Freedom of action had broadened his thoughts. He no longer was the numbered thing in the stony coffin at Dartmoor. He breathed, and lived and had some right to the good things of this life.
Unclasping his hand from the stay, he turned and glanced along the deck. It was lined with passengers who huddled against the rail—shapeless masses of brown and gray and glistening waterproof.
The commercial traveler had met with a kindred soul in the person of the little Scot with a bundle. Their voices sounded above the roar of the swift passage. The Scot was, in his cunning way, pumping the traveler dry as to what he had said to Fay.
Fay turned a shoulder to them and started forward beyond the break of the pilot and chart house. He heard voices raised in the smoking-room. Pressing his face to the forward midship port-hole, he wiped the mist from the glass and peered in.
Three men sat about a table upon which was a scattering of silver and gold. At their elbows glasses perched. In their hands were cards. They swung with the ship, lunged toward each other, and straightened like dummies in a pantomime. They played their hands, and redealt. Fay realized that a game of American stud was going on. He wiped the port-glass and studied the three faces.
One was cockney with a great arching nose and a loose catfish mouth. He wore a green cravat and a
horsey pin. The second player was stout and triple chinned. He might have been a Yorkshire horseman going across for Holland mares. The third player, whose face was almost hidden by the back of his head, interested Fay. There was that in the poise of the man which brought back deep-sea memories when certain cliques haunted the smoking-rooms of five-day boats.
This man wore a pair of smoked glasses.
Fay watched the tide of fortune through the port-hole. It was evident that between the striking of the ship’s bell for three A.M. and three-thirty A.M.—six strokes and seven—the man with the glasses had increased his pile of gold at the expense of the Yorkshire squire.
Keen-brained and trained to note appearances, Fay realized that the man with the glasses had some percentage upon the game. He searched his memory for the man’s name. That head and the narrow sloping shoulders were more than familiar. He decided to enter the smoking-room.