"Yes. And you bring the cash tomorrow morning. And I give you back the other cheques."
"Oh . . ." He considered. Then he said: "I'll see you in hell first!"
"All right." Her pose of indifference was easier now; she knew that, tougher than Bancroft, he was also quicker to size up a situation. "Then I'll go to your wife. And I'll call my uncle as well."
149
"Nuts! Who's going to believe you? It's your word against mine."
"I have the cheques," she answered. "Three thousand dollars' worth."
"What the hell is the good of them? Be your age! You know I can send a cable tomorrow morning, and have the whole lot cancelled. I just say I lost them."
"But I have them."
"So?" His voice, however, was unsure; he was getting more and more of the picture every moment; his mind had almost caught up with hers.
"How did I get them?" asked Diane. "You want me to go to your wife and say, 'I found these in my bed after your husband had gone'? Or show them to the Captain, to prove you were here? He'd put you off the ship at the next stop!"
Gerson came a step nearer. "O.K.—where are they?" he asked roughly.
"I told you, they're safe." She looked up at him, meeting his eyes without wavering. "You try and find them, and I'll start screaming."
"There's no one around at this time of night."
"My uncle's just across the passage."
"Is he in on this?" he asked bitterly.
"Not yet."
He swallowed; so intense was the prickling silence in the cabin that she could actually hear it. "You can't prove a thing," he told her. But it was himself he was telling, and failing to convince. "I came in here for a drink. You started throwing it at me. Don't forget, you've got your pants off. I haven't."
"Is your wife going to believe that?"
That was the moment when he began to swear, and equally the moment when she knew she had won. She hardly heard the torrent of obscenity which he seemed able to rip off as if he were tearing successive pages from a book; indeed, it was like background music, unheard by the inner ear, which was busy with other things. When his voice petered out, and he remained standing in furious, sweating silence, she said:
"Feeling better? Don't take it too hard, sonny. The price was a bit high, that's all."
"A thousand f-dollars!"
"That's a perfect description. . . . Don't come too early in the morning. I like my sleep."
"You can sleep. I'll be thinking—but good! You won't get away with this!"
At eleven o'clock next morning, however, Gerson was in quite a different mood. It might have been a hangover, or a rueful sense of humour strong enough to survive the loss of a thousand dollars; it might even have been that she had gauged the amount accurately —she had not been too greedy, a thousand dollars was just not enough to make him drop everything and run screaming for the cops. But whatever it was, when they met out on the boat-deck there were no more reproaches. He handed her a roll of hundred-dollar bills; she produced the rest of the travellers' cheques and passed them over; and that seemed to be that. When he looked at her, his glance was almost admiring.
"That was the most expensive lay I ever had," he said. "Hell, it cost more than getting married!"
"Worth it?"
"Jesus, no! Nothing's worth that kind of money."
"Too bad. I thought we might do business."
"Not at those prices." He was staring seawards, where the morning sun on the water made a clean, dancing sheen. "I've been doing some figuring. You pulled this on Jerry Bancroft, didn't you?"
There seemed no harm in telling him. "Yes."
He slapped his thigh. "I knew it! The crooked bastard! I thought there was something phoney when he was talking. How much did you take him for?"
"The same."
"A thousand bucks?"
"Yes." Even here, she would not confess to that extra thousand; it was her own triumphant secret.
"Do me a favour," he said, after a moment. "Give me back five dollars."
She stared. "Now why?"
"So that I come out better than him."
He was laughing, and after a moment she joined in. "It's a deal." He had forgotten about the sixty dollars in cash, and she wasn't going to remind him. She opened her bag again, found a five-dollar bill, and gave it him. "Your change, sir."
"That Bancroft," he said, pocketing it. "He's not so smart after all. Only cost me nine-hundred-ninety-five. Now he was really gypped."
6
The evening's poker session was to be in Carl Wenstrom's suite, and there, punctually at nine o'clock, the five other players assembled.
Carl welcomed them like old friends—which, indeed, they were; they were now bound by the ties implicit in the prolonged ebb-and-flow of this battlefield. Tillotson was one; the biggest winner after Carl, a tough and aggressive player with that necessary sense of humour which went with successful bluffing. Burrell was another, a Canadian, married to a French-Canadian wife whose theatrical mannerisms, curious accent, and insistence that she was a Parisienne born-and-bred, had drawn to herself a good deal of unflattering attention. He was very rich, and (among Americans) curiously sensitive, as if he went in fear of being unmasked as only a Canadian after all.
Mr. Beddington was another contestant, cautious, speechless from one hour's end to another; and Mr. Greenfield—"the father of the brat", as Carl called him—who purged his guilt by generous over-calling, was another. The last member was a rash and cheerful man by the name of Hartmann, a New York advertising executive who, judging by some of his plays, was underwriting the whole thing on his expense account.
They were punctual, as serious poker-players always were; and they refused after-dinner brandy or liqueurs, according to the same tradition. Kathy, performing briefly as hostess before they settled down, had little to do save to pour coffee for all of them. When offered drinks, they all said, with scarcely any variation: "Not now, thanks. Got to concentrate."
"Concentrate?" repeated Carl, picking up the word as Hartmann used it. "What's this? You mean you're going to take the game seriously?"
"It's about time I did," said Hartmann, who started each session full of cheer and ended up in impenetrable mourning. "Gosh, d'you know how much I'm down on the past month?"
"How much?" asked Burrell, who was satisfied—and, indeed, proud—to have broken even on the twenty-two games they had played so far.
"Eight thousand dollars, that's all," said Hartmann. He looked round him for sympathy. But at this stage, just before the game, he was never sad about his losses; he knew for certain that the balance would be redressed by the time they broke up. "If I told them back in N'York what you characters here were doing to me, they'd say to have my head examined."
"Maybe they'd be right," said Mr. Greenfield, another big loser. "And maybe I'll join you, if things go on like this."
Tillotson, who was sitting at the green baize table counting out chips, looked up momentarily.
"The trouble with you," he said to Hartmann, "is that you will come in on every hand."
"But I like playing," said Hartmann.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," said Tillotson. "It's nice to have you along. But I just thought I'd mention it."
They came to the table as soon as they had finished their coffee; before each player, when Tillotson had completed the allotment, were four stacks of red, yellow, blue and green chips representing two thousand dollars. Carl broke open a pack of fresh cards, took out the jokers, and began to shuffle them. Cigars were lighted, chairs were drawn up; Kathy placed an ash-tray beside each of them. It was the marginal moment before battle was joined, and Carl, feeling the cards slide beneath his fingers, was deeply contented. There was no moment in the world like this: the shining chips stacked, the score-card clean, the cards ready to be cut, the players hopeful and eager. Probably, apart from the game, he would not speak twenty words during the next four or five hours; Tillotson was the same sort of player as he, absolutely still, absolutely concentrated; the others would do the talking, in more or less degree, but for these two, poker was like a flag hoisted, a gage thrown down.