The Fighting Chance Part 58

"No. If I make up my mind that I want the horse I'll write him--perhaps."

Lingering still, she let one hand fall on the banisters, turning back toward Plank, who was following:

"I understood you to mean that--that Mr. Siward's financial affairs were anything but satisfactory?"--the sweet, trailing, upward inflection making it a question.

"When did I say that?" demanded Plank.

"Once--a month ago."

"I didn't," said Plank bluntly.

"Oh, I had inferred it, then, from something you said, or something you were silent about. Is that it?"

"I don't know."

"Am I quite wrong, then?" she asked, looking him in the eyes.

And Plank, who never lied, found no answer. Considering him for a moment in silence, she turned again and descended the stairs.

The dinner was one of those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the women--except Marion, who took what the men took--used claret sparingly.

Coffee was served where they sat; the men smoking, Agatha and Marion producing their own cigarettes.

"Don't you smoke any more?" asked Grace Ferrall of Leila Mortimer, and at the smiling negative, "Oh, that perhaps explains it. You're growing positively radiant, you know. You'll he wearing a braid and a tuck in your skirt if you go on getting younger."

Leila laughed, colouring up as Plank turned in his chair to look at her closer.

"No, it won't rub off, Mr. Plank," said Marion coolly, "but mine will.

This," touching a faint spot of colour under her eyes, "is art."

"Pooh! I'm all art!" said Grace. "Observe, Mr. Plank, that under this becoming flush are the same old freckles you saw at Shotover." And she laughed that sweet, careless laugh of an adolescent and straightened her boyish figure, pretty head held high, adding: "Kemp won't let me 'improve' myself, or I'd do it."

"You are perfect," said Sylvia, rising from the table, her own lovely, rounded, youthful figure condoning the exaggeration; "you're sufficiently sweet as you are. Good people, if you are ready, we will go through the ceremony of cutting for partners--unless otherwise you decide. How say you?"

"I don't care to enter the scramble for a man," cried Grace. "If it's to choose, I'd as soon choose Marion."

Plank looked at Leila, who laughed.

"All right; choose, then!" said Sylvia. "Howard, you're dying, of course, to play with me, but you're looking very guiltily at Agatha."

The major asked Leila at once; so Plank fell to Sylvia, pitted against Marion and Grace Ferrall.

A few moments later the quiet of the library was broken by the butler entering with decanters and ice, and gla.s.ses that tinkled frostily.

Play began at table Number One on a pa.s.sed make of no trumps by Sylvia, and at the other table on a doubled and redoubled heart make, which sent a delicate flush into Agatha's face, and drove the last vestige of lingering thoughtfulness from Quarrier's, leaving it a tense, pallid, and expressionless mask, out of which looked the velvet-fringed eyes of a woman.

Of all the faces there at the two tables, Sylvia's alone had not changed, neither a.s.suming the gambler's mask nor the infatuated glare of the amateur. She was thoughtful, excited, delighted, or dismayed by turns, but always wholesomely so; the game for its own sake, and not the stakes, absorbing her, partly because she had never permitted herself to weigh money and pleasure in the same balance, but kept a mental pair of scales for each.

As usual, the fever of gain was fiercest in those who could afford to lose most. Quarrier, playing to rule with merciless precision, coldly exacted every penalty that a lapse in his opponents permitted. Agatha, her teeth set in her nether lip, her eyes like living jewels, answered Quarrier's every signal, interpreted every sign, her play fitting in exactly with his, as though she were his subconscious self balancing the perfectly adjusted mechanism of his body and mind.

Now and then lifting her eyes, she sent a long, limpid glance at Quarrier like a pale shaft of light; and under his heavy-fringed lashes, at moments, his level gaze encountered her's with a slow narrowing of lids--as though there was more than one game in progress, more than one stake being played for under the dull rose glow of the cl.u.s.tered lights.

Sylvia, sitting dummy at the other tables mechanically alert to Plank's cards dropping in rapid sequence as he played alternately from his own hand and the dummy, permitted her thoughtful eyes to wander toward Agatha from moment to moment. How alluring her subtle beauty, in its own strange way! How perfect her accord with her partner! How faultless her intelligence, divining the very source of every hidden motive controlling him, forestalling his intent--acquiescent, delicate, marvellous intelligence--the esoteric complement of two parts of a single mind.

The collar of diamonds and aqua marines shimmered like the reflection of shadowy lightning across her throat; a single splendid jewel glowed on her left hand as her fingers flashed among the cards for the make-up.

"A hundred aces," broke in Plank's heavy voice as he played the last trick and picked up the scoring card and pencil.

Sylvia's blue eyes were laughing as Plank cut the new pack. Marion Page coolly laid aside her cigarette, dealt, and made it "without" in the original.

"May I play?" asked Sylvia sweetly.

"Please," growled Plank.

So Sylvia serenely played from the "top of nothing," and Grace Ferrall whisked a wonderful dummy across the green; and Plank's thick under lip began to protrude, and he lowered his heavy head like a bull at bay.

Once Marion, over-intent, touched a card in the dummy when she should have played from her own hand; and Sylvia would have let it pa.s.s, had not Plank calmly noted the penalty.

"Oh, dear! It's too much like business," sighed Sylvia. "Can't we play for the sake of the sport? I don't think it good sportsmanship to profit by a blunder."

"Rule," observed Marion laconically. "'Ware barbed wire, if you want the brush."

"I myself never was crazy for the brush," murmured Sylvia.

Grace whispered maliciously: "But you've got it, with the mask and pads," and her mischievous head barely tipped backward in the direction of Quarrier.

"Especially the mask," returned Sylvia, under her breath, and laid on the table the last card of a Yarborough.

Plank scored without comment. Marion cut, and resumed her cigarette.

Sylvia dealt with that witchery of rounded wrists and slim fingers fascinating to men and women alike. Then, cards en regle, pa.s.sed the make. Plank, cautiously consulting the score, made it spades, which being doubled, Grace led a "singleton" ace, and Plank slapped down a strong dummy and folded his great arms.

Toward midnight, Sylvia, absorbed in her dummy, fancied she heard the electric bell ringing at the front door. Later, having barely made the odd, she was turning to look at the major, when, beyond him, she saw Leroy Mortimer enter the room, sullen, pasty-skinned, but perfectly sober and well groomed.

"You are a trifle late," observed Sylvia carelessly. Grace Ferrall and Marion ignored him. Plank bade him good evening in a low voice.

The people at the other table, having completed their rubber, looked around at Mortimer in disagreeable surprise.

"I'll cut in, if you want me. If you don't, say so," observed Mortimer.

It was plain that they did not; so he settled himself in an arm-chair, with an ugly glance at his wife and an insolent one at Quarrier; and the game went on in silence; Leila and the major still losing heavily under the sneering gaze of Mortimer.

At last, "Who's carrying you?" he broke out, exasperated; and in the shocked silence Leila, very white, made a movement to rise, but Quarrier laid his long fingers across her arm, pressing her backward.

"You don't know what you're saying," he remarked, looking coldly at Mortimer.

Plank laid down his cards, rose, and walked over to Mortimer:

"May I have a word with you?" he asked bluntly.