Every eye was concentrated on Kennedy. I was peering so hard it hurt, and somehow my mouth felt dry. Shirley came in, her eyes widening at the size of the pot. She stood back of Kennedy, without saying a word. I knew that she comprehended the hands perfectly—the sheriff with ace, queen, ten showing; Kennedy with king, queen, deuce.
Slowly Kennedy flipped the sheriff’s card. A seven. Kennedy studied his own hand a moment, and his eyes flickered around the table, a curious light in them. Suddenly he dealt. An ace! And from the bottom of the deck, so clumsily done that any one in the world could have caught it.
“Pair of aces!” he crowed, showing his hole card.
The silence was like a physical substance, throbbing and heavy and packed with evil. My eyes rested on Shirley’s face. Her eyes were wide and horror-stricken, and she looked as if she were about to scream.
Suddenly the silence was shattered by the blow of Curran’s fist on the table. As if it had set a spring into action, every man around that table, except Kennedy, was on his feet.
“Out of this house, you thieving, yellow, sneaking crook!” thundered the old man furiously. “There ain’t a man here didn’t see you take that ace from the bottom! Git out, I tell you, or I’ll—”
He choked with his own wrath, as he crouched as if to leap across the table.
Kennedy got up leisurely, his eyes hard enough to make one’s flesh crawl. They held an expression that I can not describe, but this I was sure of, crazy as it seemed—there was no rage in them. Perhaps he couldn’t feel deeply enough to wax furious. It was as if he were dead.
“I guess you caught me,” he said evenly.
He pulled down his blouse and ran his hand through his hair. Penoch was like a statue. Not one sound broke the stillness.