After about half an hour, Lord Wycliffe's opponents threw down their cards and declared themselves finished for the evening. "Anyone else?" asked the young Englishman, glancing at the crowd of onlookers. "The evening is young yet, surely." Seeing that there would be no takers, he stood up and began to gather his chips.
I seized the moment. Pushing forward as the rest of the crowd dispersed, I appeared suddenly at his elbow. "Well played, your lordship," I said, as though he and I had met before. "May we assist you in cashing in your winnings?"
"Kind of you," he said.
"Not at all." I swept the chips into my top hat. "If you'll just follow me?"
"You see, I'm rather busy just now," he said, slipping an arm around the waist of the girl in green. "May I collect them at a more convenient time?"
"I see no difficulty," I answered. "If you'll just step over to the cashier's window, I'll give you a receipt."
"But--"
"It won't take but a moment."
He whispered into the ear of his young companion and slipped something into her hand. "Very well," he said to me. "Let's be quick about it."
With Harry trailing behind, I led Lord Wycliffe out of the main parlor and through a smaller room where a team of bartenders was busily mixing cocktails. "Where are we going?" Lord Wycliffe asked. "I've never been back this way before."
Neither had 1, but there was no reason for him to know this. "We'll need to open the safe," I said. "We don't ordinarily keep such large reserves of cash out on the main floor."
"But I told you I only wanted a receipt."
"I'll need to verify that we have the cash on hand. Bear with us, sir." I found a heavy Dutch door and pulled it open. Behind it lay a flight of bare wooden steps leading down into a cellar. "Follow me, sir," I said, heading down the stairs. Harry brought up the rear.
At the bottom of the stairs we found ourselves standing on the dirt floor of a large wine cellar. "This can't be right," Lord Wycliffe said. "What are we doing here?"
I nodded at Harry. He shrugged, peeled off his tailcoat, and laid it neatly across a wooden wine bin.
"Just a few questions, if you'd be so kind, your lordship. We must take precautions when a player enjoys such a remarkable run of luck."
"But what are we doing in the wine cellar?"
"A simple precaution. To avoid any possible embarrassment."
Harry took two quick intakes of breath, rather in the manner of a snorting bull. Then he pressed his fists together at his chest and flexed his muscles, so that his arms and torso bulged alarmingly.
"I don't know just what you mean," said Lord Wy-
cliffe, glancing anxiously at my brother's peculiar display. "Say, what's he on about?"
Harry gave two more bull-snorts and cocked his fists at shoulder level. His arm muscles pulsed and throbbed beneath the fabric of his shirt.
"We don't often see a player of your caliber here in New York," I said, ignoring my brother's posturing. "It's fortunate that you don't pass this way often."
"Yes, well." Lord Wycliffe's eyes shifted nervously from Harry to me. "I had a bit of luck, is all."
"Luck? You do yourself an injustice, sir."
"Look, I really don't know what you're suggesting. Are you going to give me a receipt, or-?"
"Hot down here, don't you think?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Hot. Stuffy. Unseasonable."
"Yes, but I'm not sure I-"
"Better take off your coat, sir."
His eyes locked on mine. Harry, meanwhile, had dropped into an awkward squat and had his arms flexed over his head. "I think perhaps I'd best get back upstairs," said his lordship.
"If we could just ask you to take off your coat, sir," I repeated.
"I don't-I don't-," he glanced at Harry, who had begun to make a strange bovine sound, as if he might throw a calf. Lord Wycliffe looked back at me. "This is intolerable."
"The coat."
His shoulders sagged. "Oh, all right." He began to peel off his jacket. "I don't know how you spotted it."
The hold-out was a masterly construction of wood and leather webbing, with straps and buckles at the elbow and wrist. A flexible trident-style clip ran along the inner forearm and a circle of leather was cinched tightly around the chest. When the cards were held normally, with the elbow bent, the trident clip remained flush with the cuff of the jacket. Whenever the player gave a long deep breath-sighing over an opponent's misfortune, for instance-the clip extended six inches forward, delivering one or two fresh playing cards into the player's cupped palm. At the same time, any inconveniently low cards could be whisked away. A card worker like my brother, who could cause an entire pack to appear and disappear at his fingertips, could perform simple switches of that sort with his bare hands. For anyone who didn't happen to be a "King of Kards," however, a wooden hold-out was the next best thing.
"That's a beauty," I told Lord Wycliffe. "Who did it? Anderson's?"
"A firm in London," he answered, dejectedly.
"How much do you owe, your lordship?"
"You mean here? Or in toto?"
"Just here."
"Quite a lot. Upwards of three hundred dollars."
Harry's eyes widened, but he continued with his regimen, which had now broadened to include some very energetic leg-stretching.
"Your winnings tonight would have just about cancelled that out."
"Nearly. What will happen to me now?"
"That depends on you. The management doesn't have to know about this unfortunate development."
His eyes brightened. "You're not with the Cairo? But I thought-"
I shook my head.
"I-I can pay you," he said quickly. "Let me cash in the winnings and I'll do right by you. You have my word."
I shook my head again. "We're going to ask you some questions. You will answer them truthfully."
He drew back, and his eyes seemed to grow hooded. "Questions? What do you mean?"
"I understand that you are engaged to Miss Katherine Hendricks," I said.
"What's that to do with anything?" he snapped.
"Her father is very wealthy."
"I am aware of that," he said stiffly.
"How do you suppose he would react if he knew that his future son-in-law was gambling away Miss Hen-dricks's dowry in a flop house?"
"Are you threatening me? Is this to be blackmail?"
"We'll discuss that in a moment. As I said, we wish to ask you a few questions."
"And if I refuse?"
"We'll pay a call on Mr. Hendricks."
"Damn it!" he cried. "Damn it all to hell!"
"Your lordship," said Harry, without pausing in his exertions, "I will thank you to watch your language."
Lord Wycliffe's eyes moved from Harry to me and back again. "Common thugs, that's what you are," he said. "Look at you. With your hair tonic and your bad shoes. I don't know what sort of dodge you're trying to put over on me, but I'm putting a stop to it right now. Pay a call on Michael Hendricks? The pair of you? You'd never get past the door."
I stepped up close and held his gaze for a moment. "Mr. Hendricks was right," I said. "You are a pompous ass."
He backed up half a step. "You've never met Michael Hendricks in your life," he said.
"When was it that your name was raised?" I asked myself. "When he showed me his new locomotive, the Minotaur? Or was it when Becking appeared with the humidor? Funny, I really can't recall. Of course, we'd both had quite a bit of Walker's by that stage."
Lord Wycliffe pressed his lips together. "You're a detective of some sort, is that it? The old man hired you to check up on me."
I would have preferred to let the assertion go unanswered, but Harry couldn't help himself. "Yes, Lord Wycliffe," he said proudly. "We are amateur sleuths."
"Be that as it may," I said quickly, "would you be so good as to tell us when you last saw Branford Wintour?"
"Wintour! Is that what this is about?"
"When did you last see him?''
"Why, I've never met the man! Wintour was something of a hermit, I understand. Rarely came out of that whacking great pile of his."