by Max Brand
For as he spoke, Lee won, let his bet ride and won again, doubled, recouping his losses at a stroke. And then he settled down seriously to the work of throwing his money away.
XVIII. ALICE AGAIN
BUT THE CURSE of Midas had descended upon Lee Garrison unasked, and whatever he touched turned into gold. At faro, to be sure, he managed to lose five thousand in a moment, but, when he won on the next turn of the card, he turned away in despair, while the man at the deck gaped to see the gambler leave at the very moment his luck changed. From faro he went to chuck-a-luck, where, having placed his accustomed thousand on the five, instantly two fives danced to the top of the next cast, and when he left his stake and winnings in the hope of seeing them disappear — they doubled again!
After this he went from table to table, literally throwing money away, but though he lost here, he won there. He could not even carry his winnings about with him, for gold coin weighs ninety pounds to every ten thousand dollars. So he hired one of Lefhvre’s own men to stand guard over that precious canvas bag while Lee went about with sack pockets sagging with a load of gold. Although he sowed it by blind handfuls, he could not lose it. At eight o’clock he had to shake his head in surrender. Alice, without stain and without reproach, was waiting for him, and he must go. Gloomily he started for the dance hall, with twenty times the money which he had come to lose. He passed the ecstatic form of McLeod, who had been exactly imitating the betting of Lee on a smaller scale, and who now muttered: “You’re a master, Garrison. Nobody under heaven could make out your system — I’ve racked my brains over it and got nothing but — cash.”
That was the common sentiment. They had seen greater winnings in Monsieur Lefhvre’s, but they had never seen winnings taken in with so careless a hand. And what a system it was that, in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes, allowed the master to turn at will from one game to another, so completely the lord of all that it seemed his will was imposed on the whirl of the roulette wheel and on the arrangement of the faro pack. This, combined with his youth, and then the known facts about the affair at Crawford’s, caused them to stare joyously after him as he reached the big door leading to the dance hall, paused there a moment, and finally, with a lift of his head, disappeared into the brighter atmosphere of the adjoining room.
Lee saw her instantly, whirling in a yellow dress, or was it beaten gold made to flow softly as spider web about her? She spun down the center of the room in the arms of a handsome youth. The music, as though to greet his entrance, climbed to a rich crescendo, and the pulse of the drum grew hurried. She danced with a glistening arm outstretched, sheen in her hair, her face flushed. Then he looked more closely at her companion.
He was magnificent; he stood, one knew at once, exactly the romantic and perfect height of six feet. He was in the poetry of the early twenties, so that a woman could call him either man or boy, as her cunning fancy chose. Straight as an aspen he was and shouldered like an oak. His features were of statuesque perfection, with the straight nose and the long, strong sweep of the jawline that Grecian sculptors loved to strike out with their chisels. Considering that this magnificent fellow was set off by graceful dancing, easy manners, and above all by precisely fitted Sunday clothes, Lee Garrison had reason to pause and watch that radiant pair weave through the crowd. How deft, how careless a guide was this big stranger. How could human brain at one and the same time conceive the elaborate passages through which his feet were going in rhythm with the galloping music, and, at the same time maintain a steady and smiling flow of conversation.
The heart of Lee sank. His own harsh features were shown to him in a mirror: cheekbones too high, eye staring and sunken, chin too lean.
Heads were turning toward him. Every one of them knew him, so it seemed, and each glance was accompanied by a subdued murmur. No doubt they were rehearsing the episode in Crawford’s. He groaned as he hunted for a vacant table along the side of the room.
A voice detached itself from the conglomerate murmur, and there she came with the handsome youth only vaguely in view behind her. He would have known her by her radiant body, Lee decided, had her face been masked in black.
She took possession of him in a swirl of words and gestures. “Here he is! This is Harry Chandler. I told him I was waiting for you to come, and he’s been taking care of me. Wasn’t that sweet of him? Do you have to go right now, Mister Chandler?”
