As he stood before us that night, one hand resting on the beautifully carved flat-top desk at the window, the other stuffed deep into the side pocket of his dinner jacket, he kept his gaze fixed on Vance, without displaying either annoyance or concern: his was the perfect "poker face."
"What I wished to see you about, Mr. Kinkaid," Vance remarked at length, "is a letter I received this morning. It occurred to me it might interest you, inasmuch as your name was not too fondly mentioned in it. In fact, it intimately concerns the various members of your family."
Kinkaid continued to gaze at Vance without change of expression. Nor did he speak or make the slightest move.
Vance contemplated the end of his cigarette for a moment. Then he said:
"I think it might be best if you perused this letter yourself."
He reached into his pocket and handed the two typewritten pages to Kinkaid, who took them indifferently and opened them.
I watched him closely as he read. No new expression appeared in his eyes, and his lips did not move; but the color of his face deepened perceptibly, and, when he had reached the end, the muscles in his cheeks were working spasmodically. His fat neck bulged over his collar, and ugly splotches of red spread over it.
The hand in which he held the letter dropped jerkily to his side, as if the muscles of his arm were tense; and he slowly lifted his gaze until it met Vance's eyes.
"Well, what about it?" he asked through his teeth.
Vance moved his hand in a slight negative gesture of rejection.
"I'm not placin' any bets just now," he said quietly. "I'm takin' them."
"And suppose I'm not betting?" retorted Kinkaid.
"Oh, that's quite all right." Vance smiled icily. "Every one's prerogative, don't y' know."
Kinkaid hesitated a moment; then he grunted deep in his throat and sat down in the chair before the desk, placing the letter before him. After a minute or so of silence he thumped the letter with his knuckles and shrugged.
"I'd say it was the work of some crank." His tone was at once light and contemptuous.
"No, no. Really, now, Mr. Kinkaid," Vance protested blandly. "That won't do—it won't at all do. You've chosen the wrong number, as it were. You lose that chip. Why not make another selection?"
"What the hell!" exploded Kinkaid. He swung round in the swivel chair and glared at Vance with cold, penetrating menace. "I'm no damned detective," he went on, his lips scarcely moving. "What has the letter to do with me, anyway?"
Vance did not reply. Instead he met Kinkaid's vindictive gaze with cool, steady calm—a calm at once impersonal and devastating. I have never envied any one the task of out-staring Vance. There was a subtle psychological power in his gaze, when he wished to exert it, that could not be resisted by the strongest natures that sought to oppose him through the projection of that inner character which is conveyed by the direct stare.
Kinkaid, with all his forcefulness of mind, had met his match. He knew that Vance's gaze would neither drop nor shift; and in that silent communication that takes place between two strong adversaries when they look deep into each other's eyes—that strange wordless duel of personalities—Kinkaid capitulated.
"Very well," he said, with a good-natured smile. "I'll place another wager—if that'll help you any." He glanced over the letter again. "There's a hell of a lot of truth here. Whoever wrote this knows something about the family situation."
"You use a typewriter yourself—eh, what?" asked Vance.
Kinkaid started and then forced a laugh.
"Just about as rotten as that," he returned, waving his hand toward the letter.
Vance nodded sympathetically.
"I'm no good at it myself," he remarked lightly, "Beastly invention, the typewriter. . . . But I say, do you think any one intends to harm young Llewellyn?"
"I don't know, but I hope so," Kinkaid snapped, with an ugly grin. "He needs killing."
"Why not do it yourself then?" Vance's tone was matter-of-fact.
Kinkaid chuckled unpleasantly.
"I've often thought of it. But he's hardly worth the risk."
"Still," mused Vance, "you seem more or less tolerant of your nephew in public."
"Family prejudice, I suppose," Kinkaid said. "The curse of nepotism. My sister dotes on him."
"He spends considerable time here at the Casino." The remark was half question, half statement.
Kinkaid nodded.
