK
The early darkness of late autumn settled over the flat country. Tiny lights twinkled from distant farmhouses as the Limited plowed through the night.
The athletic young man continued to stare moodily out of the window.
The black expanse of country became more thickly studded with lights.
They flashed in the foreground in regular constellations as the train whizzed with undiminished speed past tall block towers and tiny suburban stations.
Long parallel rows, narrowing to a point under a distant hazy nimbus, marked the course of the outreaching arteries of a great city. Warning bells clanged peremptorily at the lowered gates of grade crossings.
The car wheels crashed noisily over an ever-increasing number of frogs and switch points, an occasional brilliantly illuminated trolley car crept slowly over its rails, and the hundreds of green and red and yellow lights of the widening railroad yards lent a variety of color to the scene.
That infallible harbinger of an approaching terminal, the colored porter, had appeared in the doorway, whisk-broom in hand, when--suddenly--there was a grinding jar; the heavy coach trembled through its length, and from forward came a m.u.f.fled roar followed by the tearing crash of riven metal.
The car reared upward--higher and higher it climbed to the accompaniment of the terrible crunching grind that proclaims undirected power and benumbs the brain with the horrid possibilities of energy uncontrolled. When almost perpendicular the sleeper toppled and crashed sidewise across other tracks at right angles to its course.