Reed Peter

To Cut the Cards

Peter Reed

To Cut the Cards

The taxi dropped Paul Clint off at the Cemetery Inn. It was loaded with the college crowd. Clint attracted no attention as he walked through the darkened rooms. He was middle-sized, carefully dressed, with thinning brown hair. The tanned skin pulled tight over cheekbones, jaw, gave his face a look of hardness. He was slim-waisted, and his hands looked large and clumsy. He moved with a casualness that hinted at extreme nervous control.

He found Elizabeth Krandall at a table for two in one of the few quiet corners. The juke box threw fantastic glimmers of light on the dancers. A tall couple circled endlessly in one corner of the crowded floor. The girl had both arms high around her partners neck, her lips pressed to his cheek. He held her by the waist. Inside the juke box a throaty woman was moaning about “Rumors are Flying.”

Elizabeth Krandall smiled and nodded as Paul Clint sat down opposite her. She was tall, dark, young, and she looked very weary. There was something almost Slavic about the cast of the eyes and cheekbones. She was beautiful in a lush and mysterious way.

“A strange place to meet you, Mr. Clint.”

“A good place. It’s not likely that we’ll be noticed together. You’re not going to like what I have to say.”

“You haven’t found out.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Right. The temporary membership to the Sakonda Club that your friend Mr. Howe got for me was very handy. I’ve kibitzed on Mr. Nicholas Candlet’s bridge game for two evenings and filled in the foursome twice. He wins consistently, but I don’t know how.”

“My father found out. He lost nearly two hundred dollars a month to Mr. Candlet for nearly a year, which is more than a Professor of Mathematics can afford to lose, and in the end he found out how Candlet was cheating.”

“I’m not certain that he found out the method. He merely proved in the notes that you found in his desk after he died that, mathematically, Mr. Candlet couldn’t win as often as he does. Your father proved it by the percentage of finesses made.” Paul Clint had copies of the newspaper stories of two months before back in his hotel room at the Onondaga. The papers had called it a ‘tragic accident.’ Professor Krandall had visited Candlet at his home earlier in the evening and by accident left his cigaret case. He had returned for it, found the house dark and attempted to get in through the French doors to the study, hoping that he could avoid disturbing Mr. Candlet. Candlet, however, was half asleep in a chair in the darkened study and saw the form of the intruder outside the French doors outlined against the reflected street light. Candlet had tried to fire a shot over the intruder’s head, but his aim had been bad. He shot Professor Krandall, his friend and bridge partner, through the head. At least that was the newspaper and police reconstruction.

Miss Elizabeth Krandall, believing that her father had been killed deliberately, had managed to get in touch with a sympathetic lieutenant on the Syracuse police force who had told her how to get in touch with Paul Clint, known internationally as the unmasker of card cheats. Clint knew that it had been very difficult for Elizabeth Krandall to meet his fee of one thousand dollars.

Elizabeth Krandall stared at him in obvious disappointment. He leaned toward her and said, “Either the man is cheating, or he can read minds. I’ve never missed and I don’t want to miss this time, but I don’t know where to start. Candlet has no other source of income beside his cards. He plays at two clubs in town, principally at the Sakonda. He lost his business when the war started. He lives on about a thousand a month scale. He makes every finesse that is essential to his contract. His defense play is perfect. When he misses a finesse, it is for an overtrick.”

“But I thought you knew every method of cheating, Mr. Clint.”

“I thought I did. Candlet isn’t a mechanic. By that I mean that he doesn’t hold the deck during the deal in such a way that it would be possible for him to deal second card or bottom. The decks used belong to the club — plastic decks. I’ve checked the cards used in play. They appear to be unaltered. There are no mirrors or devices that he could use to see the closed hands. I’m stopped right there. No mechanics in the deal, no marks on the cards, no devices. Those are the three principal ways of cheating. There is no other. Unless Candlet has found a new way.”

He could see her eyes fill and glisten in the dim light. “You’ve got to find out.”

“Miss Krandall, for my own self respect I’ve got to find out. This is my business. I can’t afford to fail. I’ve got to be confident. If I can’t nail this bird, I may be licked from here on in.”

