“And up you ten.”
Trudi’s voice lifted plaintively from the corner:
“‘I’ll be blamed if I can see, my baby.…
I’ll be blamed if I can see, my honey …
I’ll be blamed if I can see
How all my money got away from me
This mornin’—this evenin’—so so-ooon.’”
“And twenty.”
“See you.”
“Three aces are better than three nines—or they used to be when I was a boy. Why not try walking round your chair, Doug?”
Doug, tilting the whiskey bottle at a sharp angle, once more displayed that even and disquieting glitter of teeth.
“Oh, I’ve a notion that it takes something more than that to win from Lucky Baird. Shove over another pile of those blues, will you, banker? Two cards, if it’s all the same to you.”
“‘Duncan and his brother was playing pool,’” intoned the indefatigable Trudi,
“‘When Brady came in acting like a fool;
He shot him once, he shot him twice,
Saying, “I don’t make my living shooting dice!”
Brady won’t come no mo-ore!
Brady won’t come no more!
Brady won’t come no mo-ore!
For Duncan shot Brady with a forty-four!’” …
“Let’s ease into it with a five this time. What you doin’, Bright Eyes?”
“‘When the girls heard Brady was dead
They went up home, and put on red,
And came down town singing this song
Brady’s struttin’ in Hell with his Stetson on!’”
“And up you five.”
“See you, and raise it five.”
“And twenty.”
“And up you ten.”
“‘Brady, where you at?
Brady, where you at?
Brady, where you at?
Strollin’ through Hell in your Stetson ha-at!”
“Full house, Dart; standing room only!”
“All yours, my dear fellow! Angels are certainly hovering over you to-night. Cards, Lindy?”
“Two.”
“Kit! Kit Baird! Chatty wants ‘Clinch Mountain. Can you sing ‘Clinch Mountain’ and play poker?”
“My good girl, I can sing the Fifth Symphony and play poker. Ask Mr. King.… All right, Chatty, here’s to you!”
The careless voice filled the room with its drifting and bitter charm.
“‘Way up on Clinch Mountain
I wander alone;
I’m drunk as the devil.…
Oh, let me alone!—’”
“Up you ten.”
“And ten more.”
The voice wandered too, mischievous and melancholy:
“‘Jack o’ diamonds, Jack o’ diamonds,
I know you of old—
You done rob my pockets
Of silver and gold!
I know you of old, boy,
I know you—’”
Doug King, leaning heavily on the table, said more heavily still, “Lord, you’re an ungrateful beggar! I understood in Panama that he lines your pockets instead of robbing them—”
Kit tilted his chair back, lifting a warning hand to quell the rising turbulence in Joel’s expressive countenance.
“Easy, old boy.… King, you seem to have Panama on your mind this evening. Is there anything you’d especially like to tell us about its flora, fauna, or local head-dresses before we go on? We’ll hold up the game until you can give us your undivided attention, if you’d rather.”
“No, no. It’ll keep.” Doug’s voice was once more geniality itself. “We want to save something for a rainy day, you know—and it looks to me as though to-morrow were going to be good and rainy. One card.”
“That being the case,” said the red-headed young man, mildly regretful, “the command is forward! Dealer takes three. Don’t tell me we’ve lost all our other playmates!”
“You lost two of ’em before the draw,” said Joel Hardy, contemplating his cards gloomily. “You’d have lost three, if I’d had any sense.” He bent a look of some intensity on the apparently oblivious Douglas. “Speaking of playmates and foreign parts, Kit, Larry told me about that Polish offer. I hope to the Lord you’re going to give it two thoughts before you turn it down; it means New York a good bit, you know, and there are a few of your playmates who would rather enjoy having you around again.”
Kit lashed him that brief and unforgettable smile. “Thanks—I’ve given it two thoughts. One before the game started and one since. I’m taking the Polish job.… You opening this thing, Doug?”
For once Lindy was not quick enough with the concealing lashes; from the lifted eyes there flashed something so winged and dazzling that Doug King, glancing up in time to catch it squarely, drew back as though it had been a buffet in his face.
