“Cy Liskard,” the banker said. “He’s a client of mine. And he’s full to the back teeth with dollars and dust. And,” he added slowly, “looks like he is with liquor, too. Guess he’s out for a time. He’ll get it if he sits into the Saint’s game. She’ll skin him to death.”
The stranger’s movements were rough and forceful. He made no pretence. The crowd where he joined it about Claire’s table was at least three deep. It was composed of men in every fashion of clothing, and women whose faces were sufficiently disguised under paint to hide up the worst traces of aging and dissipation. He shouldered his way through and came to a halt immediately behind one of the players. McLagan wondered at the ease, the impunity, with which his purpose was accomplished.
“He’s a roll of ten thousand in his hip pocket, and I can’t say how much more. I wonder the kind of game he’s got lying back of those dead eyes of his.”
Burns spoke reflectively, but his companion made no answer. McLagan had bestirred himself out of his seat. He had perched himself up on its arm, the better to view the scene. His gaze was on the stranger and was swiftly reading the thing that must have been obvious to any onlooker sufficiently interested. The man was clearly under the influence of drink, but by no means drunk, and his “dead eyes,” as Burns had called them, were fixed in a devouring stare upon the girl at the far end of the table. It was not the game that claimed the man. No, it was the girl, who remained utterly unconscious of his regard, lost in the absorbing interest of the hand she was playing.
“You know, Mac,” Burns went on, after a moment’s contemplation of the man, “there’s faces with features that mark a man down in a feller’s reckoning, and leave him with an opinion that he’s no right to on the face of things. But his feeling generally proves right in the end. That boy’s eyes leave me cold in the spine,” he laughed. “To me they’re the eyes of a dead soul. To me, they’re the eyes of a feller who’d better have been smothered at birth. I’d hate——”
He broke off. Above the murmur of voices with which the room was filled the tones of a voice jarred harshly. It was Cy Liskard, and he was speaking to the man behind whose chair he was standing.
“I want to cut in right away,” he was saying. “Ther’s fi’ hundred dollars for your chair, Mister. Does it go?”
McLagan had straightened up from his lounging attitude. Burns, too, was on his feet, and both had moved nearer to the table. Five hundred dollars offered for a “cut-in.” It was sufficiently extravagant. And every eye of those standing around was on the stranger who made the offer.
A few moments passed. The hand came to an end, the pot passing to the man whom the stranger had sought to buy out. Then there came movement, and the player’s voice made itself heard.
“Hand us the dough,” he said sharply. “You can cut right in. If you’ve the nerve to bid five hundred for a chair, I guess you’re more entitled to it than me.”