The girl matched his bet and raised it another hundred. And the man laughed again with a further challenge.
“It’ll cost you another thousand!” he cried, and his tone was exulting.
Victor Burns found himself holding his breath while he waited for the girl’s move. Just for one instant her eyes flashed out of their usual calm. There was real excitement in them now. And he wondered if at last she had been caught out of her depth.
“And more,” she said. And her voice was perfectly steady. “One thousand more.”
Her chips had become exhausted and she thrust forward a roll of bills. Then she sat waiting for the man to come again.
It was the supreme moment when the test of nerve was at its highest pitch. The onlookers understood. Big game as they were used to witnessing at this centre table, it was the first time they had looked on with stakes rising by a thousand dollars at a bet. The question in every mind was the same. The man was obviously a gold man with a pouch full of dust. What was its limit? How far would he go under the influence of the surroundings and the liquor he had obviously consumed?
Cy Liskard clutched his cards and laughed harshly.
“Come again,” he shouted. “There’s your thousand an’ another.”
He literally flung the bills on the table, for he, too, had exhausted his chips. “Ther’s nigh fifteen thousand in the pot. Can you see it an’ raise it? Raise it—if you’ve the grit.”
“Sure, I will,” Claire replied with just a suspicion of sharpness in her tone for all her smile. “Come again, Mister man. Let’s see your colour. You haven’t the stuff in you to raise that. It’ll cost you fifteen hundred.”