Presently Kilgarry called Mercer on the third raise and lost a small jackpot to three nines. Mercer scowled as he stacked the handful of chips.
"Hell, what's the matter with this game?" he protested. "This isn't the way we usually play. Let's get some life into it."
"It does seem a bit slow," Simon agreed. "How about raising the ante?"
"Make it a hundred dollars," Mercer said sharply. "I'm getting tired of this. Just because my luck's changed we don't have to start playing for peanuts."
Simon drew his cigarette to a bright glow.
"It suits me."
Yoring plucked at his lower lip with fingers that were still shaky.
"I dunno, ole man—"
"Okay." Kilgarry pushed out two fifty-dollar chips with a kind of fierce restraint. "I'll play for a hundred."
He had been playing all the time with grim concentration, his shoulders hunched as if he had to give some outlet to a seethe of violence in his muscles, his jaw thrust out and tightly clamped; and as the time went by he seemed to have been regaining confidence. "Maybe the game is on the level," was the idea expressed by every line of his body, "but I can still take a couple of mugs like this in any game."