“You could play poker for a living.”
I shook my head. “Poker’s hard work, if you want to make a living at it. I don’t much care for hard work.”
“I don’t play very well, you know.”
“I know.”
“You think I could learn?”
I studied him for a moment. “If you learned how to play well, you probably wouldn’t like it, and you’d quit.”
He took another swallow of Scotch. “I’ve tried to quit.”
“Couldn’t?”
He shook his head. “Compulsion, I suppose.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I should take your advice and learn how to play well so I could quit.”
“It’s hard work, as I said. You have to learn the odds, learn to memorize what cards have been played, read the other players, and wait. Waiting is what makes it dull.”
“You make the cure sound worse than the disease.”
“It might be in your case. There aren’t any halfway houses for compulsive gamblers. There’s no tapering off. You either quit cold or you keep on gambling until it’s all gone and you take something that doesn’t belong to you so that you can gamble one last game and then they catch you and put you away where it’s not so easy to gamble anymore. I’ve never heard of any compulsive gamblers dying either rich or old.”
Robin Styles poured another two ounces of Scotch into his glass. “I saw a doctor about it a few times. A psychiatrist. He was a Jungian, I believe.”
“He’d be supportive anyway.”
“We didn’t get anywhere.”
“Well, when they sell that sword of yours you should have enough to keep you in chips for a year or two.”
“It’s such an awful lot of money, isn’t it?”
“What did you do for money before?”
“I was in advertising for a while,” he said. “I was really rather good at it. It was an American firm.” He mentioned the name of a large New York-based agency.
“That’s a Wellington tie you’re wearing, isn’t it?” I said.
He looked surprised. “However did you know?”
“I once did a couple of columns on old school ties. After Wellington, it was Oxford, wasn’t it? Balliol, I’ll bet.”
“I say, does it show?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s just that that agency that you used to work for liked Balliol men to handle some of their stuffier accounts. The clients found them soothing.”
“It was a rather good job.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“The usual gambler’s reasons. I got lucky and won as much in a week as I made in a year. So I quit.”
“How’d you meet Eddie Apex?”
“Through Wes Cagle at Shields. I was stony. My father had left me this sword collection plus just enough to get through school so I thought I might sell the collection. I’d heard somewhere that such things could be sold on the quiet without the tax people looking over your shoulder. So I asked Cagle if he knew anyone who could help. He said he would see. A few days later I got a call from Eddie Apex. He asked me to meet him at his place and to bring along a representative piece from the collection. So I brought along my father’s favorite. Have you ever been to Eddie’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it weird?”
“Yes,” I said, “isn’t it. What happened then?”
“Well, not much, really. Eddie just looked at the sword for a long time. I mean he simply held it and looked at it without saying a word. Then he asked if he could keep it for a couple of days. I said of course and he wrote me out a receipt. Three days later he called and asked if he could give me lunch, that he had some rather important and exciting news. Well, we met at his club and after he had got a couple of whiskies into me he told me what the sword actually was and that it might be worth anywhere from one million to three million pounds.”
“How did you feel?”
Robin Styles leaned back in his chair and stared at Mr. Hilton’s ceiling. “You know,” he said in a thoughtful tone, “I remember exactly. I think I had about three bob in my pocket and a hundred pound overdraft at my bank. I remember getting this feeling of tremendous sexual excitement. I simply had to have a woman. I didn’t care what she looked like or who she was as long as she would fuck. And then I wanted a game. A real game. I wanted to get into bed with a woman and then I wanted to play poker. In that order.” He looked at me. “Do you find that strange?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “But then nobody ever told me that I was suddenly worth a million or so pounds.”
“Well, I decided to see if Eddie Apex were really serious. So I explained my financial condition and asked whether he could advance me some money. He said does this mean that you agree to let me and my colleagues handle the sword and I said of course. Well, he said, would five thousand pounds be enough and would it be all right if he sent it around later that afternoon in cash, because under the circumstances, cash would be better than a check. I nearly fell off my chair, of course. I was expecting something like three hundred pounds. But still that didn’t satisfy my immediate needs. Sexual needs, I mean. So I said that would be fine, but could he spare fifty or a hundred quid now and he smiled and said, of course, and handed me over a hundred pounds. I went out that afternoon and got fucked most delightfully and does my crude way of speaking offend you?”
“Not in the least.”
“Good. Well, a day or so later I met the Nitry brothers and aren’t they the odd pair?”
“They are that,” I said.
“Yes. Well, they gave me a little lecture on what the sword really was and congratulated me and told me that they had had it authenticated — I believe that was the word they used — by some chap in Maida Vale, of all places. They now intended to enter into negotiations for its sale. I said splendid and would it be possible to advance me a bit more money. They said Eddie would take care of that so Eddie and I came to an agreement. He would provide me with pocket money of a couple hundred pounds a week and guarantee my losses for up to fifty thousand pounds at Shields. I’ve very nearly reached that limit already.”
“How long has it taken you?”
“Only a couple of weeks.”
“And then the sword was stolen.”
“That’s right. The sword was stolen and I was shattered.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m not sure that you really can, Mr. St. Ives.”
I nodded. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“And you’re going to get it back for us.”
“I’m going to try.”
He rose and stretched. His manners were too good to permit him a yawn. “Well, if you go about your calling the same way that you play poker, I feel that I’m in the best of hands. Thank you very much for breakfast, and now I think I’d better let you get some sleep.”
“All right,” I said, rising.
He paused at the door. “Eddie will be in touch with me when there’re any developments, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really think I could ever learn to play good poker?” From the wistful note in his voice, I knew that he wanted me to say yes.
“Maybe,” I said. “At least there’s one thing you have going for you.”
“What?”
“A few million pounds. If you lose all that, you’ll know for sure.”
Chapter Thirteen
I was in bed by 5:45 that morning and probably asleep by 5:49 and the phone didn’t ring until 6:01. I let it ring for a while on the theory that whoever was calling would give up or die, but when they didn’t and since I never sleep too well with a phone ringing, I finally answered it with a snarling hello.
“We want the money this morning,” the voice said. It was the same voice that had invited me down to the Black Thistle for Scotch and morphine. It was a man’s voice and so neutral in tone and inflection that I couldn’t tell whether he was American or English. He sounded as if he had acquired his accent in the middle of the Atlantic.