Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

4 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY Pop himself was good, if he would pay, but I remembered the looks between them. I didn’t believe they intended to lose; if they did, I doubted their intention to come through. “ Give us a new deck, Ned, will you?” asked En Sue. ‘“ You'll find them in the drawer of the buffet, to the right.” As I handed them to him he gave me a look. His eyés were like black opals now, sug- gesting rather than showing hidden fire, the most intensely alive things I have ever seen. The soul of the born gambler was back of them.. He stripped the stamp, threw out the joker, and shuffled them, not on the table, but between fiying fingers that jug- gled the cards too swiftly for the eye to follow. He could do anything with those fingers, from the exquisite brushlike strokes with which he wrote Chinese or Greek or Sanscrit, for that matter, to stopping with his ungloved hand a ball walloped hard enough to smash the fence and apparently out of all reach. The new game started, and I watched from the buffet. En Sue faced Pop, the ‘“‘ gentlemen” flanking him. I kept away from seeing En Sue’s hand—that sort of thing isn’t good golf, and it isn’t good cards, to my mind. He always announced what he held when he didn’t toss in, and that was seldom, for the little red joss, or his own skill and judgment, brought an ava- lanche of chips his way. The “ gentlemen ” bought fresh stacks, and En Sue collected them. The top of the room was blue with smoke, and En Sue asked me to open the window from the top. This I did, noting a balcony of wrought iron and a glimpse of a dried-up garden in the light I let out be- tween the curtains of heavy crimson bro- cade. En Sue’s luck became monotonous even to me, and I was watching the vagaries of the drifting eddies of cigar and cigaret smoke, incense above the head of the little red godling. Pop’s voice sounded, rasping, all the suavity and gentility out of it: “What the devil do you mean?” “‘T like to play with fifty-two cards, not fifty,” answered En Sue, and his tone was that of a twanged steel wire. From somewhere he had produced an WEEKLY. automatic. I had seen it before. It was of foreign make and mechanism, handled with green jade, carved with dragons. And I had seen En Sue shoot with it, tearing out a two-inch bull’s-eye at twenty paces. Now it was leveled at the center stud of Pop’s stiff shirt-front. ‘Don’t touch those cards—any of you,” commanded En Sue. ‘‘ Ned, come here and count them. If I’ve made a mistake I’ll apologize and return my winnings.” I had just started forward when I saw the hand of the player to En Sue’s right drop swiftly to his side. They’ were all playing with their coats off except En Sue, whom temperature never seemed to affect. Pop had been mopping his forehead almost continually for the past half-hour, despite the opened window, and his big silk hand- kerchief lay in his lap while his hands were outclawed on the table, dragging the baize. I saw the glint of blue steel following the move of the “ geritleman’s ” hand. The champagne bucket was handy. I stooped and plucked the bottle from the broken ice. The man’s hair was brushed back from forehead to the nape of his neck, glossy as a seal, but I marked the protuberance just back of and level with the center of his pointed ear. Using the heavy bottle as a club, I tapped him there. He half-rose and made a head-dive to the floor, appar- ently attempting to spin on the top of his skull. The gun fell softly to the thick rug, and I retrieved it just in time to rise and catch ‘‘ gentleman ’’ No. 2 with a pistol flashing from his waistband, his finger on the trig- ger, lifing the gun toward En Sue’s head. I fired pointblank across the table, and got him in the right shoulder. The bullet must have smashed a bone, for he dropped his own weapon and his face turned chalky white, the blood starting out on his shirt- sleeve. It was no time for ethics. The shot might have roused the house. I dragged down the heavy curtains from the pole, gagged him with Pop’s handkerchief, strapped his own belt about his arms, used one of the heavy cords that looped up the curtains in the daytime to hobble him and rolled him up in one curtain. The same treatment, COMmiclboo SS C©