“Once I read about a man who could remember the sequence of cards and...”

“I thought of that. When I played, I used a shuffle that altered the position of every face card and ace in the deck in relation to every other. It made no difference.”

The waitress brought the two drinks he had ordered. She sipped at hers and then stared down at the glass. She looked very young and very helpless. Paul Clint watched her and his mind wandered away from the Candlet case. A girl like this. Gentle, intelligent, well bred. If life had thrown him into a different pattern, a different groove, a girl like this would be... There was no word. ‘Keep your mind on the case,’ he said to himself. ‘Women like this aren’t for you, my boy. Besides, you have ten years on her at least. She can’t be over twenty-two. If it was anyone else you would run out on the case right now. The least you can do is stick around and try some more. Give her back the advance fee if you fail.’

She glanced up at him and smiled wryly. “I’ve got to keep believing that you know what you’re doing.”

“I won’t blame you if you begin to have doubts, Elizabeth.” It was the first time that he had used her name. It felt good to say it.

“When’s the next attempt?”

“Tomorrow night at the Sakonda. I just wanted to report to you. The way it looks now, I’m stopped.”

He lit a cigaret for her and she turned and watched the couples on the floor. He said, “We’re out here, now, and business is taken care of. Let’s be a couple on a date for a few hours.”

She smiled. “A long time, Paul, since I’ve dated. Not since my father...”

“All you have to do,” he said quickly, “is sit and look interested while I talk about myself. That’s standard procedure.”

He told her about breaking up the rigged pools on the Bermuda cruise ships, the latest angles on crooked dice tables, the decaying princess at Cannes who made a hundred thousand cheating at six pack bezique, the banker who dropped fifty thousand in a crooked poker game in St. Louis and apologized to the sharpers for his poor play before he went out and blew the top of his head off.

Little by little he coaxed her away from the shadow of her grief, and she charmed him with the spontaneous gayety of her laughter.

They danced, and she was light in his arms. He forgot the difference in ages. He looked into her dark eyes and it seemed as though the room spun dizzily around him.

When the crowd thinned out, they left, and he drove her battered little coupe back to town. He pulled over to the curb at the side entrance of the Onondaga. On impulse he put an arm around her shoulders. She lifted her lips eagerly and he kissed her. In the middle of the kiss he felt oddly frightened. He pulled away.

She said, “Something has happened to us, Paul. Hasn’t it?”

“You’re nuts,” he said crudely and hoarsely. “Go home and sleep it off.” He walked into the hotel without looking back. As the door closed behind him, he heard the clatter of the little coupe starting up.

As Paul Clint walked into the Sakonda Club the steward nodded and said, “Good evening, Mr. Roberts.” Clint nodded and went on up the stairs to the game room. Candlet, lean, grey, lined and nervous, and Hockinson, beefy, bald, asthmatic, and Cristrode, gaunt, stooped, surly, were waiting impatiently.

“Penalized five yards for delaying the game,” Cristrode muttered.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” Clint said as they cut for partners.

Clint drew Hockinson for the first rubber. Cristrode’s deal. Clint sat on Candlet’s right. The stakes were fifty cents a hundred. Hockinson passed. Cristrode opened with a diamond. Clint had barely enough for a one heart overcall. Candlet thought for about thirty seconds and then bid six diamonds. Hockinson and Cristrode passed. Holding the Ace of spades, plus the kings of diamonds and hearts, Clint doubled. Candlet redoubled. In the play of the hand, Clint made the Ace good. Candlet held the Ace, Queen of diamonds. Cristrode’s opening bid had been made on six diamonds to the jack plus his outside count. Candlet finessed perfectly. Nine hundred and fifty points on the first hand.

As Candlet gathered in the cards to shuffle, Clint said, “Gentlemen, the oftener I lose, the more superstitious I get. I wonder if you’d permit me to indulge a bit of superstition?”

Candlet looked at him, a suspicious look in his greenish eyes. “What do you want to do? Walk around your chair?”