After a moment he said evenly, “Open for ten.”
“And up you ten,” retorted Kit, permitting himself a smile of ingenuous pleasure.
“And twenty.”
“And twenty more.”
Doug King stared down at the blank green space before him where the red and blue and white piles had stood like soldiers so short a time ago. He reached his hands toward the gay clutter in the centre of the table.
“I’ll go shy,” he said briefly. “See your twenty and up you thirty.”
“‘On what strange meat hath this our Cæsar fed, That he is grown so great?’” inquired the red-headed young man with interest. “Now is it just possible that he has them?” He slid another little pile into the clutter, his eyes dancing. “Let’s see what kind of a hand makes you carry on like that, Doug?”
“Straight, ace high.”
He flung them on the table carelessly enough, but the light blue eyes that met the dark blue ones across the table were not careless.
Kit remarked in a voice tenderly commiserative, “One ace isn’t high enough, old boy; I’ve got three.” He laid them delicately on the table before him, and let two others flutter after them. “And a pair of paltry little fives thrown in for luck.… Games of skill are what you ought to go in for, not games of chance. Take slapjack, now—”
Doug burst into a sudden laugh—a laugh so expansively contagious that even Joel’s tense, dark face relaxed.
“I’ll take another Scotch, if it’s all the same to you. God, what a run of luck!… All right, all right, I know when I’m through, boys and girls; I didn’t know that there was as much money in the world as I’ve lost in twenty minutes!” He drew the cards toward him with mock awe. “Three aces, no less—I’ve forgotten what three aces look like. Beautiful as the morning, aren’t they?” He pushed his chair back with an emphatic thump. “Well, here’s where you all see the best trick I do—transformation of well-known poker player into champion apple-roaster. The rest of you roisterers can go it without me. I know when I’m licked. Check in the morning for you, Kit. These the sticks for the apples, Lindy?”
“Yes—we’ll all help; you’ve had enough, too, haven’t you, Gavin?” Her voice sang; her eyes sang, too. “Just as soon as we cash these in—”
Doug fingered the tip of the stick critically “This thing’s too blunt to go through any apple in the world, and my pocket knife’s upstairs, confound it. Where’s that dinky thing I was trying to cut the ham with? That was good and sharp.”
“Trudi, darling, where did you put the silver?”
“Back in the cabinet by the window. We’re settling up over here, too; I’m starving to death. Don’t tell me all that gold and silver belongs to you, Chatty Ross!”
Doug, knife in hand, stood leaning negligently against the back of his chair, eyes more intent on the stacks mounting under Kit’s long fingers than on the stick that he was whittling.
“Quite a killing, my lad! What did you clear? Five hundred?”
“Seven hundred and forty, if I’m correct. I haven’t seen whether it balances yet.”
“And you’re the only
winner?”
“No, no; it comes closer to making you the only loser. Joel’s a couple of hundred ahead, Dart’s dropped about seventy-five, and as far as I can make out, Lindy broke pretty nearly even. It begins to look as though you gave the party.”
“It began to look that way to me some time back,” said Doug King amiably. He leaned forward to inspect the neat rows of figures that were blossoming under Kit’s fingers—there was a quick spurt of red and the stick fell to the ground with a clatter. “Oh, double damn that thing!” He flung the knife on the table with a sharp grimace, and bent his head to the damaged thumb. “Lord, I’ll say it was sharp! I’m darned lucky it didn’t take it off.”
Joel said in a voice untinged by any very marked sympathy, “If you don’t stop waving it around like that you’re apt to wreck all these cards. You’ve got some blood on one of ’em.”
Doug, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket with one hand, made a valiantly unsuccessful effort to staunch the blod. “No, that’s no go; Lindy, lend a hand, will you? If you catch it right below the knuckle it’ll make a kind of tourniquet.”
Lindy, teeth deep in her lip, stretched out a hand, shuddered, and turned away. “Oh, Doug, I—simply can’t. I’m so dreadfully, dreadfully sorry.”
