Of course horse-players did sometimes have winning streaks which defied all the mathematical laws of chance. But from the curious information in that urgent transcontinental call, which had brought Keene hurrying from Santa Anita, this Towbee wasn’t even a regular follower of the bangtails. Nobody knew anything about him except that, from his familiarity with cards, dice and numbered wheels, he must be a professional gambler. In Keene’s experience, professional gamblers didn’t have streaks of anything — except larceny — in their systems.
There was a little space around Towbee at the table. Apparently, no one wanted to crowd him. No one spoke directly to him, either, though there were frequent exclamations when other players won, following his lead.
Keene bought chips, ran a few bets on the black, doubling until he collected. Nobody paid any attention to him. Towbee gazed blandly at him, past him. Didn’t even look at him a second time. After ten minutes, Clay Larmin and the copper-haired girl came upstairs:
The crowd paid plenty of attention to the heir of the Claybrook Stables:
“Rotten break in the fifth, Mister Larmin.”... “Some days y’ can’t win a buck, boy.”... “Better put Hy-wide up for claiming, Clay.”
Larmin took it sourly, gave short answers. He bought a stack for the girl. She broke what was evidently a table custom by not waiting for Towbee to place his chips. She dropped a yellow on number 31, another on 5, one on 2. Her hand bumped Towbee’s as she reached across the table.
Towbee smiled pleasantly, showing white, even teeth. “Pardon.” He had the faint trace of an accent. Keene couldn’t be sure whether it was phony or not.
The girl laughed uneasily. “Just trying to rub off some of your luck, Mister Towbee.”
Young Larmin scowled at her, caught her arm.
Towbee shrugged, amused. “At roulette, I am not so fortunate. One cannot tell from the condition of the ball, how fast it will run or where it will stop, as with horses.” He ignored Larmin.
The croupier called the spin, the ball rattled around the rim, stopped. Towbee won. The girl lost.
“Damn.” She swore without vehemence. “I guess I'd do better to follow your lead, Mister Towbee.”
Larmin glowered, was about to pull her away from the table, when the chuck-a-luck girl who'd answered Keene’s question came up, touched the youth on the sleeve. He bent his head to catch the message, turned to stare disagreeably at Keene for an instant, then muttered something to his copper-haired companion. She made a face, cashed her remaining chips.
“Don’t take it all,” she called to Towbee agreeably. “Leave some for me.”
The gambler waved a delicately manicured hand. She let Larmin escort her downstairs. Keene looked at his watch. It was five to one.
He’d better be at his Buick on the dot, or that waitress might get cold feet. She’d been scared to meet him at all. That could only mean she was afraid somebody’d be watching every step Keene Madden took. But nobody seemed to have any interest in his departure.
The guard downstairs merely grinned. “See anything you liked?”
“I made a down payment,” Keene said, nodding.
The dining room was closed. There were no waitresses around. Neither Larmin nor the girl was at the checkroom when he went out.
However, there were still plenty of cars in the parking oval.
He couldn’t see into his Buick until he got close to it. The girl was already in the back seat, keeping out of the glare from the neons spelling out Stirrup & Saddle. He opened the door, saw the reflection of the neons on the rear fender dim momentarily as something cut off the light behind him.
He pivoted, throwing up an arm, lunging toward the back seat. He had a split-second glimpse of a bulky-shouldered figure — a rum-reddened nose beneath a low-pulled cap — before the length of pipe paralyzed his arm, exploded against his head.
He fell half into the car. His left foot caught the attacker six inches below the belt buckle. There was weight behind the boot, too. The man grunted, hit Keene again with the pipe across the knee-cap.
Keene tried to roll on his side to get at his hip pocket. The heavy-shouldered man smashed him across the mouth with the iron. Twisting further into the car, doubling his knees to get them free of the door, Keene reached up, grabbed the handle, jerked the door. There was an agonized yelp as the slamming metal caught the big man’s fingers.
Keene snatched at the door handle again. From the darkness behind him, a bomb burst back of his ear. It was the last thing he remembered.
Chapter II
The Uninvited Corpse
A taste of blood in his mouth. Teeth aching hideously. The top of his skull seemed to be alternately expanding and contracting. He had trouble focusing his eyes. It was the same nauseating sensation he’d experienced that time eight years ago, when his jumper had fallen at the hedge in the steeplechase.
Slowly, at the expense of dizzying pain, he pulled himself up off the floor of the car. His shoulders had been wedged between the back of the driver’s seat and the front of the rear seat. His knees were doubled up, protecting his midsection. It must have been the only thing that had prevented his attackers from inflicting permanent injury.
Except for a light pickup truck and a station wagon with Stirrup & Saddle lettered on its door, the parking space was empty. He looked at his wrist-watch. That first smashing blow from the pipe had cracked the crystal, mashed in the works. The clock on the dash said ten past two.
He cursed himself for a stupe — letting himself be suckered into a trap like that. Yet if they'd only meant to wreck him within an inch of his life — to frighten him from Saratoga — how would they have dared use the waitress as a come-on girl?
Perhaps she would claim Keene had offered to drive her home after she’d finished working, then made a pass at her in his car — whereupon some club attendant had come to the rescue, beaten up her molester. If that kind of a story got into the papers, it wouldn’t do Keene, or his chance of doing his job, any good whatever.
He got out of the car. The knee screamed at him. He gulped the cool night air to keep from being sick.
The Stirrup & Saddle was dark, upstairs and down. The neon sign was out. He tried to remember what car had been parked next to his. It didn't seem possible that anyone could have come as close to the Buick as the driver of the adjoining sedan must have, without noticing something was wrong. Still, he had been jammed down on the floor boards, pretty well hidden.
He slid in behind his own wheel. The rear-view mirror showed him a face masked with a smear of dried blood, puffy lips, a dilly of a shiner over his right eye. At that, he felt worse than he looked.
He found the flask in the glove compartment, soaked his handkerchief in bourbon, swabbed the blood off. The liquor stung his mouth. But he decided it might make his insides feel a little less shaky, and so he gave the flask a couple of good belts.
He rolled the Buick out onto the concrete, headed north toward Union. It took all his powers of concentration to handle the car, but jumbled questions kept doing nipups in his brain: Who had spotted him so swiftly? Why had somebody decided to discourage him before his investigation had even got under way? What was all that byplay up in the casino between Towbee and Clay Larmin's girl?