“No. Once, many years ago, I lost a large chunk of dough in a poker game. I had five bucks left. I wanted to change the curds. So I left the game, went to a drugstore and bought a pack for two hits. Gentlemen, on those cards I made back all my dough and a little more. I’d like to send one of the club servants out to a drugstore to buy two packs of cheap cards to see if it’ll change my luck.”

Candlet said, “Nonsense. These are good cards.”

Clint said, mildly, “Give a consistent loser the right to a whim.”

Hockinson said, “It’s okay by me. Cards are cards.”

Cristrode said, “I don’t care what you do.” Candlet looked as though he would object again. But he didn’t. Clint pushed the wall button and sent the waiter out after two packs of cheap cards. Candlet doubled and set Hockinson and Clint three hundred points before the new cards were put into play.

After five or six hands with the cheap cards, Clint began to get excited. He had a clue to the answer. Candlet played well, and, in fact, continued to win. But he missed finesses, made improper leads on defensive play. He lost his uncanny card sense and played an average amateur game. He became gloomy in spite of winning.

Near the end of the evening, claiming that the cheap cards were getting a bit dog eared, Clint had the original cards put back into play. Candlet reacquired his seventh sense, and the game went heavily against his opposition on each rubber.

After Clint had payed off, he picked up the plastic cards to return them to the downstairs desk. As the night clerk reached for them, Clint said, “Say, I’m going to a party and I’d like to take these along and see if I can stir up an early morning bridge game.”

“It’s not permitted, Mr. Roberts, to take the cards out...”

“I’ll have ’em back to you by noon tomorrow. Here’s a buck for your trouble.” He shoved the black bakelite case in his pocket and walked away, leaving the dollar on the counter. The clerk didn’t call him back.

Up in his hotel room, he examined the cards for over an hour without finding any consistent variation in the design on the back, only minor priming imperfections that showed up under a glass, too tiny to be used as a key to suit and value. His thumb, sensitive to the smallest marks and indentations, discovered vague areas of roughness on the backs of the cards, but he could not sense a pattern. Besides, the roughness was too indefinite to be detected on the deaf — and Candlet seemed to do as well no matter who dealt.

With a gesture of annoyance, he tossed the decks onto the top of the bureau and went to bed. He clicked off the bed lamp and his mind whirled in a constant pattern. Thoughts of Candlet would merge into thoughts of Elizabeth. He knew that this case was becoming too personal to him. He was losing the clear and objective point of view that had enabled him to crack so many seemingly impossible cases. After tossing and turning for over an hour, he got out of bed, put on his robe, and sat in the darkened room by the window, looking down at the silent streets of the city. He knew that he was quietly and desperately lonely.

The next morning he walked down North Salina until he saw a store that looked promising. The dusty window contained the usual assortment of false noses, sneeze powder, dribble glasses, exploding matches and crude joke gifts. He walked in and a bell jangled above the door. Clint stood by the counter and in a few seconds a vast and greasy citizen came waddling out of the darkened rear of the store, wiping his lips with a dirty napkin. He glanced at Clint’s obviously expensive clothes and rumbled ingratiatingly, “Good morning. Something you want, hah?”

Clint put on an expression that was both bland and sly and leaned over the counter. He said, “I want to play a joke on some friends. Take their money in a game and then give it back, of course. I don’t want to be caught at it.”

“Sure. Sure. I got nice dice for a crap game. Got sliding weights inside. Rap ’em on the table and they got a sure seven. Rap ’em again and they’re honest.”

“This has got to be cards.”

“Sure. I got all kinds a cards. How about a tapered deck where the big ones are a little fatter on one edge. Know where to cut and you cut a high card every time.”

“They might notice. How about a marked deck?”

“Here is one. Look close. See up here in the corner? See this little space right here? Watch the arrangement of the dots. Two dots over here, that means a queen and just above, one dot on the left means a heart. Queen of hearts. See?”

“Hell, I ain’t be peering at those little dots. Too small. My eyes aren’t so good.”

“So, you wear an eyeshade, no?”

“One of those green things?”

“Here is one. Put it on. Well down over the eyes like so. Now look through at the back of this deck. See this card?”

