Stanley Abbott: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 30, No. 13, Mid-December, 1985

“You’re a goddam liar!” said Fields.

“Am I? I noticed you started folding whenever the dealer called some cards wild — you couldn’t read a fistful of wild cards, could you? There wasn’t going to be time to mark all the cards, so you marked only the face cards — and the aces,” said Nygaard, and he turned over four more cards from the old deck, all aces.

Pederson yapped, “Cheat! You lousy cheater!”

“Don’t say cheat to me!” said Fields. “He’s the one who can read the cards from the back!”

“No, sir,” said Nygaard, “that dog won’t bark. This is a new deck, and I learned how to read the marks from the cards you were holding, cards I held only long enough to put in front of you and never saw the faces of.”

“How do you read them, Thor?” asked Balstad.

“Look here, see these little notches on the edges of the cards? Aces notched near the top, kings down a way, queens farther down, and jacks near the bottom. I think we should take a look at his fingernails to see if one is filed sharp, or maybe at that big ring he’s wearing, to see if it’s got a raised edge on its underside.”

Fields stood, his face a deep red. “Don’t you touch my ring! This is some kind of stickup, isn’t it? You’ll pretend to find a rough spot and keep the ring. Well, you won’t get away with it! This is a nine hundred dollar ring, and if you take it away from me, I’ll have the law on you, see if I don’t!”

For some reason, this made everyone in the room laugh. “What’s so stinkin’ funny?” demanded Fields.

Nygaard, grinning fiercely, said, “Maybe we should introduce ourselves again. I’m Detective Sergeant Thor Nygaard, Hedeby police. The man with the furry sweater is Mark Balstad, our county prosecutor. Nils Pederson, the yappy one there, is about as good a criminal defense lawyer as Hedeby has. And the big, sad-eyed cuss, the man with the second-highest pile of chips, is Tillman Draxten, judge of District Court.”

Fields’s deep color faded to a pasty white. “This is crazy,” he whispered. Then, louder, “What kind of crazy town is this? This is an illegal game!”

“Yeah, we know,” said Nygaard. “That’s why we have to hide out in old Grimby’s basement whenever we want to play it.”

“Well, then, you know you can’t arrest a man for cheating in an illegal game of chance.”

“He’s right, you know,” Prosecutor Balstad said. “I would never take him into court.”

“And if he did, I could defend him with one hand tied behind my back,” added Attorney Pederson.

“And I’d dismiss the charges,” said Judge Draxten.

“There, see?” said Fields. “So you caught me, so what? Take my winnings, give me the hundred and fifty I came in with, and I’ll be on my way.” He began to reach for his chips.

But a large hand seized his wrist in a mighty grip. Fields dropped the blue chips he had picked up, twisted around, and saw the largest man in the room looming over him.

“Keep your fat hands off the table!” Nygaard said.

“Haul him out in back and rough him up some, Thor,” suggested Grimby, who had gone behind his bar for a child’s baseball bat. He let it smack into the palm of one hand. “I’ll help, if you want me to.”

Fields snarled, “All right, all right; keep all the money! It’s highway robbery, but keep the money! Now let go!”

“No,” said Nygaard. He was very angry, his clenched face threateningly close to Fields’s.

“Settle down, Thor,” said Balstad nervously.

“Why should he settle down?” asked Pederson, who had been the big loser that afternoon.

“Hold it,” growled Draxten, with his judge’s authority. The others looked at him. “Let’s not be hasty, or do something illegal. The man is a cheat, obviously. However, he’s been caught before he made away with our money. I think we should separate him from that amount he won from us by cheating and ship him off. What do you think, Mr. Balstad?”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“I think we should sit him down and make him eat those marked cards!” said Pederson.

Draxten consulted his watch. “We haven’t got time for that. It’s after six and we have to be at the lodge by seven thirty in good bib and tucker.”

Balstad stood. “Is it as late as that?” He lived well outside of town, and the snowy roads would slow travel. He began to gather his chips. “Cash me in, Nils. You guys will have to decide what to do with our friend here without my help. Fine him everything he’s got on the table and let him go; that’s my advice.” He changed his chips into forty-seven dollars in cash and left.

“I still think we should rough him up some,” said Grimby hopefully. He had moved to guard the door, baseball bat in hand.

“Don’t do anything to him that will leave a mark,” advised Pederson, the lawyer. “Or he might sue.”

“That money on the table,” said Fields, “is all the money I’ve got.”

“Crap!” barked Pederson. “There’s more cash in your wallet; I saw it when you bought in the second time. And you’ve got more credit cards than the rest of us put together.”

“Just once,” said Grimby. “Hit him just one time. Or let me hit him.”

“Shut up, Grimby,” said Nygaard.

“Let him go, Thor,” said Draxten.

“Think of something mean, legal, and appropriate to do to him and I will.”

“I don’t think there is such an action,” said Draxten. “If you can think of something yourself, be my guest. And on that note, I take my leave. Cash me in, Nils. And if you want a ride home, you’ll have to leave with me now.”

Pederson hesitated, tom. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Give me your chips. Thor, let me know what you decide, okay?”

“Sure.”

Pederson cashed all the chips, and left with Draxten. Then, except for Grimby, Nygaard was alone in the basement room with his captive.

“Grimby, can I use your phone?” Nygaard asked.

“Sure. Are you going to hit him or not?”

“Naw, I’m so mad I might accidentally kill him. Then there’d be a stink.”

“Hide him outdoors, and he won’t stink until next spring,” said Grimby, grinning. But he decided Nygaard wasn’t going to do anything worth watching, at least right then, so he said, “I got to go shower and change for the dinner. See you there?”

“Yeah,” said Nygaard absently, hanging on to Fields with one hand and dialing with the other. “Hello, Jack? It’s me, Thor.”

Jack Hafner was Nygaard’s partner in the squad room, and a cool head. However, when he heard Nygaard’s complaint, he only laughed. “I’m with the judge on this one, Thor,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do but turn him loose.”

Nygaard said something rude about Jack’s lack of imagination and hung up. He said to Fields, “Maybe I should put you outside in your stocking feet. And drop your car keys down a storm drain, if I could find one under the snow.”

“You do that, or leave any kind of mark of violence on me,” threatened Fields, “and by God, I’ll go to your newspaper with the story of this poker setup you’ve got here, and everyone will suffer.”

“Those would be serious charges,” agreed Nygaard, considering the threat. “And there’d be an investigation. We’d have to hold you as a material witness. And who knows how long it would take to bring in an outside judge?”

Fields grinned. “Yeah, but in the end you’d lose your badge. I think we got us a Mexican standoff here.” Fields offered a carrot. “Look, keep the money. In fact, let me add fifty dollars to it. You don’t have to share it; you can always say you gave it back to me. I’ll leave town tonight, I promise, and no one will ever know.”