Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 6

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with the six of hearts. The civil servant, who had an insatiable

curiosity, called his raise to twenty pounds and sighed and muttered

mournfully as he paid the ivory chips into the pot and Jake swept them

away and stacked them neatly in front of him.

"Let's have a new pack-" smiled Gareth, lifting a finger for a servant,

and hope that it breaks your run of luck." Gareth offered the seal on

the new pack for inspection, then split it with his thumbnail and

unwrapped the pristine cards with their bicycle-wheel designs,

fanned them, lifted the jokers and began to shuffle, at the same time

starting a very funny and obscene story about a bishop who entered the

women's rest room at Choring Cross Station in error.

The joke took a minute or two in the telling and in the roar of

masculine laughter that followed, Gareth began to deal, skimming the

cards across the green baize, so that they piled up neatly before each

player. Only Jake had noticed that during the bishop's harrowing

experiences in the ladies" room, Gareth had blocked the cards between

shuffles, and that each time as he lifted the two blocks he had rolled

his wrists so that for a fleeting instant they had fanned slightly and

faced.

Guffawing loudly, the baron gathered up his hand and looked at it.

He choked in the middle of his next guffaw, and his eyelid started to

jump and twitch, as though it was making love to his nose. From across

the table came a loud hiss of indrawn breath as the planter closed his

cards quickly and covered them with both hands. At Jake's right

hand,

the civil servant's face shone like polished yellow ivory and a little

trickle of sweat broke from his thinning hairline, ran down his nose,

and dripped unheeded on to the front of his dress shirt, as he stared

at his cards.

Jake opened his own cards, and glanced at the three queens it

contained. He sighed and began his own story.

"When I was first engineer on the old Harvest Maid tied up in

Kowloon, the skipper brought a fancy little dude on board and we all

got into a game. The stakes kept jumping up and up, and just after

midnight this dude dealt one hell of a hand." Nobody appeared to be

listening to Jake's story, they were all too absorbed with their own

cards.

"The skipper ended up with four kings, I got four jacks and the ship's

doctor pulled a mere four tens." Jake rearranged the queens in his

hand and broke off his story while Gareth Swales fulfilled the civil

servant's request for two cards.

"The dude himself took one card from the draw and the betting went mad.

We were throwing everything we owned into the pot. Thanks,

friend, I'll take two cards also." Gareth flicked two cards across the

table, and Jake discarded from his hand before picking them up.

"As I was saying, we were almost stripping off our underpants to throw

it all in the middle. I was in for a little over a thousand bucks Jake

squeezed open the new cards and could hardly suppress a grin. All the

ladies were there. Four pretty little queens peered out at him.

"We signed IOUs, we pledged our wages, and the dude came right along on

the ride, not pushing the betting but staying right there."

Gareth gave the baron one card and drew one himself.

They were listening now, eyes darting from Jake's lips to their own

cards.

"Well, when it came to the showdown, we were looking at each other

across a pile of cash that came to the ceiling and the dude hit us with

a straight flush. I remember it so clearly, in clubs three to the

eight. It took the skipper and me twelve hours to recover from the

shock and then we worked out the odds on that deal just happening

naturally it was something like sixteen million to one. The odds were

against the dude and we went looking for him. Found him down at the

old Peninsula Hotel, spending our hard-won gold. We were preparing for

sea at the time. Our boilers were cold. We sat the dude on top of

them, and fired them.

Had to tie him down, of course, and after a few hours his knockers,

were roasting like chestnuts."

"By God," exclaimed the peer.

"How awful."

"Quite right," Jake agreed. "Hell of a stink in my engine room." A

heavy charged silence settled over the table all of them aware that

something explosive was about to happen, that an accusation had been

made, but most of them not certain what the accusation was,

and at whom it had been levelled. They held up their cards like

protective shields, and their eyes darted suspiciously from face to

face. The atmosphere was so tense that it pervaded the gracious

room,

and the players at the other tables paused and looked up.

I think," Gareth Swales drawled in crisp tones that carried to every

corner of the listening room, "that what Mr. Barton is trying to say

is that somebody is cheating." That word, spoken in these

surroundings, was so shocking, so charged with dire consequence, that

strong men gasped and blanched. Cheating in the club, by God, better a

man be accused of adultery or ordinary murder.

"I must say that I have to agree with Mr. Barton." The icy blue eyes

snapped with angry lights, and he turned deliberately to the bewildered

member of the House of lords beside him.

"I wonder if you would be good enough, sir, to inform us as to the

exact amount of our money that you have won." The voice cracked like a

whiplash, and the peer stared at him with complete incomprehension for

a moment and then his face mottled purple and crimson, and he gobbled

angrily.

"Sir! How dare you. Good God, sir!-" and he rose in his seat,

breathless, choking with outrage.

"Have at him!" cried Gareth, and overturned the heavy teak table with

a single upward thrust of both hands. It crashed over, pinning the

planter and the civil servant under it, and scattering ivory chips and

playing cards in such profusion that nobody would ever know what cards

Gareth Swales had dealt to himself in that last remarkable deal.

Gareth leaned across the struggling mass of downed players and clipped

the peer smartly under the left ear.

"Cheating! Ha! Caught you cheating!" The peer roared like a bull and

swung a full-armed punch under which Gareth ducked lightly, but which

went on to catch the club secretary between the eyes, as he hurried up

to intervene.

The room erupted into violence, as the other members rushed in to

assist the secretary.

Jake tried to reach Gareth, through the sudden seething storm of

bodies.

"Not him, you!" he shouted angrily, flexing his arms and knotting his

fists.

There were forty club members in the room. Only one person was not

dressed in the uniform that showed they belonged Jake in his baggy

moleskins and the pack turned on him.

"Watch out behind you, old boy," Gareth warned Jake in a friendly

fashion, as he reached out to take the lapels of Gareth's suit in his

hands.

Jake whirled to meet the rush of angry members, and the fists that were

bunched for Major Swales thudded into the charging group. Two of them

dropped but the rest swarmed on.

"Lay on!" Gareth encouraged him merrily. "And damned be he who cries

"Enough"." Miraculously he had armed himself with a billiard cue.

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