"Who said you wanted glasses to play poker? It isn't always the cards that win."
Kilgarry was smiling, but his eyes were almost glaring at Yoring as he spoke. Yoring avoided his gaze guiltily and squinted at the hand he had dealt himself. It contained the six, seven, eight and nine of diamonds, and the queen of spades. Simon held two pairs again but the card he drew made it a full house. He watched while Yoring discarded the queen of spades and felt again that sensation of supernatural omniscience as he saw that the top card of the pack, the card Yoring had to take, was the ten of hearts.
Yoring took it, fumbled his hand to the edge of the table, and turned up the corners to peep at them. For a second he sat quite still, with only his mouth working. And then, as if the accumulation of all his misfortunes had at last stung him to a wild and fearful reaction like the turning of a worm, a change seemed to come over him. He let the cards flatten out again with a defiant click and drew himself up. He began to count off hundred-dollar chips.
Mercer, with only a pair of sevens, bluffed recklessly for two rounds before he fell out in response to the Saint's kick under the table.
There were five thousand dollars in the pool before Kilgarry, with a straight, shrugged surrenderingly and dropped his hand in the discard.
The Saint counted two stacks of chips and pushed them in.
"Make it another two grand," he said.
Yoring looked at him waveringly. Then he pushed in two stacks of his own.
"There's your two grand." He counted the chips he had left, swept them with a sudden splash into the pile. "And twenty-nine hundred more," he said.
Simon had twelve hundred left in chips. He pushed them in, opened his wallet and added crisp new bills.