"Trying to annex some of the Kinkaid money which his mother won't supply him too freely. And I humor him. Why not? He plays a system." Kinkaid snorted. "I wish they'd all play a system. It's the hit-or-miss babies that cut down the profits."
Vance turned the conversation back to the letter.
"Do you believe," he asked, "that there's a tragedy hanging over your family?"
"Isn't there one hanging over every family?" Kinkaid returned. "But if anything's going to happen to Lynn I hope it doesn't happen in the Casino."
"At any rate," persisted Vance, "the letter insists that I come here tonight and watch the johnnie."
Kinkaid waved his hand.
"I'd discount that."
"But you just admitted that there is a lot of truth in the letter."
Kinkaid sat motionless for a while, his eyes, like two small shining disks, fixed on the wall. At length he leaned forward and looked squarely at Vance.
"I'll be frank with you, Mr. Vance," he said earnestly. "I've a hell of a good idea who wrote that letter. Simply a case of mania and cold feet. . . . Forget it."
"My word!" murmured Vance. "That's dashed interestin'." He crushed out his cigarette and, rising, picked up the letter, refolded it, and put it back into his pocket. "Sorry to have troubled you and all that. . . . I think, however, I'll loiter a bit."
Kinkaid neither rose nor said a word as we went out into the Gold Room.
3. THE FIRST TRAGEDY
(Saturday, October 15; 11:15 p.m.)
The place had already begun to fill. There were at least a hundred "members" playing at the various tables and standing chatting in small groups. There was a gala, colorful atmosphere in the great room, coupled with a tinge of excitement and tension. The Japanese orderlies, in native costume, were darting about noiselessly on their various errands; and on either side of the arched entrance stood two uniformed attendants. No movement, however innocent, of any person escaped the ever-watchful eyes of these sentinels. It was a fashionable gathering; and I had no difficulty in identifying many prominent persons from social and financial circles.
Lynn Llewellyn was still sitting in a corner of the lounge, busily engaged with pencil and note-book and apparently oblivious to all the activity going on about him.
Vance strolled down the length of the room, greeting a few acquaintances on his way. He paused at the chuck-a-luck table near the east front window and bought a stack of chips. These he wagered on the "one," doubling each time up to five, and then beginning again. It was incredible how many "ones" showed up on the dice in the cage; and after fifteen minutes Vance had won nearly a thousand dollars. He seemed restless, though, and took his winnings indifferently.
Turning again to the centre of the room he walked to the roulette table operated by Bloodgood. He looked on for several turns of the wheel from behind a chair, and then sat down to join the play. He was facing the lounge alcove, and as he took his place at the table he glanced casually in that direction and let his eyes rest for a moment on Llewellyn, who was still deep in thought.
The selections for the next turn of the wheel had been made,—there were only five or six players engaged at the time,—and Bloodgood stood with the ball poised against his middle finger in the trough of the bowl, ready to project it on its indeterminate convolutions. But for some reason he did not flip it at once.
"Faites votre jeu, monsieur," he called in a facetious sing-song, looking directly at Vance.
Vance turned his head quickly and met the slightly cynical smile on Bloodgood's heavy lips.
; "Thanks awfully for the personal signal," he said, with exaggerated graciousness; and, leaning far up the table toward the wheel, he placed a hundred-dollar bill on the green area marked "0" at the head of the three columns of figures. "My system tells me to play the 'house number' tonight."
The faint smile on Bloodgood's lips faded, and his eyebrows went up a trifle. Then he spun the wheel dexterously.
It was a long play, for the ball had been given a terrific impetus and it danced back and forth for some time between the grooved wheel and the sides of the bowl. At length it seemed to settle in one of the numbered compartments, though the wheel was still spinning too rapidly to permit the reading of the numerals; but it leaped out again, made one or two gyrations, and finally came to rest in the green slot—the "house number."
A hum went up round the table as the rake gathered in all the other stakes; but though I watched Bloodgood's face closely, I could not detect the slightest change of expression:—he was the perfect unemotional croupier.
