Fredric Brown - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 6. Whole No. 211, June 1961

But she doesn’t; instead, she slows up and takes her time, not hurrying any more, like when she first came out of the room. I can see that she is going to try to bluff it out.

She swaggers along real tough, and everyone is turning around to look at her. Then, when she gets down to the bottom, she happens to pass a guy with a cigarette stuck in his mouth — and doesn’t she reach out and calmly take it away and start puffing it herself without even a thank-you!

She passes by the main entrance without a look, and heads straight for the big gambling room, cool as a cucumber.

“Well,” I say to myself, “if this don’t beat everything for sheer, unadulterated nerve!” Instead of ducking, she is going to hang around the premises a while and try her luck with money that she just lifted, which is so hot that smoke ought to be coming out of that case she is carrying this very minute — if it happened to have anything in it. All I ask is just one look at her face when she opens it and finds out what her haul is worth; maybe that will take some of the swagger out of her.

In I go after her, and I buttonhole the nearest bouncer.

“Send for the cops,” I say, “I’m going to present you with a pinch in just about thirty seconds. Camille, over there, squeezing her way to the middle roulette table — keep your eye on her.” And I tell him what she’s done.

He sends out for the policia and also sends for the manager, and then him and me and the other bouncer close in on her and get ready to pounce when I give the signal. But first I want to get a load of her disappointment.

Well, they’re as thick as thieves around that table — two or three deep — but that hasn’t stopped her; she used both elbows, both hips, and her chin, and blasted her way through to the baize. We can’t get in that far; all we can see is her back.

“Wait a minute,” I motion them, “she’ll be right out again — into our arms. She hasn’t anything to play with.”

You can hear the banker say, “Place your bets,” and “Bank is closed.” Then the clicking of the little ball as the wheel goes spinning around. Not another sound for a minute. Then a big "Оoh!” goes up from everyone at once.

“Killing,” says the bouncer, knowingly.

“Wonder what’s delaying her?” I say. “She ought to have found out by now. Maybe she’s picking people’s pockets—”

The same thing happened a second time; a big long "Оoh! " sounds like a foghorn.

The manager shews up, and I tell him the story out of the corner of my mouth. “—caught her in the act and followed her down here. But all she got was the empty kit,” I snicker.

“That’s what you think,” he squelches. “I got my doubts! A voice on the wire, claiming to be Fay North, asked me to turn back that envelope less than ten minutes ago. I took it up to the room myself—”

“Did you see her take it from you?” I ask excitedly.

“No, that’s why I think something’s fishy. An arm reached out from the room, but she stayed behind the door. Claimed she was dressing.”

“Good Gawd!” I moan. “And you turned over fifteen grand like that without—”

“You told me North or you would claim it. The call came from 210 — that’s her room, I checked it with the switchboard operator.”

“That’s my room!” I tell him. “North’s is 211. This phony was in there — I saw her coming out. C’mon! We’ve wasted enough time. The hell with the payoff.”

The Mex police had come in by now, two of them, both higher-ups, this being the casino. The manager and the bouncers shoo everyone aside, the crowd falls back, and we get a good look at what has been going on. The phony is left standing there all alone. But she is so taken up she never even notices. And she has the fifteen thou all right. Or at least she had it to start with; now she must have two or three times that. In fact, everything in sight is piled up in front of her, nearly chin-high.

Her system, it seems, has been to blow the bills she bets with her breath, like handfuls of leaves, letting them land wherever they want to on the number mat. The banker is green in the face.

The manager taps her on the shoulder. “You’re under arrest.”

The Mex line up one on each side of her. She’s hard-boiled all right, like I knew she would be.

“Run along and fly a kite for yourself. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

I stoop down and pick up the toilet-kit, which she has kicked under the table. I shake it in her face.

“This belongs to Fay North. I saw you coming out of my room with it. Now, are you going to come clean or are you going to see the inside of a Mexican jail?”

Well, she keeps looking me in the eye and looking me in the eye like she wanted to say something; and then she looks at all the winnings piled up on the table like she was afraid of something, and she just shuts up like a clam.

For a minute I almost have a crazy idea that maybe it is Fay herself, under a heavy character make-up, only just then I turn my head and I see the real Fay come sweeping in the doorway like a queen, heading for one of the smaller side-tables.

“Hold on,” I say, “she’ll tell me in a jiffy. If it was just the empty kit this one lifted, you can turn her loose for my part, but if she phoned down for that money she goes to jail, dame or no dame.”

I run over and stop Fay and say to her, “Miss North, did you call down a while ago for that money the manager was holding for you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, and gives me an unpleasant look through her smoked glasses. “Don’t put me in a bad mood now. Can’t you see I’m on my way to the table? Please stay away from me, I got to have quiet to concentrate—”

I go back to them and say, “Okay, off she goes!”

“Why you—!” she blazes at me, but she doesn’t get any further. The two Mex lieutenants drag her out backward by the shoulders, kicking like a steer, and there’s quite a commotion for a minute; then the place settles down again, and that’s that. Since neither me nor the manager can talk the native lingo, one of the bouncers goes along with them to prefer the charges and see she’s booked right.

Well, I’m afraid to go too near Fay, on account of she seems to be in a cranky humor and asked me not to distract her; so I sit down just inside the door where I can watch her and be the perfect bodyguard, without getting in her hair. She sure looks spiffy in her gold dress, but she keeps the smoked panes on even while she’s playing. She has the usual luck and runs out of the fifteen thou, which the house turned back to her, in no time flat.

Then she starts unloading I.O.U.’s, and they come over to me to make sure there won’t be any mistake like there was before; but I tell them to go ahead and honor them, it’s the real McCoy this time.

About the time she’s another four or five in the red, a houseboy comes in with a message for her and she quits and goes out after him. I get up to follow her, and she gives me a dirty look over her shoulder, so I change my mind and sit down again, saying to myself, “Gee, I never saw her as snappish as this before!”

But my equilibrium has hardly touched the chair once more when there comes a whale of a scream from just outside the casino entrance. Then another, which chokes off in the middle like a hand was clapped over the screamer’s mouth. Then there’s a shot, and the sound of a big eight-cylinder job roaring away from in front of the place with its throttle wide open.

By that time the chair is rooms behind me and I’m tearing out the entrance with my own loudspeaker in my hand. There’s nothing to shoot at but a little winking red tail-light which is already clear of the casino grounds and just as I fire at it, it goes out, not because I hit it but because it’s too far away to see any more. The porter is sitting on the front steps holding onto his shoulder for dear life, and one of her gold slippers which fell off when she was thrown in is lying there in the roadway.