Clint remembered the eyeshade stunt. It had been hot for a short time until everybody had heard about it. Something to do with colors. You looked through the green at the back of a prepared deck and the denomination of the card showed up big enough to cover the back of the card. It was such an old gag that he hadn’t thought of it. For a moment he was excited. Then he remembered that Candlet didn’t wear an eyeshade. He pulled one of the plastic decks out of his pocket and glanced at the back of them through the shade. No change. He wasted a few more minutes, bought a shaped deck to compensate the man for his time and then dropped the wrapped package in the nearest city trash barrel. He took the plastic cards back to the club.

As he turned to leave the club he felt a touch on his arm. He glanced around and Candlet was smiling at him, his green eyes glistening. “Good morning, Mr. Roberts. Time for a little gin?”

Clint shrugged. One more chance to watch the man’s technique. They took a deck upstairs and cleared the backgammon board off one of the small tables. They played silently. One cent a point. Hollywood scoring. Candlet won steadily. He never dropped a card that Clint could use. He always managed to play off when Glint knocked.

After the first half hour, Clint managed to pick up a cold hand, knock and get the deal. He smiled inwardly. His big hands moved slowly and apparently clumsily. First rule with a sucker. Don’t make any quick motions. On the riffle, he located the cards he scanted and worked them into alternate positions at the top of the deck. He gave the cards to Candlet to cut. When he picked them up he reversed the cut with a lightning motion shielded by one of his big hands. He dealt, sensing that Candlet looked puzzled as he saw his first card. Clint picked up his cold hand and ginned immediately, catching Candlet with a large number.

Again Clint shuffled, fixing himself a cold hand. Candlet cut slowly and carefully. He watched Clint, but Clint wasn’t worried. The human eye wasn’t quick enough to catch the reverse of the cut. Candlet gasped as he saw his first card. Clint ginned again before drawing, catching Candlet with a large batch.

Candlet looked very annoyed. He said, “There’s something odd about this, Roberts, I never saw two cold gins in a row before. And my cut of the cards...” He paused.

Clint realized that Candlet had read the top card of the cut, and when a strange card came out, he knew that something had happened to the cut. “What about the cut, Mr. Candlet?” Clint also knew that Candlet couldn’t object without disclosing that he knew all the cards from the back.

Candlet smiled without humor. “I’ll cut a little deeper next time.”

On the next deal, when Clint reversed the cut, he slid the top card of Candlet’s cut back onto the top of the deck. He saw Candlet relax visibly, Clint held the cards so that Candlet could see the top card easily. With slow and easy motions, Clint second-dealt the entire hand, leaving the top card, which Candlet was watching, undisturbed. Candlet’s mouth dropped open and his eyes narrowed. He leaned forward as Clint dealt, trying to catch the deception. It was proof positive that Candlet could read the backs of the cards.

When the deal was finished, Candlet ran one finger around the inside of his collar and said with a sickly smile. “I hope you’ll forgive me, Roberts, I don’t feel very well.”

“Of course, Mr. Candlet. It’s quite alright. Stop; any time. Let me see, now. The last two hands gave me two schneiders. That leaves me four hundred and ten points ahead. Four dollars and a dime, Mr. Candlet.”

Candlet payed off with a hand that trembled. He left in a hurry.

Clint sat in the lounge for a half hour trying to figure out how Candlet could read cards that apparently bore no mark. He walked to the Chamber of Commerce and looked up the data on what Candlet’s business had been before the war. He found a picture of Candlet taken years before. Face not as lined. Hair thicker and less grey. Wearing glasses which were now discarded.

After leaving the Chamber of Commerce, he walked to Police Headquarters and talked to the Deputy Chief. He gave his credentials and told his story to the Deputy Chief. When he was through, the big man with the strong face leaned back in his creaking swivel chair and said, “You put me on a spot, Clint, I appreciate the fact that you’re an expert, but suppose you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong I leave you out of it. I take the rap for releasing the stuff in a private club. I’m positive enough to take the risk, even though I don’t exactly understand the principle involved. You can get me the item I want?”

