Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

might be in a car beside yours waiting for a light to change and you know that you'll never meet in a hundred years, but the instant that your eye holds hers there is a leaping spark, a quickening of the pulse and you’re both aware that it’s there. For the blonde and Matt Brady, the spark was alive. I slipped a sawbuck out of my wallet and slid off the lunch- counter stool. It had been some time, but I thought I could hold - my own in a blackjack game. I found a place at the end of her table. | , “Ten,” I said. She stacked five, matched it, and poked the paper money down the slot in the table. She dealt nimbly. And when a hand broke, she scooped the loser’s bet into the tray and folded his cards under in one smooth sweep. I put two bucks on the table for the next deal. When the cards came around, I raised the corner of the top one and saw a K. I slid it over and checked the bottom. An ace! Blackjack, my first hand! I flipped the cards over. “Nice start.” She said it casually and pushed a stack of three silver dollars my way. And once again I got the feeling that the look in her eye was above and beyond the call of duty. “Keep ’em coming,” I grinned. What happened to me in that ses- sion of blackjack should happen more. often. Only maybe I couldn’t 112 ae take too much of it because play- ing in a fixed game is a little hard on the nerves—even when things are stacked in reverse. That’s right. 1 caught it about twenty minutes after I sat down. I played a lot of cards when I did a stretch in the service and a guy just naturally keeps tab on what’s been dealt. The game was going along, the blonde giving me an eye now and then as she had from the very first. Then I split a pair of aces for one card down on each. My first was a queen. When I raised the corner of the other for a peek, it was the ten of diamonds. And the ten of diamonds had just busted a hand down the line. I glanced at it again, then checked the other players. They weren’t © looking at me, so I risked one long tight look at the blonde’s face. Her left eyelid came down just a_ fraction of an inch. and_ stayed there an instant—half a wink, a silent message that she was for me and to hell with the house. There’s a little larceny in all of us, they say—that eternal yen to get something for nothing. The call of the fast buck. I settled back to milk this one for all the law— or the babe dealing—would allow. I raised my bets to five and she smiled at me. My hand still won almost every time. Then I went up to ten and the-cutie with the cards lifted an eyebrow. Too strong. I went back to five. But I kept win- ning—winning like you do in one ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE COMIC OOO KS.C©