The marks were only tiny dots the size of a pin-point, and each card was marked with two dots, no more and no less. The position of one dot indicated the suit, the position of the other the value of the card. The dots were arranged in positions corresponding with the figures on a watch-face. For instance, one dot placed where the big hand would be at half-past the hour, meant that the card was a six, another dot indicating the suit. Similarly if the dot was where the big hand would be at a quarter-past the hour, it meant that the card was a three, and so on. The knave and queen were eleven and twelve o’clock. The king, the thirteenth card, was shown by a dot placed in the centre where the hands meet. Looked at in the light, the tiny marks were quite invisible. They could only be seen in the dark—or by a person looking at them through dark-coloured glasses. The old gentleman, I suddenly recollected, always wore, when playing, spectacles of a peculiar smoky hue.
One thing, however, still puzzled me; and that was how the old rogue had obtained possession of the cards in order to mark them. I jumped to the conclusion in the beginning that he was probably in league with one of the under-stewards, who had access to the place where the packs for sale to the passengers were kept in stock. But this, I discovered later, was not so. What had happened was this:
On the second day out the dear, affable, old gentleman had organised a whist drive for the ladies, himself providing the prizes, and had ordered in advance from the chief steward a dozen and a half packs of cards. Only eight of these were used, as he had easily foreseen, there being only eight tables. The ten unopened packs he had returned to the chief steward the next morning, with the remark that he had overestimated the number of players taking part in the drive.
This much was clear. The rest I had to guess. But there was no difficulty, in my mind at all events, in supplying the missing links in the chain of evidence. He had had the twelve packs in his possession one whole night. What was easier than for him to steam them carefully open in the seclusion of his cabin, mark them with the phosphorous oil, and then re-seal them? The chief steward would hardly be likely to examine the packs very critically when they were returned to him, and even if he had done so, he would not in all probability have been able to detect that they had been tampered with.
Well, I felt pleased as Punch at having solved the riddle. The only question that agitated me now was whether I ought to expose the old rascal. I thought the matter over very carefully, and in the end I decided not to do so. For one thing, any action of that kind would quite possibly have led to his being arrested on his arrival at New York, and myself being detained there as a witness; an eventuality which would not at all have suited my plans. For another thing, I reflected, the mischief was already done; he could win no more money that voyage, seeing that this was our last day at sea. So I let him go, and I noticed that he was one of the first over the gangway when we arrived at New York.
Later on I instituted a few discreet inquiries about the old gent from a New York detective whose acquaintance I made, but I could not get him to admit that he knew him, or even that he haled from New York at all. “He’s probably a Chicago crook,” he remarked. “There’s a lot of snide gamblers make Chicago their headquarters.”
That’s the Americans all over. They are awfully proud of their own particular city, and can never be got to admit that there is anything wrong with it. Almost the first question a stranger is invariably asked on his arrival in, say, New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, is whether he doesn’t consider New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, as the case may be, the finest and most beautiful city he was ever in.
For my part I always used to answer the questions in the affirmative, no matter where I might be, but my own private opinion is that Los Angeles is far and away the most beautiful of American cities. It was while I was performing there, by the way, that I had my first and only experience of tuna-fishing. This was at Santa Catalina Island, which lies off the coast of California in the Pacific Ocean.
The tuna is a gigantic mackerel, weighing anything from 80 lb. up to 400 lb., and even more, and is the strongest and gamest fish that swims. “When you go tuna-fishing,” I was told, “you must be prepared to hook something like a thirty-knot torpedo-boat.”
The favourite haunt of the tuna is the warm shallow water round Santa Catalina. He comes there after the flying-fish, which form his favourite food, and angling enthusiasts flock there in the season from all parts of the world in order to enjoy the sport of killing him.