"Your system seems to be working," he remarked to Vance, as he moved out a stack of thirty-five yellow chips. "Vous vous engagez, et puis vous voyez. . . . Mais, qu'est-ce que vous espérez voir, monsieur?"
"I haven't the groggiest notion," returned Vance, gathering up his bill and the chips. "I'm not hopin'—I'm driftin'."
"In any event, you're lucky tonight," smiled Bloodgood.
"I wonder. . . ." Vance slid his winnings into his pocket and turned from the table.
He walked slowly toward the card room, paused at the entrance, and then moved on to the vingt-et-un game which was in progress at a high semi-circular table only a few yards from the lounge alcove. There were two vacant chairs facing the hallway; but Vance waited. The dealer sat on a small raised platform, and when the player at his right relinquished his seat Vance took the vacant chair. I noted that from this position he had an unobstructed view of Llewellyn.
He placed a yellow chip on the paneled section of the table in front of him, and a closed card was dealt to him. He glanced at it: standing behind him, I saw that it was the ace of clubs. The next card dealt him was another ace.
"Fancy that, Van," he remarked to me over his shoulder. "The 'ones' are followin' me around tonight."
He turned up his first ace and laid the other beside it, placing another yellow chip on it. He was the last to be served by the dealer on the "draw"; and to my astonishment he drew two face cards—a knave and a queen. This combination of an ace and a face card constitutes a "natural"—the highest hand in black-jack—and Vance had drawn two of them on the one deal. The dealer's cards totalled nineteen.
Vance was about to wager a second hand when Llewellyn rose with determination from his seat in the corner of the lounge and approached Bloodgood's roulette table, with note-book in hand. Instead of continuing the play, Vance again took up his winnings, slid from his high chair, and sauntered back to the centre of the room, taking his place behind the row of chairs on the side of the roulette table opposite to that at which Llewellyn had seated himself.
Lynn Llewellyn was of medium height and slender, with a suggestion of quick wiry strength. His eyes were a flat, dull blue, and though they moved quickly, they showed no animation. His mouth, however, was emotional and mobile. His thin, somewhat haggard face gave one the impression of weakness coupled with cunning; yet withal it was a capable face—a face which a certain type of woman would consider handsome.
When he had taken his seat he looked about him swiftly, nodded to Bloodgood and to others present, but apparently did not see Vance, although Vance stood directly across the table. He watched the play for several minutes, making a notation of the winning numbers in the leather-bound booklet he had placed before him on the table. After five or six plays, he began to frown, and, turning in his chair, summoned one of the Japanese boys who was passing.
"Scotch," he ordered; "with plain water on the side."
While the drink was being fetched he continued his notations. At length, when three numbers in the same column had come in succession, he began eagerly to play. When the boy brought the Scotch he waved it brusquely away, and concentrated on the game.
For the first half-hour that we stood watching him I tried to trace some mathematical sequence in his choice of numbers, but, meeting with no success, I gave it up. I later learned that Llewellyn was playing a curious and, according to Vance, a wholly inconsistent and contradictory variation of the Labouchère—or, as it is popularly called, Labby—system which, for many years, was thoroughly tested at Monte Carlo.
But, however inadequate the system may have been scientifically, Llewellyn was profiting by it. Indeed, had he followed up his advantages, after the unreasoned custom of the amateur player, he would, as it happened, have progressed more rapidly. But each time he caught a number (en plein) or a half-number (à cheval) or a quarter-number (en carré) he withdrew his winnings in proportion to their duplication, multiplying only when luck went against him. After almost every play he glanced quickly at the carefully ruled tables and columns of figures in his book; and it was obvious that, despite all temptation to do otherwise, he was abiding rigidly by the set formula he had decided to follow.
Shortly after midnight, when one of his suites of doubling had reached its peak, the right number came. The result was a large winning, and when he had drawn down the six piles of yellow chips, he took a deep tremulous breath and leaned back in his chair. I calculated roughly that he was approximately ten thousand dollars ahead at this point. News of his luck soon spread to the other players in the room, and there was a general gathering of the curious around Bloodgood's table.
