Where the Pavement Ends Part 41

"I'll take it up for ten pounds," I offered.

He nodded, without so much as looking at me; and I dropped five American eagles besides his stake....

"_Rien ne va plus!_"

But I had already effected my exchange; and I s.n.a.t.c.hed away the big goldpiece just as the marble struck, hopped, and rattled into a socket.

"_Vint e uno_," announced the banker, surprised into his own native tongue; and I caught the unmistakable quiver of a live disappointment as his glance crossed mine with the flash of a knifeblade.

The gambler waited until a silver rake had swept away his eagles. With a visible effort, then, he braced himself against the table and rose. He turned to me, met my smirk of triumph with a frown, and plowed but of the throng to the natural refuge, the little barroom on the terrace side, where I followed him quite shamelessly.

The hour was early; we had the place to ourselves as we pledged each other in the quaint device they call a c.o.c.ktail at the Pavao.

"You made a good bargain," he said, setting down his gla.s.s. "There must be at least twenty-five dollars' worth of pure gold in that slug if there's a penny--let alone its curio value."

His manner had a rough edge. Any one who has lost over the green cloth knows the spleen it can raise against all reason. I was the better pleased next instant when he broke through with a smile of sound good nature:

"Here's hoping it brings you better luck than mine."

I liked that smile, and the voice, easy and true as a bell, and the whole hearty, big-boned cast of him; and I marveled what twist had made a splendid great fellow like this, with his arching chest and walking-beam breadth of shoulder, the hanger-on at unhealthy gaming rooms. He was neither old nor young enough to be merely foolish. Forty would be about his age, I judged; but his eyes were new, like those of a child, and the only marks about them were the little sun crinkles of outdoor living.

"You were willing to sell," I reminded him with a half query.

"Of course!" he nodded. "When the game gets me running I'd stake my shoes if I could sell 'em. And ten pounds was more than the bank would have paid. All the same, you've got a rare piece, cheap."

"Just what have I got?"

"A doubloon--don't you know? One of those queer Portuguese cart wheels.

Sink it! I made sure I'd found a lucky at last--anybody would."

I echoed that glorious old word:

"A doubloon?"

"Aye!" He smiled again. "Pieces of eight--what? The pirates used to cut throats for 'em."

On sudden impulse I risked a small experiment.

"I've no wish to profit by your misfortune," I said. "This is evidently very valuable.... Call the ten pounds a loan."

He glanced at the coin as I laid it before him; and then, with a widening of pupil, at me. I was startled to see him hesitate.

"No," he decided. "No. But look here, that's decent of you. I will say it's downright decent."

"Not at all," I protested virtuously. "It might be worth many times what I paid you."

"That wouldn't worry me."

But something was worrying him as he frowned down at the golden disk. I felt a trouble on the man that bit deeper than his losses. He had an odd, abrupt trick of pa.s.sing a hand hard over his brow as if to brush away some constant irritation, a gesture at once nave and pa.s.sionate.

At such times he looked about him with an uneasy air, puzzled and, I could almost say, resentful.

"You must be very much attached to the thing," I persisted.

He slid it back to me brusquely, with a jab of his forefinger.

"Thanks. Would you mind putting it out of sight?"

We were sitting at one of the small tables that lined the side of the little room. It so chanced that I sat facing the bar, which was not a proper bar at all but a long, low sideboard, whereon an attendant compounded drinks. My new friend was at my left and thus failed to see what now I saw--a detached head glaring out of the wall, sharp and definite as a cameo. I was slow to connect this singular phenomenon with a strip of mirror over the sideboard and regarded it merely with wonder, for the face was very much alive, convulsed and eager. Tardily, then, I recognized the jet spadebeard of the superior banker, and at the same moment felt a hot breath stirring in my back hair.

"h.e.l.lo!" I exclaimed, and spun around in time further to recognize a pair of perfect coat tails; they were just disappearing through the doorway into the _salle_ behind me.

He could not have had ten seconds' start, but when I reached the doorway the fellow had vanished in a fringe of bystanders. Another banker, bald-headed and not in the least superior, was now in charge at roulette, and I noticed that the fat croupier had also been replaced.

I turned back to the attendant at the bar, a pop-eyed nondescript in a white jacket.

"Who was that?" I demanded indignantly. "Who is that man, and what the devil did he mean by blowing down the back of my neck?"

He stared at me, with fluttering lids, chalk-faced--I was to appreciate presently what terror rode that obscure soul.

"_No compriendo_," he stammered, though I had heard him use good-enough English of a sort in wheedling for tips. Impatient at his stupidity and my own jumpy nerves, I flung away from him--or, rather, I started to fling and was halted there in my tracks....

Now the contact of a revolver is something that no man need be taught to identify. It is a part of instinctive knowledge. When a hard blunt nose snuggled suddenly under my lowest rib I required no verbal order to make me stand quite pa.s.sive and obedient. So I did stand, while still mechanically resisting the furtive, tremulous fingers that came stealing round my wrist, trying to force my hand open.

I was not half so frightened as amazed, and certainly not half so frightened as the creature himself. I knew it must be the wretched little attendant who was tickling me with that revolver, and that he was trying to hold me up for something--what it might be I scarcely thought.

If he had been respectable in any way through strength or skill or personality, I believe I might have yielded. But to be robbed by this miserable hireling, this pop-eyed dispenser of bad c.o.c.ktails, himself in a state of the most abject funk, roused all the stubbornness of which I was capable. As if a sheep had a.s.saulted me!

I suppose I should have allowed myself to be shot ingloriously had not the big gambler discovered what was going on. In two steps he was by me, pouched the weapon with a fist like a m.u.f.f, and simply abolished Pop-eye....

"Easy now!" he warned him. "Don't yell!" It was an absurd anticlimax to see that bold, bad gunman being jammed upright to keep him from falling in a heap. "Reposo yourself, matey, if you know what's good. Be quiet--comprendo so much? n.o.body's going to hurt you."

Somehow I found myself back at the little table. The gambler occupied the chair at my right this time, whence he could watch my late enemy, who hung collapsed over the bar. Except for these trifling changes, the whole incident might have seemed illusion.

"What was that for?" I managed to ask.

The gambler answered with a negligence that struck me in my condition of mind like an affront:

"Well, the lad's of no importance--don't you see? He had to do what he was told and he wasn't up to his job--that's all. But I thought we'd best keep him in view. No sense having him run off to report."

"How true!" I said with a faint attempt at emulation. "One concedes the frivolity of having the lad run off to report. After all, he could only confess that he had failed to murder me. But suppose I do it?"

"What--complain?"

"It occurs to me I might. I'm not vindictive, but I really don't care for pistols with my drinks."

"To whom?"