The handkerchief with its ugly crimson pattern fluttered to the table, and Doug stood staring ruefully at the abandoned thumb.
“My fault, my dear; I clean forgot how you felt about it. As a matter of fact, the thing’s pretty deep; I suppose I’d be a plain fool not to clean it out before I bandage it. I’ll just dash upstairs, fix it up, and be back before any of you know it.” He swept up the handkerchief, waved a gallantly reassuring hand, and was gone.
Kit, drawing the edge of the knife across his thumb, remarked pensively, “He was quite correct about its being sharp. Still and all …” He sat staring at it appraisingly for a moment before he put it back, and rose leisurely to his feet. “Doug, the deft and dexterous, slicing his finger to the bone and dropping stick, knife, and handkerchief before you could materialize as much as a white rabbit.… How come? How come? … It’s quite all right, Lindy, you can look up—there’s not a sign of the tragedy left, not so much as—” He checked sharply for a moment, staring down at the place where the red-flecked handkerchief had lain, and then continued evenly, “not so much as a single drop of blood.”
Joel, sweeping the chips into the red lacquer box, remarked with some acerbity, “I don’t know yet why he made such a roar and racket over how deep it was. It looked to me as though he hadn’t even got a good nick out of his knuckle! Think he was making a grandstand play at you, Lindy?”
Lindy, sorting the cards into two neat stacks, murmured with a palely valiant smile, “Oh, I hardly think he’d choose blood as a short cut to my heart.… I’m glad it wasn’t deep.”
Kit, his eyes still on the table, quoted pensively, “‘Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but’tis enough—’twill serve’.… Whither bound, Ray?”
Ray, halfway to the door, called back, “After some aspirin; my head’s simply splitting—it’s this everlasting wind.”
“Are we going to have to sharpen this whole pile of sticks before we can use them?”
Lindy cast an apprehensive glance at the knife.
Joel, kneeling to examine the points, answered blankly, “They’re sharp as nails, every last one of them. He picked the only blunt one of the lot. By heck, I said it was a dodge! Now just what—”
Kit, drawing a leisurely finger tip over the green space before him, said absently:
“I’ve got some iodine up in my room; I rather think I’ll play the good Samaritan and pass it along…. As he says, this might turn out to be dangerous.”
He smiled down into the shadowed questions that were Lindy’s eyes and was gone, on feet silent and unhurried.
For a moment the group at the table sat staring after him, behind the straining eyes something stirring, something chilled and startled and disturbed, something dark, that followed him into darkness.… It was Joel who broke the silence with an impatient shrug and a not particularly reassuring laugh.
“If we all crouch around here listening to this blasted wind much longer we’ll get as cuckoo as that child wife of mine. Good-night, listen to it! The damn thing sounds as though it came tearing straight up out of hell.…”
They listened, turning their faces to the frantic clamour soaring now to a higher pitch of frenzy and despair … higher … higher … higher still. Lindy sprang to her feet, pushing the table from her.
“Who’s going to stir up these embers? Trudi, aren’t you and your cutthroats through? It’s getting on to twelve, and not a soul has even started the chestnuts.”
Trudi, checking glumly on expert fingers, groaned aloud. “Sherry, you poor lout, how even you could lose six dollars and eighty-five cents as fast as that is beyond me!” She swept the pile of silver into Larry’s predacious palm. “Where’s that warming pan for the chestnuts? Joel Hardy, what are you skulking around the outskirts for—got a rendezvous? Turn out the blaze of glory while you’re over there, will you? I’m all through with the lights and the music; what I’m after from this on is cosseting and peace.”
Joel reached abstractedly for the switch, and the room sank gratefully back into firelight and shadow.
“I was just trying to make up my mind whether to chase upstairs and see how the hospital ward was getting on,” he remarked to the group that had already forgotten to listen. “Did Ray say she was—Oh, hello Kitten! I was just going up. Headache better?”
The little figure across the dark threshold said, “No” in a strange voice that didn’t belong to Ray at all, and then moved swiftly forward, clutching at him with hands that were ice cold even through the comforting warmth of his coat.