The Deputy Chief sighed. “Okay. We can get hold of one and let you have it. But don’t say where you got it.”

“And you have a man on the outside, will you? If this joker is uncovered and if he tries to make a run, I’ll try to stop him, but I might not be able to. It’ll give you the motive on the Krandall killing if I’m right.”

When the clerk brought in the item Clint had requested, he stuffed it into his pocket and thanked the Deputy Chief. He left.

It was the middle of the evening, and on the second floor of the Sakonda Club, Candlet kept glancing nervously at Paul Clint who was kibitzing the game. Clint made no attempt to play, refusing the invitations to cut in. He kept his steady eyes on Candlet. Candlet played nervously, but well, piling up a score that was impressive.

When the other game broke up and the players left, Clint tensed. He reached a hand into his inside pocket and took out what appeared to be a bulky fountain pen. No one paid any attention to him. He fiddled with a sliding knob on the side. Abruptly he shoved the little knob along the groove and laid the penlike object on the table. It hissed and thick white smoke boiled out of the end of it.

Paul Clint jumped back out his chair and ran to the door. He dosed it and stood with his back against it. The four players gasped and shouted. The white smoke obscured the table.

Clint shouted, “Stay away from the call button on the wall. Don’t try to leave the room.” There was authority in his tone. The gas seeped across the room and reddened Clint’s eyes, sending the tears streaking down his cheeks. He gasped and coughed. One of the players fumbled his way to the windows and opened one. He leaned out over the sill, coughing and choking. Clint’s eyes burned and smarted. His throat began to feel raw.

Another man found the second window and opened it wide. A third stumbled toward Clint at the door. Clint grabbed his arm, turned him around and shoved him back into the room. The tear gas began to diffuse with the wind that came through the two open windows. At last it was gone and four indignant men, clawing at their eyes, faced him, shouting at him. They were too annoyed and too angry to think of the call button on the wall. The thing that had looked like a fountain pen lay empty on the table.

Clint held up both hands and said, “Quiet! There’s a reason for this. He patient. Look at Mr. Nicholas Candlet.”

The others gaped at Candlet. Their eyes were still streaming and they were still coughing, but Candlet seemed to be in far worse shape. His eyes were puffed and he clawed at his cheeks with his fingers. He was obviously in great pain. They watched him, uncomprehending.

He fumbled for a chair and dropped into it. He bent his head over the table and fumbled at his eyes. When he straightened up again, two small shining objects lay on the green felt. He reached a hand out for them, but Clint was quicker. He scooped the items up and held them gently in his hand.

Ignoring Candlet, Clint called the other three men toward him. He held up one of the objects and said, “Know what this is?”

They peered at it with reddened eyes. “Contact lense, isn’t it?” Cristrode said.

“That’s right. Make a test for me, Cristrode. Hold it close to your eye and look at the backs of the cards through it. Notice that the iris part is tinted a greenish color.”

Cristrode looked at Paul Clint oddly, but did as he was told. He looked through the small lense at the backs of the cards. He gasped, “I’ll be damned! That card is the ten of diamonds. Big ten and a diamond next to it. Sort of glows.” Hockinson flipped the card over. It was the ten of diamonds. Clint permitted himself to relax slightly. He had lacked the nerve to make the test himself.

They turned and stared at Candlet. He stood near the wall, his shoulders slumped. Hockinson balled his red fists and said. “Why you miserable little fake. I’m going to...”

Candlet peered at Hockinson with watery bluish eyes. He faltered, “Okay. I thought no one would ever find out. I’ll pay back everything I’ve got and leave town. Please...”

He held out both trembling hands and once again Paul Clint saw the familiar picture. The card cheat trapped. The whining creature that thought it would never be caught.

Cristrode said, “That sounds okay to me. But I’m going to stick right next to you until I get my dough. I’ve lost plenty to you.”

Clint turned to Cristrode and said, “Not so fast, please. He’s anxious to pay off and leave town so he can set up somewhere else. And he has another reason. This makes it possible to reopen the Krandall case, giving Candlet a motive. You wouldn’t like that, would you?” he asked, turning to Candlet.

