The waiter went to the manager and spoke in a corner behind the back of his hand. The manager came over in turn, leaned confidentially across the back of Durand's chair.
"Anything I can do, sir ?"
"Can't you offer us anything a little more exciting than this?"
"If you were alone, sir, I'd suggest--"
"Suggest it anyway," Durand encouraged him.
"There are some gentlemen upstairs-- You understand me?"
"Perfectly," said Durand. "I wish I had known sooner. Come, my dear."
"The lady too?" the manager asked dubiously.
"I am very well behaved," she simpered. "I will be quiet as a mouse. No one will know that I am there."
"Tell them Mr. Bradford sent you from below. We do not like too much attention called to it. It is just for the diversion of a few of our steady customers."
They went up together at a propitious moment, when no one seemed to be watching. Durand knocked at a large double door, behind which a buzz of conversation sounded. A man opened it and looked out at them, holding it so that they could not see within.
"Mr. Bradford sent us from below."
"We don't allow ladies in here, sir."
She smiled her most dazzling smile. Her eyes looked into his. Her hand even came to rest upon his forearm for a moment. "There are exceptions to every rule. Surely you are not going to keep me out? I should be so lonely without him."
"But the gentlemen's conversation may--"
She pinched his chin playfully. "There, there. I have heard my husband swear before; it will not shock me."
"Just a moment."
He closed the door; reopened it in a moment to offer her a black velvet eye-mask. "Perhaps you would be more comfortable with this."
She gave Durand a satiric side look, as if to say "Isn't he naïve?" but put it on nevertheless.
The man stood aside, to hold back the door for them.
"Need you have been so coquettish ?" Durand said to her in a rapid aside.
"It got me in, didn't it?"
Her entrance created a sensation. He had seen her attract attention wherever they went, but never anything comparable to this. The buzz of conversation stilled into a dead silence. The play even stopped short at several of the tables. One or two of the men reached falteringly behind them, as if to draw on their coats, though they did not complete the intention.
She said something behind her hand to their host, who announced in a clear voice: "The lady wishes you to forget that she is here, gentlemen. She simply enjoys watching card games."
She bowed her head demurely, in a feigned sort of modesty, and went on, her arm linked to Durand's.
Their guide introduced him at one of the tables, after having first obtained his name, and the willingness of the other players to accept him. "Mr. Castle--Mr. Anderson, Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Steeves."
Bonny was not introduced, propriety in this case dictating that she be omitted.
"Champagne for the gentlemen," Durand immediately ordered, as soon as he had taken seat.
A colored steward brought it, but she at once took over the task from him, remarking: "That shall be my pleasure, to see that the wants of the gentlemen at this table are attended to." And moved around from one to the next, filling their glasses, after the cards were already well in play. Then sat back some little distance removed, with the air of a little girl upon her best behavior, who has been allowed to sit up late in presence of her elders. If her legs did not actually dangle from her chair, that was the illusion she conveyed.
Durand took out the entire two hundred, with an indifferent gesture, as though it were simply a small fraction of what he had about him, and the game began.
Within minutes, it was no longer two hundred. And at no time after that did it ever again descend to two hundred, though sometimes it swelled and sometimes it shrank back again. It doubled itself in bulk, finally, and then when it had doubled itself again, he made two piles of it, so that he must have had a thousand dollars in winnings there on the table before him. He did not remove any of it from sight, as the etiquette of the game proscribed, the play still being in progress.
The room was warm and unaired, and the players were heated in addition by their own excitement. The champagne thoughtfully there beside them was gratefully downed in hectic gulps at every opportunity. And each time a glass fell empty, a fleeting shadow, less than a shadow, would tactfully withdraw it a short distance behind the player, in order not to interfere with his view of the table, and there refill it. With graceful, dainty, loving little gesture, hand to throat, or bosom, or toward ear, lest a drop be spilled, as the drink was returned to its place. Tapering fingers, one or the other folded shorter than the rest, clasped about its stem.
Occasionally she got an absent, murmured "Thank you," from the player, more often he was not even aware of her, so unobtrusively were his wants tended.
Once she motioned with her fan to the steward, and he brought another bottle, and when the cork popped, she gave a little start of alarm, as pretty as you please, so timorous a little thing was she, so unused to the ways of champagne corks.
But suddenly there was silence at the table. The game had halted, without a word. Each player continued to look at his cards, but no further move was made.
"Whenever you're ready, gentlemen," Durand said pleasantly.
No one answered, no one played.
"I'm waiting for the rest of you, gentlemen," Durand said.
No one looked up, even at sound of his voice. And the answer was given with the speaker's head still lowered to his cards.
"Will you ask the lady to retire, sir ?" the man nearest him said.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you have to be told ?" They were all looking at him now.
Durand started to his feet with a fine surge of forced indignation. "I want to know what you meant by that!"
The other man rose in turn, a little less quickly. "This." He knocked his diffuse cards into a single block against the table, and slapped Durand in the face with them twice, first on one side, then the other.
"If there's one thing lower than a man that'll cheat at cards, it's a man that'll use a woman to do his cheating for him!" Durand tried to swing at him with his fist, the circumstances forgotten now, only the provocation remaining livid on his cheeks--for he had no past history of brooked insult to habituate him to this sort of thing. But the others had leaped up by now too, and they closed in on him and held his arms pinioned. He threshed about, trying to free himself, but all he could succeed in doing was swing their bodies a little too, along with his own; they were too many for him.
The table rocked, and one of the chairs went over. Her scream was faint and futile in the background, and tinny with horrified virtue.
The manager had appeared as if by magic. The struggle stopped, but they still held Durand fast, his marble-white face now cast limply downward as if to hide itself from their scorching stares.
"This man's a common, low-down cheat. We thought you ran a place for gentlemen. You should protect the good name of your establishment better than this."
He didn't try to deny it; at least that much he had left. That was all he had left. His shirt had come open at the chest, and his breast could be seen rising and falling hard. But scarcely from the brief physical stress just now, rather from humiliation. The whole room was crowded about them, every other game forgotten.
The manager signalled to two husky helpers. "Get him out of here. Quickly, now. I run an honest place. I won't have any of that."
He didn't struggle further. He was transferred to the paid attendants, with only the unvarying protest of the manhandled: "Take your hands off me," no more.
But then as he saw the manager clearing the disheveled table, sweeping up what was on it, he called out: "Two hundred of that money is mine, I brought it into the game."