“Joel, Joel, take me away rrom this place.”
“Look out!” shrieked Trudi above the firelit laughter, “you’ll have every last one in the ashes if you tilt it like that—there! Doggone you, Sheridan, not even a nut’s safe with you. Where’s the tongs? If you take the fire shovel—”
“Ray, for the love of the Lord, what’s the matter with you? Stop chattering your teeth like that; what is it, a chill?”
“No … no. Joel, we’ve got to get away; we’ve—”
“What do you mean, get away? Darling, you’re completely off your head; I’ll bet you’ve taken half that bottle of aspirin. Look, come over to the fire, and I’ll tuck you up on a cushion.”
“I haven’t t-touched any aspirin. It was all dark. I—took the wrong turn.… Joel, don’t make me stay here. D-don’t… don’t—”
She clung to him, drawing him deeper into the shadows, hysteria chattering behind that frantic whisper.
Joel put reassuring arms about her, his face swept with relief and mirth.
“Did something frighten my poor child? Did she hear a wicked little ghost? Well, I won’t let any ghost that ever walked touch one hair of that blessed little cracked head of yours! Ray, you’ll be the death of me yet.”
“It wasn’t the ghost. I heard… I—” She twisted in his arms with a sudden convulsive energy. “Joel, listen; if you get the car, we can slip out the back way without anyone seeing us. We can get to Washington in two hours; we can—”
He gripped her shoulders, his voice suddenly stern. “Ray, what in God’s name are you talking about? You heard Kit Baird tell you that the bridge was down between here and Washington.”
“He said there was a place where you could ford; he did, he did—I heard him tell Lindy.… Hurry, hurry—”
Joel gave her a vicious shake.
“Be quiet, you little lunatic—someone will hear you. If you think that just because you have some insane maggot in your brain about ghosts and graveyards you can—”
She said, “Joel, listen to me—you’ve got to listen to me. Something frightful’s going to happen here; something frightful’s happening now.… Listen—” She threw back her head, and asked in a thr
ead of a voice from which everything was frozen but terror, “What’s that?”
“What’s that? Of all the—”
“That … That noise. Hush!”
He listened, frowning and intent, straining his ears above the crying wind, the voices from the hearth … his face relaxed into grim mirth.
“It’s Kit Baird, whistling. Is that a portent of evil, according to you?”
It came nearer—nearer—clear and careless and piercingly, effortlessly sweet—Lindy’s song, seeking her down dark corridors.
“‘Down in the valley
The valley below.…
Hang your head over,
Hear the wind blow!’”
Lindy, warm in the firelight, turned a face of still magic to greet it, but the girl in the shadows did not turn.
“‘Hear the wind blow, dear,
Hear the wind blow …’”
“Is he—alone?”
“Good grief, how do I know whether he’s alone? Now, listen, Ray, and get this straight. I love you to distraction and I’ve never had a quarrel with you yet, but I want to tell you here and now that if you keep up this lunacy, and insult my friends by any more nonsense about clearing out of here to-night, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live. Understand?”
She whispered, “Oh, Joel—oh, Joel—you’ll never forgive yourself as long as you live,” and pushed by him toward the fire without a backward glance.
Kit Baird called from the shadow beyond his shoulder:
“Making love to your wife again? Lord, what an old-fashioned lot we are!” … He slipped an affectionate arm across the other’s shoulders, demanding gaily, “Got any forbidden fruit for a pair of good boys, you over there?”
There was a mild clamour of greeting and much shifting and manoeuvring of sofa cushions.
“Here, Joel!” “What’s wrong, Ray—see a ghost up there?” “Next to me, Kit. I’ve got your guitar, and a drink and an apple and everything ready.” “Move over, Larry—that’s the boy!”
The girl on the far side of the red-headed young man, holding her hands toward a fire that left them colder, asked in a small frozen voice, “Where is—Doug?”
“Doug? Didn’t anyone tell you about the big accident, Ray? The wounded hero is still sulking in his tent.… I rather gathered that he wanted you, Lindy.”
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