The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

It was as an advantage more than enough to enable Joe to win; and while I lived in his company, I never knew him to be out of pocket by that divertisement. The marvel was that he could keep accurate track of fifty-two cards as they fell one after the other into play, and do these feats of memory in noise-ridden bar-rooms and amid a swirl of conversation in which he more or less bore part.

Those quick folk of the fraternity whom he encountered and who from time to time lost money to Casino Joe, never once suspected his victories to be a result of mere memory. They held that some cheat took place. But as it was not detectable and no man might point it out, no word of fault was uttered. Joe took the money and never a protest; for it is as much an axiom of the gaming table as it is of the law that “Fraud must be proved and will never be presumed or inferred.” With no evidence, therefore, the losing gamblers made no protesting charge, and Joe went forward collecting the wealth of any and all who fought with him at his favorite science.

Casino Joe, as I have said, accounted for his mastery at casino by his power to “Tell the last four,” and laid it all to memory.

“And yet,” said Joe one evening as I urged him to impart to me his secret more in detail, “it may depend on something else. As I’ve told you, it’s my gift. Folk have their gifts. Once when I was in the town of Warrensburg in Western Missouri, I was shown a man who had gifts for mathematics that were unaccountable. He was a coarse, animalish creature, this mathematician; a half idiot and utterly without education. A sullen, unclean beast of a being, he shuffled about in a queer, plantigrade fashion like a bear. He was ill-natured, yet too timid to do harm; and besides a genius for figures, his distinguishing characteristics were hunger measured by four men’s rations and an appetite for whiskey which to call swinish would be marking a weakness on one’s own part in the art of simile. Yet this witless creature, unable to read his own printed name, knew as by an instinct every mathematical or geometrical term. You might propose nothing as a problem that he would not instantly solve. He could tell you like winking, the area of a seven or eight-angled figure so you but gave him the dimensions; he would announce the surface measurements of a sphere when told either its diameter or circumference. Once, as a poser, a learned teacher proposed a supposititious cone seven feet in altitude and with a diameter of three feet at the base, and asked at what distance from the apex it should be divided to make both parts equal of bulk and weight. The gross, growling being made correct, unhesitating reply. This monster of mathematics seemed also to carry a chronometer in his stomach, for day or night, he could and would—for a drink of rum—tell you the hour to any splinter of a second. You might set your watch by him as if he were the steeple clock. I don’t profess,” concluded Casino Joe, “to either the habits or the imbecility of this genius of figures, yet it may well be that my abilities to keep track of fifty-two Cards as they appear in play and know at every moment—as a bookkeeper does a balance—what cards are yet to come, are not of cultivation or acquirement, but were extant within me at my birth.” When Casino Joe appeared in the Bowery he came to gamble at cards. That buzzing thoroughfare was then the promenade of the watchful brotherhood of chance. In that hour, too, it stood more the fashion—for there are fashions in gambling as in everything else—to win and lose money at short-cards, and casino enjoyed particular vogue. There were scores of eminent practitioners about New York, and Joe had little trouble in securing recognition. Indeed, he might have played the full twenty-four hours of every day could he have held up his head to such labors.

There was at the advent of our rural Joe into metropolitan circles none more alert or breathless for pastmastery in unholy speculation than myself. About twenty-one should have been my years, and I carried that bubbling spirit for success common to the youth of every walk. Aut Cosar aut nullus! was my warcry, and I did not consider Joe and his career for long before I was slave to the one hope of finally gaining his secret. One might found fortune on it; like the philosopher’s stone it turned everything to gold.

With those others who fell before Joe I also believed his success to be offspring of some cheat. And while the rustic Joe was engaged against some fellow immoralist, I’ve sat and watched for hours upon end to discover what winding thing Joe did. There was no villainy of double dealing or chicane of cut-shifting or of marked cards at which I was not adept. And what I could so darkly perform I was equally quick to discover when another attempted it. But, albeit I eyed poor Joe with a cat’s vigilance—a vigilance to have saved the life of Argus had he but emulated it with his hundred eyes—I noted nothing. And the reason was a simple one. There was literally nothing to discover; Joe played honestly enough; his advantage dwelt in his memory and that lay hidden within his head.

Despairing of a discovery by dint of watching, I made friendly overtures to Joe, hoping to wheedle a secret which I could not surprise. My proffers of comradeship were met more than half way. Joe was a kindly though a lonely soul and had few friends; his queer garb of the cowpastures together with his unfailing domination at casino kept others of the fraternity at a distance. Also I had been much educated of books by Father Glennon, and put in my spare time with reading. As Joe himself had dived somewhat into books, we were doubly drawn to each other. Hours have we sat together in Joe’s nobly furnished rooms—for he lived well if he did not dress well—and overhauled for our mutual amusement the literature of the centuries back to Chaucer and his Tabard Inn.

At this time Joe was already in the coils of that consumption whereof at last he died. And what with a racking cough and an inability to breathe while lying down, Joe seldom slept in a bed. The best he might do was to gain what snatches of slumber he could while propped in an arm-chair. It thus befell that at his suggestion and to tell the whole truth, at his generous expense, I came finally to room with Joe. Somebody should utilize the bed. Being young and sound of nerves, his restless night-roamings about the floors disturbed not me; I slept serenely through as I doubtless would through the crack of doom had such calamity surprised us at that time, and Joe and I prospered bravely in company.

Beseech and plead as I might, however, Joe would not impart to me that hidden casino strength beyond his word that no fraud was practiced—a fact whereof my watchings had made me sure—and curtly describing it as an ability to “Tell the last four.”

While Joe housed me as his guest for many months and paid the bills, one is not to argue therefrom any unhappy pauperism on my boyish part. In good sooth! I was more than rich during those days, with a fortune of anywhere from five hundred to as many as four thousand dollars. Like all disciples of chance I had these riches ever ready in my pocket for what prey might offer.