“In a second,” Harold said briefly. “Soon’s the game’s over.”
“Fine!” Clarence said expansively. Nothing could possibly spoil this lovely evening for him. He came to stand behind Harold, looking at his cards. “How are you doing?”
“Terrible!” Harold said tightly. “Awful! Pops, here, is luckier than a guy with two bicycles! I teach him the game maybe a couple hours ago, at the most, and already he schneids me six-across-Hollywood twice in a row!” He forced a smile. “Not that I’m complainin’; I ain’t no sore loser. He plays good.”
Clarence smiled indulgently and leaned over to consider the score pad before Carruthers.
“I can see,” he said, amused by Harold’s discomfort. “Eighty-four hundred points. Quite a few.” His smile broadened. “What are you playing for? Matches?”
“Matches, nothin’! Ten somethin’s,” Harold said, and concentrated mightily on his hand for several moments before finally selecting a card and placing it on the discard pile.
“Shillings. Ten shillings a point,” Carruthers said, explaining, and picked up Harold’s discard. “Gin,” he said brightly, and reached for the pencil.
Clarence gulped. “Ten shillings a point?” He reached. “Let me see that score pad!”
“Certainly,” Carruthers said agreeably, “as soon as I score it,” He counted the points in Harold’s hand, totted up the additional points, and handed the paper across to Clarence. “That makes it ninety-four hundred and sixty points, I believe.”
“At ten shillings a point!” Clarence still could not believe it. “That’s almost five thousand pounds!”
“Is it?” Carruthers took back the paper and went into some complicated calculations along the border, licking the pencil point for accuracy. He looked up, beaming at Clarence in a congratulatory manner. “You’re quite right, you know. I make it four thousand seven hundred and thirty quid, to be exact.”
Clarence turned to Harold, his eyes narrowing, his jaw clenched. “And just how are you going to pay all this, dummy?”
“Pay it? How much is it?” Harold asked, wondering why Clarence was suddenly so unfriendly.
“Roughly ten grand! Ten thousand bucks, you idiot!”
“Ten thous—” Harold swallowed, looking dazed.
“That’s what I said! Open your ears! Ten thousand dollars, lunkhead! And how do you expect to pay it?”
Harold was looking at Carruthers with wounded eyes.
“You should have explained how much we was playin’ for, pops. I wasn’t tryin’ to take you. That wasn’t very nice of you.”
Billy-Boy Carruthers was quite willing to get into a discussion on the relative niceness of kidnaping as opposed to winning at cards, but before he could reply, his attention was drawn to Clarence, who had suddenly smitten himself on the brow. It had occurred to Clarence W. Alexander that he was almost as big an idiot as Harold, to be making such a fuss over nothing. The fat man was, after all, their prisoner, and while as a general rule Clarence normally honored gambling debts — although to be truthful he seldom faced them since he usually played with his own dice — in this case honoring a gambling debt was not even a part of the question, let alone the answer. If Harold, with his odd sense of fairness, got stuffy about it, he could simply add Harold’s loss to their ransom demands and write them off. Or he could get the old man in a game of Parcheesi and win the money back. Not to mention the distinct possibility that, Harold or no Harold, they might well have to scrag the old man to keep him quiet after the ransom was paid, and it was a statistical fact that scragged old men never collected debts, gambling or otherwise.
All of this having flashed through Clarence’s active and conniving brain in a matter of moments, he took a deep breath and smiled at Harold apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Hal,” he said. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper over a little thing like that.”
“Sure,” Harold said, instantly forgiving his friend. “Anyways, I can pay him out of my share of the ransom dough, Clare. It won’t cost you a cent, my losin’ like that.”
“Of course. Of course,” Clarence said in a conciliatory manner. “And now, how about a nice meal to finish off a nice day?”
“Sure,” Harold said generously. “I got some beans and leftover veal I can make into a real casserole Leavenworth. Some guy shown me in Joliet. You guys wait in the other room. I’ll carry in your drinks,” he said to Carruthers, and shook his head in admiration for the old man, all previous irritation at having lost now dissipated.
Almost ten grand the old guy beat him out of, and him not even knowin’ the game a couple hours ago, not to mention bein’ six years older than God. Harold picked up the bucket and the brandy bottle in one huge hand, gathered in the half-filled glasses in the other, and carried them into the next room, setting them down beside Carruthers, who had settled himself in a comfortable arm chair. And that was another thing: the old man had put away enough hooch to knock even Maisie — and Maisie had been known to bend an elbow with the best — right on her full keister, and yet the old guy hadn’t even got the slightest bit woozy. It just showed that gettin’ old didn’t mean the end of the world; and on that comforting thought Harold went back into the kitchen and began digging exploratorily into the fridge.
Leaving behind him in the other room an extremely thoughtful William Carruthers, no longer feeling quite as homey as before, and feeling far less of a kindred spirit with this Clarence just because the man had good taste in brandy and appreciated the artistic advantages of a turned-off television. Taking money from Harold with marked cards had simply been an entertainment; but the look in this Clarence’s eyes when he apologized to Harold for losing his temper, was quite another matter. The thoughts that had engendered that apology, that had realized the total lack of need to pay that debt, had most certainly been of a lethal nature. And that was quite another matter, indeed...
Chapter 8
Despite the fact that neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor even dark of night, for that matter, were present to stay them — especially since it was eleven o’clock of a sunny September morning — the postal messengers of Her Majesty’s Service still managed to make their appointed rounds, and in the course of doing so, dropped off a missive at the Mystery Authors Club addressed to Timothy Briggs and Clifford Simpson.
Potter, the secretary, frowned as he fingered it suspiciously. In all his years of tenure as secretary, the only other message he could recall any of the three receiving was when the Jarvis award had been given them some months before. He was also surprised to see the name of William Carruthers omitted from the cover of the letter, but this mystery, at least, was resolved for him when he made his way toward their niche in the northeast corner of the lounge. Since Carruthers was missing, and since the letter was addressed to the other two, it was obvious to Potter — who had several minor mystery novels to his credit himself, and who considered himself therefore quite a master of analysis — that the missive had to be from Carruthers, and nobody else.
And no wonder the old man stopped writing, Potter thought, taking pleasure from the concept, considering the awful state of his penmanship — or pencilmanship, rather. Printed, and barely legible, at that. Probably never heard of a typewriter, and wouldn’t be able to solve its intricacies if he had! Must have driven his publisher crazy!
Satisfied with his analysis, and wondering how he might be able to work it into his next opus, he handed the letter over with a sniff and made his way back to his office, noting in passing that the old men had gone back to beer, and that Simpson was back to smoking those tarred bits of rope he used to smoke before. Probably wasted all that lovely Jarvis money, Potter thought with more than a touch of satisfaction, and then smiled as he could visualize himself making good sport of the fact with his coterie when they arrived for lunch.