Lee watched Harry Chandler in wonder and sympathy, wonder that so magnificent a hero should be dismissed in his favor, and because he knew how embarrassed, awkward, and venomous he himself would have been had he stood in the boots of Mr. Chandler. To his considerable amazement young Chandler showed no dismay or confusion whatever. He acknowledged the introduction with a nod, and, while he ran an indifferent eye over Lee, he produced a cigarette, lighted it, and tossed the match toward a nearby table.
“Sorry we’re losing the last of that dance, Alice,” he said. “But tomorrow night is another night. So long!”
And he drifted off, leaving Lee with the feeling that, although he possessed the field, the laurel had been denied him.
“Want to finish this out?” asked bright-haired Alice.
He shook his head, saying that he did not dance. For certainly he would not invite invidious comparisons between his clumsiness and the skill of Chandler. That declaration cast something of a cloud over her, in the midst of which she guided him to her table, and he presently found himself opposite her cigarette and her smile.
The golden mist was vanished from her — how small a wind of truth had been needed to clear it away. Lee was seeing Alice of the window for the first time. Her blue eyes were a little faded, and about the corners was a tracery of weary crow’s-foot wrinkles. Her mouth was wider than strict necessity required, and the upper lip was a little crooked, verging toward a faint sneer where an irregularity of the teeth pushed it up a trifle. To be sure her complexion was as delicate as the rose flush of Aurora, but its perfection was now, alas, swiftly explained. For, leaning back in the chair, she produced a rouge box and powder, together with a mirror, and, holding this at arm’s length and turning her head critically from side to side, ten seconds of accurate work replaced her damp and ragged flush with a dry and even one, restoring the pearl to forehead and chin. She closed the little case with a sigh of satisfaction and snuggled the chain over her hand again.
“A gentleman friend in Omaha gave it to me,” said Alice. “He got tired of seeing me lose my bag, and so he went to a jeweler and got this thing. Ain’t it sweet?”
“Sure,” said Lee, leaning back as she leaned forward. “It looks pretty good.”
A change passed over her as suddenly as the flick of a cloud shadow across the window. For a moment she studied him with coldly intent eyes, balancing a judgment.
Lee felt that disaster lurked ahead, and he did his best to stave it off by making conversation. “This Chandler you were dancing with — that’s Handsome Harry, isn’t it?”
“That’s Handsome Harry,” she answered. “He’s a swell, all right.”
She looked past Lee with eyes made big by contemplating the full glory of Harry. Lee himself was remembering stray bits of talk he had heard here and there about the town. This was the same man who had hunted Moonshine and, mounted on a wonderfully fleet mare known by the strange name of Laughter, had run the stallion for three days.
“He’s got the blood,” went on Alice of the window, “and the blood tells. His father was a gentleman before him, and his grandfather before that. Old man Chandler came out here and started trying to raise Thoroughbreds in the desert, but he went broke. Any real gentleman goes broke, when he gets into business. All that poor Harry has is one horse and his face. But that one horse is Laughter. I guess you’ve heard about her. I’ve seen her!”
Alice’s enthusiasm for Harry faded a little. She yawned in the face of Lee and leaned back in her chair. What might have happened then no one could have told, had not a man from the gambling room said to Lee in p
assing: “Celebrating, eh? They’re still talking about how you cleaned up the games, in yonder.”
That sentence brought a delightful smile to the lips of Alice. She leaned toward Lee again with a dainty forefinger shaken in mock reproof. “So you’ve trimmed ’em, you naughty boy?”
He saw her rather than heard her. There had gathered over him a sick darkness of disappointment as he realized that Alice of the window could not be the end of the trail that began with the glove and the shack. That gloom parted a little, and he saw her raised hand, and no more.
Time, which had written of himself upon her face, had dealt gently with her hands. Her idle fingers, untrammeled by work, were girlish in slenderness, pink-tipped, and pointed. Now he saw a palm of transparent delicacy, with a blue hint of veins. No matter if the golden vanity case that another man had given her dangled from the round, small wrist. As though a wand had passed over him, Lee Garrison saw her again as she had been, when she leaned above him from the window, laughing.
