“It’ll keep. Never let it be said that ol’ Ted diverted a man from his star-guided purpose in life.”
“One more time, Ted. Why are you here?”
“I asked you if you were coming by the game tonight.”
“You did. There’s a reason I should come by?”
“There, now,” the slender man said approvingly. “The bright young police official doesn’t need to be hit in the head more than four or five times, does he?”
Lindsay stretched lazily in his chair, and then removed a small brown notebook from his shirt pocket. The man behind the desk had seen the notebook before. Like the natural-born figure filbert that he was, Ted kept book upon the winnings and losings of everyone who sat in on the town’s weekly poker game. An estimate of his own winnings for a given period some time back had been so remarkably close to the fact that the man behind the desk had determined never to underestimate Ted Lindsay.
“I thought you might like to come by, Joe, and take a lesson from a man who, in the last—” Ted Lindsay glanced down at the notebook in his hand “—eleven sessions has won seventeen thousand dollars.”
“Thousand? — ” The big man was halfway out of his chair.
“Thousand. Cheerful winner, too.”
“If you’re serious, Ted, who in the star-spangled hell is losing that kind of money? What kind of limit are you maniacs playing? Are you all crazy completely? This town can’t stand that kind of noise.”
“Oh, it’s not such a noisy process.”
“Was it you, Ted?”
“Sad to relate, it was not, Joey. In the same eleven sessions I was relieved of three hundred eighteen iron men. Previously won, of course.”
“Who dropped the bundle, then? No one around here could afford seventeen hundred.”
“Don’t get shook, Lieutenant. The bank’s still safe. You’ve been a little out of touch. There’s a few new faces in the game since you’ve been around. Real estate man from Chesterbrook. I’ve got him down for four. And a wild man from downstate — a dairyman. He’s in for seventy-five hundred if he’s in for a quarter.” Ted Lindsay closed the notebook with a snap. “And then there’s Austin Schofield.”
“Austin Schofield?” the blond man said sharply. “Judge Schofield’s nephew?”
“You know any other Austin Schofields?” the slender man asked with burlesque solemnity.
“Let’s have it, Ted.”
“Sure. I’ve got him down for three.”
“Three? Three thousand?” The chair squeaked as the big man left it, his voice thickened in its vehemence. “You’re crazy. That kid never had three hundred, even, of his own in his damn life.”
“Nevertheless.” Ted Lindsay waved the notebook. “Chapter and verse. Three thousand.”
“Does the Judge know? Who let him in the game anyhow, Ted? A kid like that in with you pirates.”
“Now pull up on the reins a minute, Joe,” Ted Lindsay said. “Who comes to the game with better qualifications? I tell you the first night he showed Bart and Doc and a couple more of us shook his hand and made him more than welcome. That game’s been played practically every Tuesday night for the last twenty-five years, come drought or blizzard. His father played in the game, and his uncle played in it. Until the Judge dropped out recently it wasn’t very often there wasn’t a Schofield sitting in.”
“Sure, but a Schofield who knew what he was doing! That milksop, pansy kid—! And that kind of money being won and lost; the game’s gotten out of hand. I remember when if a man threw a check into a pot everyone there knew just about how much it overdrew him.”
Ted Lindsay grinned. “Remember the Wednesday morning scrounging sessions to get those overdrafts covered?”
“I remember that a man could make four twenty-five dollar touches around the square and straighten himself out. That was when it was a sensible game. I’m going to put a stop to this foolishness. I asked you before — does the Judge know?”
“I just told you the Judge dropped out some time back. If no one told you, who do you think told him?”
Lindsay sat with his head cocked to one side as though testing the sound of what he had just heard. “Just what did you mean, you’re going to put a stop to this foolishness, Joe?”
“What I said.” The big man bit off the words.
“Yes? How?”
“If I have to, by padlocking Bart Chisolm’s warehouse.”
“You’re not getting a little too big for your britches, are you, boy? Bart Chisolm can throw his weight around in this town. And that game in his warehouse is an institution.”
“Can the institution stand the echoes from a half-wired-up kid putting three thousand stolen dollars into it?”
“Stolen?”
“Oh, come off it, Ted! You think he dug it out of the ground? You know he’s been clerking in the Judge’s office this summer. He must have—” A balled fist slammed the desk top with such force a glass paperweight jumped into the air. “Dammit, Ted, why didn’t you come to me before?”
“That’s not the question I thought you’d ask me, Joey,” Ted Lindsay said softly. He slid down in his chair, face inscrutable. “I realize you’re a little touchy where the name Schofield is concerned. But I really expected you’d ask me why I came to you now.”
The silence built up between them for sixty seconds before the man behind the desk spoke again. “There’s a big winner? One big winner?”
“There is a big winner. Seventeen thousand dollars worth. Charlie Ballou.”
“That bushel-foot won seventeen thousand?”
Ted frowned. “I’m in the somewhat painful process of revising my previous estimate of ol’ bushel-foot Charlie.”
“You mean you think he’s doing something?”
“No.” Ted Lindsay said it slowly, as though he were tasting the sound of the word. “I don’t think he’s doing anything, because I’ve been watching him. And I do mean watching. Seemed like kind of a bad joke at first, as poor a card player as Charlie winning so consistently. So help me, if I played poker like Charlie I’d take up praying for a better world. Still, when the money steadily gravitates in the same direction, you kind of put the glass on it. There are a couple of little things.
“I’ve been paying more attention to his game lately than I have my own, and I think he knows something. It’s almost uncanny the way he pours the coal on when he’s top hand. Last week I kept track: all night long he never called once on a hand he won. The losers called him every time. That’s confidence. Or something.”
“He’s back-reading them?”
“If he is I‘d like to know how. I’ve taken home at least two dozen decks of cards out of that game, and I’ve tested them with calipers, ultra-violet light, acid, and transparencies. If they’re marked, it’s quite a job.”
“Seventeen thousand would buy quite a job.”
“They’re not marked, Joe.”
“So how is he doing it, Ted?”
“When I find out, I’ll be glad to let you know.”
“But you’re sure he’s doing it?”
Ted Lindsay’s hesitation was fractional. “He’s got to be.”
“It may be a little late, but I‘ll be by tonight.”
Aroused curiosity was in the slender man’s voice. “Don’t tell me ol’ Sherlock discovered the method that quick?”
“No. I’ll play it by ear. See you tonight.”
Ted Lindsay struggled a moment against the abrupt dismissal, then rose reluctantly to his feet. He started to say something, changed his mind, nodded, and turned to the door.
The man behind the desk looked after his departed figure for a moment, glanced up at the clock, and stood up purposefully. His glance rested for an instant on the reversed black lettering on the door upon which Ted Lindsay had commented so jibingly: Lieutenant Joseph Conway. A long, long way removed from Big Joe Conway. A long, hard way removed.