Then there came a sinuous, silken rustle; fingers like steel wires tore the pack from his grasp and he found himself looking into the mouth of a small but eminently practical revolver.
"Hands up, you yellow son of a Greaser!" Willa's voice rang out above the amazed gasp which ran around the table. "I saw you running up the hands before when you cleaned Mr. Follinsbee on four planted jacks. That's why I eased myself into the game."
Shirley obeyed, with a sickly smile.
"Really, this is most extraordinary!" he drawled. "Is your charming cousin about to entertain us with a bit of wild-West melodrama, Vernie?"
"No," Willa interposed. "I'm going to show you what we do with a crook below the border.—Mr. North, will you take this pack and deal face up for Mr. Shirley? You'll find that somebody will have a hand to go the limit on, but our friend over there will top him, pat."
Mechanically, Winnie North complied, and, in a silence broken only by the whispering fall of the cards, he dropped before Willa herself a king full, and at the erstwhile dealer's place, four damning eights.
"You infernal scoundrel!" They were all on their feet, but it was Vernon's voice which rumbled in unexpected strength. "If my cousin weren't here, I'd thrash you within an inch of your life!"
"Don't mind me!" The revolver wavered regretfully in Willa's fingers. "I'd have winged him at the start, but I reckon shooting don't go in New York. I'll take a chance, though, if he don't loosen up with every peso he's stolen."
The threat was wholly unnecessary. With shaking hands the cheat made restitution, his sallow face gray-green and distorted with silent rage.
"Now, vamoose!" Willa commanded. "If I don't hear the front door slam in just thirty seconds, you'll be the deadest hombre this side of Kingdom Come!"