XIX. THE TOUCH OF MIDAS
ENCHANTMENT, INDEED, WAS there, and money was the enchanter. Not the lost trapper, flagging on the trail, when he sees the smoke twist above the unknown hills, or the mariner, when the light glints through the dark of the storm, is so transformed as was Alice of the window by the thought of the gambler’s winnings. There was no need of rouge now to stain her cheeks. Her eyes glistened, and her voice was sweeter. She was restored for a dazzling moment to what she had been when face and voice mated that lovely hand. And Lee Garrison cast from his mind the first horrible suspicion. For that which was so beautiful must surely be good. Perhaps the glove in his pocket would perfectly fit that hand. Yet he was held back from the trial by a thread of doubt.
“Trimmed ’em?” he said. “Yes, I can’t help winning. Money walks into my pockets, even when I try to keep it out.”
Her laughter was music, clear and sweet. “A good pick up, dearie?”
Why did she use those foolish familiar words when she hardly knew him? However, he must not criticize. Words were nothing, and he would wash the strangeness from her talk.
“Whiskey,” he said to the waiter, “in a hurry.” And to the girl: “Did I pick up much? Look!”
He thrust a hand into a coat pocket, and it came out dense and bristling with coins. Alice made a trembling, cherishing gesture.
“And lots more than that,” said Lee. “Lots more. But it’s bad stuff, Alice!”
“What sort of kidding d’you call that?” she asked a little hoarsely, and she strained her eyes away from that mass of money and forced herself to smile into his eyes.
“It isn’t a joke,” he assured her. “Money you get by gambling, money you get without work — well, it can’t do you any good, you see?”
Again she laughed, just as she had at the window. Everything and anything made her laugh, and the sound flooded through him as the golden sunshine of a morning pours a room full of warmth.
“Ever hear of it doing any bad, Lee? You are a kidder!”
“But I mean—”
“Take a drink, dearie, and explain later — always do your drinking first. Here you are, Joe — and keep an eye on us, will you? My friend is dry.”
She picked up a twenty from the hand of Garrison and gave it to the waiter, who opened his eyes and fled before she should take back the donation. Lee swept the glass to his lips and then saw that she was drinking with him. Was that right? Should a woman drink? He forgot to wonder about that point as the hot stuff burned its way home in him.
“No chaser,” he said, as she pushed the little glass of water toward him. “I like it straight — I like to watch the way it works inside.”
“You’re all man, aren’t you?” smiled the girl. “I high-signed Joe to make yours double. I knew your style, honey!”
He harked back to the money. He must prove he was right. “What I said about getting something for nothing.”
“Listen, Lee,” broke in the soft voice of the girl, “I don’t fall for that sort of stuff. You don’t have to pull the Sunday school line to make me see that you’re all O K. If that money is poison — well, it’d sure take an awful mob of it to make me sick!”
“D’you want it?” he asked curiously. “Would you like to have it?”
Her eyes widened a trifle. “You can’t tease me,” she declared, and managed a rather shaky laugh. “I haven’t asked you for it, have I?”
“If you want it, take it.” He automatically caught up the refilled glass beside him and tossed off the dram. “Take it all! You know why I give it to you? You’re too beautiful to be harmed by such stuff. Too beautiful and pure and good, Alice, for this dirty money to be bad for you. Gimme that bag.”
She slipped it off with fingers that stumbled at their work, and she watched with incredulous, childish eyes as he opened it and then crammed into the interior a jumbled mass of money. It jammed the bag, swelling it stiffly, and, still wide as it gaped, it could not swallow everything. Half a dozen coins dropped clanging on the table.
“If you want them,” said Lee, “take ’em.”
She began to gather the overflowed gold with a stilted pretense of a smile, ready to drop her spoil, if he showed sign of anger. But there was no anger in him. He watched her with a smile as she packed the money tighter and tighter into the little golden vanity case and finally managed to squeeze the lips of it shut. She pressed it against her cheek and stared at him with a startled, happy look.
