KNEW as soon as he sat in the game that he was playing for more than the money represented in his stack of chips.
He had the face of one whose ancestors hadn't worked in their shirt sleeves for many generations, but it had a worn, desperate, tense expression. Even then his face looked youthful. He wasn't more than twenty-three or twenty-four.
They were not all thoroughbreds who came to Johnny Blix's snug little apartment; but most of them had money. I got a good deal of it. Johnny thought he was indebted to me for certain minor favors in the past which he appreciated far more than I thought they were worth.
He knew that poker was more than a science with me. 1t was an art. The sand-papered tips of my fingers were almost like eyes, and I could feel and understand faint indentations on the cards that not many people could have discovered without a strong magnifying glass.
Johnny was a square gambler—as square as professional gamblers ever are, and any stranger really got a run for his money on his roulette table, though of course if the luck got to breaking too hard against the house, Johnny would press a little button with his toe and that made it very hard for the lucky man to put his money on the color or number that won.
Nor did I play poker for my health. I wasn't hoggish about winning, and didn't attract attention to my consistent luck, but with the minimum of effort, and some enjoyment, I managed to have an income somewhat above the demands I made on it.
It wasn't every night or every week that I marked or held out cards. I knew and could practise about every trick that was ever devised to make the other fellow lose at poker; and many of them were what is called ethical. In poker, as in law, there are certain rules laid down by which you can cheat the other fellow. Some men use their face as a mirror and reflect into it the quality of the hands they hold.
The young aristocrat was not one of these. He was inscrutable as an oriental. He played his cards well but desperately. I went after him. I liked him, but I was determined to break him. I knew from the way he was playing that there was something back of the game, and I was interested.
Some people go to the movies for their excitement and amusement. I like to take mine off the streets and hot from the hearts of people who are living tragedies. Into some of these little dramatic episodes I now and then force myself as a super.
Every time the boy stayed in a pot where I happened to have an interest, I boosted. I didn't win them all, or didn't get a winning percentage, but that was an incident. I wanted to make him lose.
It was a stiff game, a big game even for Johnny's where the stakes were always high. ` I have seen honest men win up into four figures between sunset and dawn, and sometimes they did it in spite of all I could do. Even a gambler who uses art instead of science can't dictate to luck: he can only increase his percentage, or chance of winning. It's different in roulette. Under a properly constructed wheel there is a delicate mechanism that arbitrarily puts the ball into the color that the man who has his toe on the button wants.
The boy was playing with good nerve, too. He played hard. He plunged and he bluffed and twice he caught me with a good hand, but not good enough, and materially reduced the number of blue chips before me.
Then I went after him in earnest. I stowed four tens in my pocket and waited. I could palm half a deck in either hand, and nobody would ever spot it with a casual look, so I had no trouble in switching those tens to my hand when he boosted the pot high as a house and stood pat. I drew two cards—it was a mere detail to get rid of the extra one before the show-down—and he stood pat.
He figured that he had me beaten, and calculated to give me another severe trimming. But his house-full on aces wasn't worth the paper it took to print the cards. That gave him a hard jolt.
I put three kings a pair of deuces into my pocket and waited. Soon I caught him again—this time with a flush, and I knew that he had gone just about to the bottom of his pile. I boosted it so high the next time he stayed that he came in for only a show-down, and we both lost. But I had broken him. That was what I wanted.
He didn't say a word. He just sat there for a minute looking rather dazed, bit his lips, sighed and got up.
I cashed in and followed him out of the room.
He looked around, recognized me and said nervously:
“Did you have it in for me? You played like it.”
I looked at him steadily, and with just a touch of sympathy in my tone I asked if it really meant much to him to lose.