“Hear, hear,” said Hay-Lawrence faintly, unfrowning his monocle, which fell on its black cord.
“I’ve got time for one rubber — or two fast ones … I’m glad I found this nice corner with you gentlemen,”—Silberstein pursued—“cut, please Major — because anything more like a mausoleum than the first cabin is, on this trip, I’ve never even considered possible. Thirteen passengers altogether, of whom half are octogenarians. One old man in a wheel chair sitting in the smoking room being uproariously rowdy all by himself, and half a dozen female century plants sitting as far from each other as they can in the drawing room. They look to me like Boston’s best … I perceived that if I was to live for another twenty-four hours I would have to seek life down here with you fellows … My God, the meals up there! It’s like a funeral … Your bid, Mr. Demarest … You come from New York?”
“Yes … One spade.”
“One spade he says. My partner’s going to say something — I can see it in his eye. It’s all right so long as I don’t see it in his hand … Sometimes the eye is quicker than the hand, on these boats. No reflections, gentlemen.”
“Double one spade,” said Hay-Lawrence, frowning his monocle into place.
“Now that’s a new one on me,” said the bald-headed Major, flushing. It was explained by Silberstein, and the game proceeded. The Major polished his pince-nez, endeavoring to look firm.
“Observe,” murmured Silberstein placidly, “the game in the opposite corner. Particularly observe the gent sitting with his face toward us. You notice that his left eye is glass — a little too far to starboard — the man, I mean, who strikes you as skull-faced. He was on the same ship with me two months ago. A professional card player, addicted to poker. Notice also the rabbit-faced timid little gent who sits two places to his left. Partners, though they pretend not to know each other. They never meet on deck, you’ll find, and they probably don’t eat at the same table.”
“Poker, what?” said Hay-Lawrence, grimacing as he peered over his shoulder. “I’d like to have a go at him. I’ve got a score to wipe out against poker. I had a little experience in my hotel the night before we sailed.”
Silberstein lifted a slow finger, diamonded, thickly reprehensive.
“Never play poker with strangers … Or bridge either. Not for high stakes.”
“Of course. I’m not a fool, man! In this case, I was bored and I took him on for pure love of adventure. I knew quite well he was some kind of sharper, but wanted to see how he would do it.”
“Well, how did he do it?”
“That’s the joke! I don’t know. For the life of me I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. He sauntered up to me while I was reading in the lounge, and asked if I’d like to play. I bought a pack of cards, and we went up to my room. Then we sat down and drew cold hands for a dollar a hand. In an hour and a half I’d lost a hundred dollars. Then I quit. He thanked me politely, put on his hat and departed … I watched him like a hawk — mind — and I couldn’t see a damned thing that looked wrong.”
“No. You never do. Those men are artists. They wouldn’t do it if they weren’t.”
“Three men asked me to play bridge with them on the train from Buffalo,” said the Major, blushing. “I refused at first, but then as they said they’d been unable to get a fourth anywhere, I joined them, stipulating that there should be no money in it. After three hands, they said there was no fun in it without a small stake — say fifty cents a hundred. ‘Good-by, gentlemen!’ I said and cleared out.” The Major giggled, blushing; then frowned severly, looking at his cards. Silberstein, with green eyes far apart, glanced at him casually and massively. The Frog Prince.
“The Major takes no chances,” he said. “Even in the Army, discretion is the better part of valor … How do you know, Major, that Mr. Demarest and I aren’t conspiring together to defraud you?… Consider the circumstances. We three meet, and look for a fourth … I sing out here in this crowded smoking room in my unabashed Jewish way, and out of all those present, and endowed with bridge talent, Mr. Demarest, total stranger, steps forward … Think it over! Looks sort of bad, doesn’t it?”
“You alarm me,” breathed the Major.
“And me too,” said Demarest. “What am I up against?”
“And as for the Duke of Clarence, my partner,” Silberstein placidly pursued, while he arranged his cards and Buddhalike serenely surveyed them with slow slant eyes from end to end of the firmly held fan, “just take a good look at him, gentlemen. I ask you, was there ever a more perfect specimen of the gentleman villain? One look is enough. Monocle and all. Raffles isn’t in it, nor Dracula, nor Heliogabalus. That bored Oxford manner, the hauteur—you know, those English go in for a hauteur—correct me, partner, if my French pronunciation isn’t all it should be — and the skillfully introduced little story of the hundred dollars lost to a New York con man — Well, I say no more.”
“Oh, dry up, Silberstein,” said Hay-Lawrence, grinning uncomfortably.
“See the guilty look?… That’s the only weakness of these English sharpers. They’re too proud and sensitive. Make personal remarks about them, and they’ll betray themselves every time … Now, Mr. Demarest here has the cold, unmoving New England face, the sacred cod; he conceals his feelings better even than the Englishman, simply because he hasn’t got any, Am I right, Mr. Demarest?”
“Perfectly,” Demarest laughed. “As for you—!”
“Well?”—calmly staring. “What about me?”
“The Sphinx, beside you, has as mobile a face as an ingénue!”
Silberstein played a card, reached his hand (cigar-holding) for the trick, then drew back as if stung.
“Ouch. He fooled me. He saved that up.”
“Yes. I saved it up,” said Demarest, tapping the trick on the edge.
“Now that we’re so well acquainted, Mr. Demarest, I should like to ask you about that young lady — the term may be taken to have some latitude — to whom you were talking just now. I wouldn’t call her a beauty, exactly — but I think it could be said with some justice that her appearance is very remarkable.”
“The Welsh Rarebit?”
“Ha!” cried Silberstein, rolling his large head back and half closing his eyes appreciatively. “Ha! is that what you call her? Welsh Rarebit is good, is very, very good. Welsh Rarebit she is … And what about her, if I may ask without seeming to be too impertinent?”
“Peggy Davis. A widow of one month — so she says. Returning from Providence, where her husband died, to Wales. Her handsome brother — a miner — will meet her at the dock.”
“Yes?… It sounds fairly circumstantial?… It convinces you?”
“The damndest face I ever saw,” said Hay-Lawrence. “It makes me ill to look at her.”
“You mean”—the Major lifted off his pince-nez and endeavored to look fiercely out of gentle brown eyes, under a brow beetling but more academic than military—“the queer-looking girl who sat over there talking with the musician?… She looked to me like hot stuff!.. He he.” He put on his pince-nez, bridling and blushing, looking naughtily from one to the other of the bridge players.