Adventure, February 1917 — page 120: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

118 figures between sunset and dawn, and some- times they did it in spite of all I could do. Even a gambler who uses art instead of science can’t dictate to luck: he can only increase his percentage, or chance of winning. It’s different in roulette. Under a properly constructed wheel there is a delicate mechanism that arbitrarily puts the ball into the color that the man who has his toe on the button wants. The boy was playing with good nerve, too. He played hard. ‘He plunged and he _ bluffed and twice he caught me with a good hand, but not good enough, and materially reduced the number of blue chips before me. Then I went after him in earnest. I stowed four tens in my pocket and waited. _ I could palm half a deck in either hand, and nobody would ever spot it with a casual look, so I had no trouble in switching those tens to my hand when he boosted the pot high as a house and stood pat. I drew two cards—it was a mere detail to get rid of the extra one before the show-down—and he stood pat. He figured that he had me beaten, and calculated to give me another severe trim- ming. But his house-full on aces wasn’t worth the paper it took to print the cards. That gave him a hard jolt. I put three kings and a pair of deuces into my pocket and waited. Soon I caught him again—this time with a flush, and I knew that he had gone just about to the bottom of his pile. time he stayed that he came in for only a show-down, and we both lost. broken him. That was what I wanted. ‘He didn’t say a word. He just sat there for a minute looking rather dazed, bit his lips, sighed and got up. I cashed in and followed him out of the room. He looked around, recognized me and said nervously: “Did you have itinforme? You played like it.” I looked at him steadily, and with just a touch of sympathy in my tone I asked if it really meant much to him to lose. “Meant much? Meant much!. My God,” he fairly shouted, his nerves were that un- strung, “it meant everything! I simply had to win!” With a gulp of despair and a sudden re- laxation of his body he added— “And I didn’t!” - Adventure I boosted it so high the next’ But I had . A “What’re you going to do? Bump yourself off?” I asked a bit coldly. ‘No. Bump somebody else off!” He meant it, too. “That’s all right if you can get away with it,” I said indifferently. ‘But the law says if you knock out a man’s tooth you have to give up an eye.” “Law!” he sneered. Then by the contrast of the ugly express- ion, I became aware that he was handsome, and unsophisticated. Some boys have hard faces at ten, and wear a perpetual sneer, and have seen and know things that make the sneer fitting. He was not such at past twenty. I raised my eyebrows quizzingly. Andhe answered: “You can kill a snake and it’s all right. But if you kill a reptilian man, it’s the electric chair for you. —— such a law!” Some people who knew something about me might have thought it passing strange had they heard me holding forth on the merits of the law and explaining how if the activities of the “reptilian man” were called to its attention the law would move toward him majestically, with the menacing sword of justice ready to strike. “Yes,” he retorted scornfully, “and put into the papers the very thing I would pay any price to keep out.” After that it -was easy to get him to talk. We went to a quiet saloon and sat down. He was young enough to look askance at my glass of ginger ale, preferring a little neat brandy himself, tossing it down as men in trouble do when most in need of a cold, instead of a hot brain. It made me impatient to hear him talk- ing about his “life being ruined” if his parents found out the girl had a secret past, and that if her blackmailer wasn’t bought off he might as well kill the fellow and then shoot himself. When-I think of all the good courage that : people waste in killing themselves, I come near to losing the laboriously acquired poise and calmness I have solicitously developed for nearly twenty years; and when I hear young, healthy men talking about “life being ruined” because something interferes with the paternal pocketbook, I do lose it; but when I hear of a man or woman rubbing their bellies on the ground before a black- mailer, I get angry and show it. Blackmailers simply capitalize cowardice GComichoo S COM