Candlet stood motionless for many seconds, his quick eyes shifting from man to man. Clint sensed the despair, the feeling of being trapped, the weighing of chances, that was going on in the thin grey head.

One of the quick hands flashed up to the left armpit and out again, holding a gun that looked like a toy. The blue metal gleamed. Hockinson stepped back with a muffled exclamation. Cristrode, Clint and the other man stood very quietly. The 22 automatic was an absurdity, an anachronism in the quiet card room. The wind swayed the draperies.

Candlet bent forward slightly, all of his hate and all of his desperation focused on the pressure of his finger on the trigger. Clint knew that such a gesture or a word would send one of the ridiculous slugs into his body. At such a range, with such a weapon, one slug was a one to three chance for death. Two slugs would be even money. Clint suspected that once Candlet started shooting, he would empty the magazine.

They were figures in a ridiculous, frozen picture. Five men and a toy pistol. Slowly and with infinite caution, Candlet made a step toward the door. Another. Another. He readied behind him with a slow left hand, grasping and turning the knob. He opened the door and backed out.

The door slammed and it broke the spell. Paul Clint raced for the door and tore it open, catching a glimpse of Candlet as he pounded down the stairs. Clint raced to the head of the stairs and dropped suddenly, rolling to one side, as a shot cracked. As soon as he heard the running feet again, he bounded up and started down the stairs.

Candlet was opening the heavy front door. Clint rushed at him in a twisting run, his insides drawing into a knot as another shot whacked viciously. He reached both hands out toward Candlet’s knees in a flying dive. Candlet slammed him behind the ear with the flat side of the small automatic. Lights soared and blazed in Paul Clint’s head and he felt the fabric of the hall rug against his cheek. The outside door was closing. He propped himself up and listened.

From the street outside came the muted whack, whack, whack of the small gun — and then a hollow and resounding boom. Only one. Clint picked himself up off the floor and leaned dizzily against the door frame. A tall patrolman shoved the door open and stood, swaying in the entrance, a foolish grin on his wide young face. He looked vacantly at Paul Clint, at Hockinson and Cristrode standing behind him, at the wide-eyed desk clerk. “Tried to kill me with a cap pistol!” he said in tones of great wonder. “Phone an ambulance for me, sonny, and a basket for him.”

He sat with Elizabeth at a small table in the corner of the station coffeeshop, the tension of the case dissolved, scraping off the grey ash of his cigaret into the dregs of his coffee. “...and so it was just a case of linking up the facts that he had previously worn glasses, had previously owned a small precision optical company and had been an amateur chemist. All these things added up to contact lenses treated in some way to disclose a luminosity on the backs of the cards. He had treated the club cards right in the club while he was supposedly playing solitaire. The police here have turned the cards and lenses over to an independent laboratory in Rochester. They’ll mail me a copy of the findings.”

“But, Paul, I don’t understand about the tear gas.”

“I was afraid that if he was accused, he’d find some way to get rid of the lenses without anyone seeing him. The gas forced him to remove them in front of witnesses. He couldn’t stand the agony of leaving them in his irritated eyes.”

He looked up at her and saw the soft questioning in her eyes. He looked quickly back at his cup, at the glowing end of his cigaret. She said gently, “Paul, look at me. There’s nothing left here for me. Take me with you. Send for me.”

He didn’t answer and she moved her hand across the top of the table and grasped his hand. The metallic voice of the train announcer rasped from an overhead speaker.

He smiled at her and gently unclasped her fingers, his eyes hard and bright. “That’s my train, Elizabeth. I travel alone and I do all right at this screwball business of mine. There’s an old gambling rule that says, ‘When you’re winning, don’t change the dice.’ So — I travel alone.”

He walked through the door, back toward the tracks, his topcoat folded across his arm, the porter walking ahead with his bag.

For a moment he paused and looked back. She was standing alone in the center of the waiting room, watching him.

He turned and hurried after the porter.

Content

Reed Peter To Cut the Cards

Peter Reed To Cut the Cards