John D. MacDonald
Kid with the Golden Touch
I don’t chalk up many failures. But this kid had me stopped.
There aren’t many of us in the business. I’m on call with some of the best private agencies, which is where most of my work comes from. You take a nice club, if they suspect a member of cheating, they don’t go to the local law, they get hold of a good agency. If it happens at your club, it’s about a 50–50 chance that I will show up. I won’t look like what you expect. I’m fat and bald and closer to 60 than I care to admit. Back in Keith circuit days I had a magic act. Mostly card stuff. I got interested in the sharpies. I used to go on lecture tours after that, wearing a black mask. Then I worked the big passenger liners, tying a can to the sharpies until my face got too well known in the trade.
Now I’ve got a little magic shop in Manhattan, and a good kid I can leave in charge when I go out on call. The calls usually don’t last long.
This was a nice club, a men’s club in the middle of a pleasant city in Pennsylvania. The club had been going a long time. You could smell the money. Old, dark, heavy furniture, a look of long-established security.
I checked in at a hotel and phoned the contact. He worked in a bank; his name was Tellford. He came over to the room. We had a talk. He said that only three members were in on it. I told him that I had registered under the name of John Harrison, just in case his pigeon happened to be a pro who would recognize my name. He said he would make arrangements at the desk of the club.
He gave me the background. “We have a group who have been playing bridge regularly together for several years. It’s a cut-in game. The stakes sound high, three cents a point, but they aren’t actually that high in effect, because we’re all about the same caliber. At the end of a year we aren’t many dollars apart. We get together every Tuesday night in the card room. We play from eight until about two in the morning. Last year one of the regulars died of a heart attack. A young man named Carl Breton had joined the club a few months before that. He was put up for membership by his employer. Breton works in the accounting department of a local manufacturing plant. He’s about 33, a quiet pleasant young man. We knew he played good bridge, but we didn’t think he would want to play for those stakes. A year ago we asked him to join us tentatively. He accepted. It brought our roster back up to six, a good number for a cut-in game.”
“And ever since that, he has won consistently,” I said.
“Precisely. Forty, 60, 100 dollars every Tuesday. We can well afford the loss. We thought for some time that it was because he played better bridge. But our sort of a game gives you plenty to kibitz. I’ve sat behind him and seen him make mistakes. I have seen him make improper bids. You, of course, understand the game.”
“I understand it. And it’s one of the tougher games to cheat in. Does he ever lose?”
“Very infrequently, and then it’s a small amount. And one night he won $300. A very exceptional evening for him. We hesitated a long time over calling in... an expert.”
“Why did you decide he was cheating?”
“He seems to know precisely where every card is before the play of the hand is begun. His finesses work too often. In the long run, without any information from the bidding, a finesse should work 50 per cent of the time. His are closer to 90. He misses once in a while. And, by the same token, his opening leads are... pretty devastating.”
“That sounds like he was using readers. How about the cards?”
“We start with two new decks every Tuesday evening.”
“Examined them afterward?”
“We thought he might be marking them somehow. We can’t find any marks.”
“I know how to handle it. I’ll discover the method. Then you and I will have a private talk with him, Mr. Tellford. He’ll resign quietly. You’ve arranged to get me into the game?”
“The two men who know who you are aren’t going to show up tomorrow night. Another member is out of town. So it will be just you and I, Mr. Breton, and a man named Mueller. We’ll cut for partners after each rubber. I’ll bring you along to fill in. I thought that would give you the best chance. If you wish, one of the other men could come and then you’d get a chance to sit behind Carl Breton during the...”
“I can learn what he’s doing by playing with him,” I said. I was very confident.
The next night Tellford and I arrived first. It was a pleasant place to play. Green felt table top, low-hanging shaded light, a handy button to push for a drink, smaller tables with ash trays at your elbow. Tellford, for practice, called me John and I called him Dick. Mueller arrived next. Barney Mueller, a big asthmatic man with a wheezing laugh. Carl Breton was the last, apologizing for being a few minutes late. He was a tall, nice-looking young man with a shy pleasant smile.
They played seriously. No small talk. The ripple sound of the cards, the monosyllables of the bidding. I drew Mueller first. It was competent bridge; nothing really tournament class, but nothing to be ashamed of either. I watched Breton’s hands, particularly when it was his turn to shuffle, and his turn to deal. He was no mechanic. I could spot that. The fingers of the left hand didn’t curl around the cards in the mechanic’s grip. Nothing much happened in the first rubber. Mueller and I got ourselves a 900 rubber in five hands.
Then Mueller drew Breton, and I was on Breton’s left. They worked tentative bidding up to four spades. I had a legitimate double. Breton played. He needed to make three out of four finesses to fake. He made the full four for an overtrick. I knew he hadn’t peeked at my hand. Nor had he had a chance to see my partner’s. Tellford gave me a meaningful glance across the table.
Tellford was declarer on the next bid. It looked safe. But Breton made a beautiful and unorthodox lead through my dummy strength on an unbid suit. That lead set us. I studied Carl Breton’s mannerisms. He played almost woodenly, his face expressionless, lips compressed. He did not seem to glance at the backs of the cards held by the other players. He kept his eyes directed at the center of the table where the light was brightest.
I went through all the tricks I could remember. Like the man who had a cigarette lighter with a mirror surface, and dealt the cards over it, reading the spots and remembering as he dealt rapidly. The bandaged-finger trick, with a sharpened, cut down thumbtack under the bandage to mark each ace and face with a tiny, almost imperceptible, puncture code. Nothing worked. The guy read the cards and he kept on reading them, and I couldn’t find out how.
Later I sat in Tellford’s car outside the hotel and said, “It’s something new. It’s a gimmick I’ve never run into. Mathematically, what he’s doing is impossible. Nobody guesses right that often, in spite of what they claim at Duke University. See if you can arrange a game for tomorrow night, or Thursday night.”
“We’d better make it Thursday.”
“Okay. If he’s that sharp, then he’s going to recognize the other forms of cheating. I’ll use half the evening trying to spot what he’s doing. Then I’ll turn mechanic and see if we can get a yelp out of him.”
“Why?”
“If he spots it, then changes his style of game and doesn’t yelp, it means he’s recognizing me as one of the brethren.”
The game was set up. Mueller couldn’t play. A man named Howe played. He was one of the ones in on my reason for being there. By 11:30 I hadn’t spotted a thing. In my next shuffle, I got a spade into every fourth slot and crimped the deck just enough so that I led Tellford, the man across from me, into the cut I wanted, and Breton into dealing me my 13 spades. I had arranged a later payback, so I used demand bidding to work my way hesitantly into the seven spade contract, happily redoubling Breton’s double, which was based on a pair of aces and a couple of outside kings. His partner led and I spread the hand, watching Breton. He gasped and gaped, and I didn’t know if it was honest surprise, or a good masking of suspicion. I notched the cards with my thumbnail, second dealt whenever it was my deal, stacked the deck whenever it was my shuffle. I cleaned up, of course. But Breton still went home with 12 dollars, all that was left of what he had won before I turned mechanic.