Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [111]
Jack and Sam were sharing the room next door. Theo had registered Beth as his wife, and although just a couple of days ago she would have been pleased by him passing her off that way, it grated now.
She knew Theo had been cheating at the card game even though he swore he hadn’t. He was too glib, overly sympathetic to her being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, and he had used the crowded train as an excuse not to explain how it all came about.
If it hadn’t been for Jack’s hasty explanation at New York’s Grand Central, when Theo went off to get tickets to Montreal, Beth wouldn’t have understood anything, for Sam was still in shock and had said little on the long journey.
In the past few months Jack’s position at the Bear had altered from being just a barman. He muscled in when drunken brawls broke out: Beth had seen him in action many times when she was playing. He was never aggressive, but he had an instinct for sensing trouble before it turned nasty, and mostly he could defuse it just with diplomacy. But on the occasions this didn’t work, he wasn’t afraid to steam in, crack the two warring men’s heads together and throw them out. Frank Jasper prized Jack for this, often referring to him jokingly as ‘My Right Hook’.
Because of Jack’s iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove talent, Frank got him in at most private card games, ostensibly to serve drinks but with security in mind. However, the last game wasn’t one run by Frank. It was organized by Rob Sheldon, a man Frank despised as he was a slum landlord and well-known racketeer. Theo and Sam had asked Jack to come along in case of trouble.
The game was in a warehouse down by the docks. The other five players were not men who ever played at the Bear; Theo had met them at other card games and knew them to be high-rollers. But Sam and Jack had never met any of them before, not even Sheldon.
Theo won the first couple of games but then began losing heavily, and when they stopped for a break around two in the morning, both Jack and Sam had advised him to cut his losses and go home, as two of the other players had done. But Theo refused, saying he felt his luck was about to change.
The two remaining men who sat down to play with Sheldon and Theo went by their nicknames, Lively and Dixey. Theo won the first game, then lost on the second. But the third and fourth he won and the stakes had grown higher. He was up some five hundred bucks and had pocketed his winnings to leave, when Sheldon, who had been winning earlier in the evening, challenged him to one last game.
Jack said he sensed trouble then. He said there was something in the air that wasn’t quite right. And he thought Theo seemed just a little too calm and confident as he sat down to play again.
Sam dealt the cards and the game commenced. The money on the table was growing. Dixey folded and left, leaving Sheldon, Lively and Theo. Then Sheldon asked to see Theo’s cards.
He had four kings, which beat Sheldon’s four of a kind.
‘I hadn’t been watching the cards played that closely,’ Jack admitted. ‘I was too busy keying an eye on Sheldon because I felt he might turn nasty if he lost. But I was sure that Dixey had one king when he folded. I guess Sheldon thought that too, for he leapt out of his chair, screaming that Theo had cheated and had another king up his sleeve. Before Theo could even get up, Sheldon was on him and pulled a knife out of his belt. He had it at Theo’s throat.’
Jack demonstrated to Beth how Sheldon did this, with his right hand at her throat and his left arm holding her captive.
‘I was afraid to go round the table and break it up in case he slit Theo’s throat; he was savage enough to do it. And there was Lively too, not a big geezer, but the kind that would steam in if he believed Theo had