“You’re wonderful,” said Alice of the window. “I never knew anybody as wonderful as you are, Lee!”
He shook his head energetically and drank again. The floor around him was alive with people who were moving out for a new dance, and they all traveled by ways which would bring them as close as possible to the table of Garrison, for the whole crowd had seen the episode of the money. Their hearts might have been warmed at the sight of such foolish spending, but it merely angered them to see him throw away without thought what he had won, they believed, without risk.
And he was saying: “You don’t understand, Alice. I’m not a gunfighter or a dead-sure gambler. Everybody’s wrong. They don’t really know me, you see. I’m as simple as anyone could be. Never hunted trouble in my life and never learned a gambling trick or a gambling system. Will you believe me?”
“I’ll believe anything,” said Alice. “Why, you don’t have to argue with me, Lee. If you want to kid me along, go ahead!”
She leaned back, smiling luxuriously, and lighted another cigarette. Immense hopes began to form in her mind. Who could tell? This man was something new. He was never serious, but he kept jesting with a strange, sober face. If she had not known a little about his exploit in Crawford’s, she might have been duped, might have taken him seriously. She was worried by only one thing — why should he have chosen her above the rest? There were prettier girls in the room, younger girls. But she repeated to herself: You can’t judge a man by his choice of a woman. Besides, this cunning fellow is looking deeper than faces. He sees I ain’t like the rest of these.
Suppose, then, that his semi-seriousness became true seriousness? Suppose that her fortunes were hitched to this wild, rising star? Two words rose in her mind, each with a thousand dream-bright pictures — Monte Carlo and Paris. She saw herself in a great hall, seated at a table covered with milk-white linen, liveried servants passing with muffled step or hanging shadow-like behind the chairs.
Between two flickings of cigarette ash that dream poured through the brain of Alice. She had entirely forgotten the princely gift that now gorged her vanity case. There were greater goals ahead. In the first place she changed her mind about one essential. She must not allow him to get too drunk. Granted that she could in this manner pluck all his winnings of the evening, she must not allow him to waken in the morning disillusioned, and so kill the goose of the golden eggs.
“I’m not kidding,” he had said in answer to her last remark. She heard him distantly through her dream. “But we won’t talk any more about me.
I want to know about you, Alice. Tell me everything about yourself.”
He had opened a floodgate. It was her favorite topic.
* * * * *
It was later in that happy, happy evening, and her story was drawing toward its close. Thrice the saucer that held her cigarette ashes and butt had been changed. She had grown inured to the curious glances of the women. The table had become a throne to Alice, and her dominion was over the fire-eyed youth who listened so intently to her words. No doubt he was playing the game of cat and mouse, in a way, but to a certain extent it was impossible to doubt his sincerity unless he could continue to act a rC4le and grow drunk at the same time.
For he was indubitably growing drunk. In spite of her cautioning, which made the tip-dizzy Joe cut the portions of Garrison to a mere wash of liquor in the bottom of the glass, the talk of Garrison became thicker. He articulated as though his upper lip had become numb.
“I’m not used to the stuff,” he said, and she was forced against her will to believe him. After all, was it not true that most gamblers avoided drink?
“Time for us to be running along, honey,” she told him. “You’re under the weather.”
He protested stubbornly that he was sober as a judge. “But I’ll go,” he said, “as soon as you finish your story. You’d just got to the place where Crawford came up to you.”
She fired with indignation as she recalled the incident, quite forgetting Lee, for the moment, except as a sympathetic listener.
“The big stiff walked up to me with that ugly grin of his. He says— ‘You got to key down, Blondie — you’re making too much noise.’ Can you imagine that? Him calling me Blondie and telling me to key down? I was so mad I just give him a look until I caught my breath. ‘Why, you big ham,’ says I, ‘if the floor of your dump was paved with faces like yours, it wouldn’t be good enough for me to walk on!’”