All three laughed for a mutual clearance of the situation. Sandy had
said what he wanted and knew that Plimsoll interpreted it correctly.
They went into the back room amicably after Plimsoll had recalled his
lookout.
There was little to indicate the passing of the Volstead Act in the Good
Luck Pool Room, where the tables had long ago been taken out, though the
cue racks still stood in place. The place was foul with smoke and reeked
with the fumes of expensive but indifferently distilled liquor.
Hereford--the "brisket" end of it--had never been fussy about mixed
drinks. Redeye was, and continued to be, the favorite. A faro and a
roulette game, with a craps table, made up the equipment, outside of
half a dozen small tables given over to stud and draw poker.
Some fifty men were present, most of them playing. Many of them nodded
at Sandy and Sam as they walked over to the faro layout and stood
looking on. Plimsoll left them and went back to a table near the door,
where his chair was turned down at a game of draw. He started talking in
a low tone to the man seated next to him. The first interest of their
entrance soon died out. The dealer at faro went on imperturbably sliding
card after card out of the case, the case-keeper fingered the buttons on
the wires of his abacus and the players shifted their chips about the
layout or nervously shuffled them between the fingers of one hand.
Sandy knew the dealer for Sim Hahn, a man whose livelihood lay in the
dexterity of his slim well-kept fingers and his ability to reckon the
bets; swiftly to drag in or pay out losings and winnings without an
error. His face was without a wrinkle, clean-shaven, every slick black
hair in place, the flesh wax-like. He held a record--whispered, not
attested--of having more than once beaten a protesting gambler to the
draw and then subscribing to the funeral. As he came to the last turn,
with three cards left in the box, he paused, waiting for bets to be
made. His eyes met Sandy's and he nodded. Three men named the order of
the last three cards. None of them guessed the right one of the six ways
in which they might have appeared. Hahn took in, paid out, shuffled the
cards for a new deal. Sam nudged Sandy, speaking out of the corner of
his mouth words that no one else could catch.
"The hombre Plimsoll's talkin' to is 'Butch' Parsons. He's the killer
Brady hired over to the M-Bar-M to chase off the nesters."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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