I glanced about me and noted the various expressions of the spectators: some were cynical, some envious, some merely interested. Bloodgood himself showed no indication, either by a look or an intonation of voice, that anything unusual was taking place. He was the faultless automaton, discharging his duties with detached mechanical precision.
When Llewellyn relaxed in his seat after this coup he glanced up, and, catching sight of Vance, bowed abstractedly. He was still busy with his calculations and computations, noting each turn of the wheel, and recording the winning number in his book. His face had become flushed, and his lips moved nervously as he jotted down the figures. His hands trembled perceptibly, and every few moments he took a long deep inhalation, as if trying to calm his nerves. Once or twice I noticed that he threw his left shoulder forward and bent his head to the left, like a man with angina pectoris trying to relieve the pain over his heart.
After the sixth play had passed, Llewellyn leaned over and continued his careful system of selecting and pyramiding. This time I noticed that he introduced some new variations into his method. He did what is known as "covering" his bets, by setting the even-money black and red fields against the color of the number he chose, and by opposing the première, milieu, or dernière douzaine against the particular group of twelve in which he had made his en plein numerical choice, as well as by utilizing both the odd and even fields (pair and impair), and the high and low field (passe and manque), in the same manner.
"That byplay," Vance whispered in my ear, "is not on the books. He's losing his nerve, and is toying with both the d'Alembert and the Montant Belge systems. But it really doesn't matter in the least. If he's lucky he'll win anyway; if he's not, he'll lose. Systems are for optimists and dreamers. The immutable fact remains that the house pays thirty-five to one against thirty-six possibilities and an added house number. That's destiny—no one can conquer it."
But Llewellyn's luck at roulette was evidently running in his favor that night, for it was but a short time before he won again on a pyramided number. When he drew the chips to him his hands shook so that he upset one of the stacks and had difficulty in reassembling it. Again he sank back in his chair and let the next plays pass. His color had deepened; his eyes took on an unnatural glitter; and the muscles of his face began to twitch. He gazed about him blankly and missed one of the numbers that had shown on the w
heel, so that he had to ask Bloodgood for it in order to keep the entries in his book complete.
A tension had taken hold of the spectators. A strange lull replaced the general conversation. Every one seemed intent on the outcome of this age-old conflict between a man and the unfathomed laws of probability. Llewellyn sat there with a fortune in chips piled up in front of him. A few more thousand dollars and the bank would be "broken"; for Kinkaid had set a nightly capital of forty thousand dollars for this table.
During the electrified silence that had suddenly settled over the room, broken only by the whirr of the spinning ball, the clink of chips and the droning voice of Bloodgood, Kinkaid emerged from his office and approached the table. He halted beside Vance, and indifferently watched the play for a while.
"This is evidently Lynn's night," he remarked casually.
"Yes, yes—quite." Vance did not take his eyes from the nervous trembling figure of Llewellyn.
At this moment Llewellyn again caught an en plein, but he had only a single chip on the number. However, it marked the end of some mathematical cycle, according to his confused system; and, withdrawing his chips, he leaned back once more. He was breathing heavily, as if he could not get sufficient air into his lungs; and again he thrust his left shoulder forward.
A Japanese boy was passing, and Llewellyn hailed him.
"Scotch," he ordered again, and, with apparent effort, jotted down the winning number in his book.
"Has he been drinking much tonight?" Kinkaid asked Vance.
"He ordered one drink some time ago but didn't take it," Vance told him. "This will be his first, as far as I know."
A few minutes later the boy set down beside Llewellyn a small silver tray holding a glass of whisky, an empty glass and a small bottle of charged water. Bloodgood had just spun the wheel, and he glanced at the tray.
"Mori!" he called to the boy. "Mr. Llewellyn takes plain water."
The Japanese turned back, set the whisky on the table before Llewellyn, and, taking up the tray with the charged water, moved away. As he came round the end of the table, Kinkaid beckoned to him.
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