Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

“Come on,” says Minny gently.

“He can deal. Sure he can, if he wants to,” says Luke.

“He can’t deal off the bottom, though!”

Luke was on his feet in a flash, looking round the room. “Who said that?” he asked, and his voice was tight and mean. All conversation had stopped, and no one was prepared to own up. Least of all me — who’d said it.

“Well,” said Luke, as he resumed his seat, “that does it, pop! If I’m bein’ accused of cheatin’ by some lily-livered coward who won’t repeat such villainous vilification — then we’ll have to settle the question as a matter of honour, I reckon. You deal, pop!”

The old man hesitated — but not for too long. “Honour” was one of those big words with a capital letter, and wasn’t a thing you could shove around too lightly. So he picked up the cards and he shuffled them, boxing and botching the whole business with an awkwardness almost unmatched in the annals of card-play. But somehow he managed to square the deck — and he dealt.

“I’ll buy one,” says Luke, slipping a ten-dollar bill into the middle.

Virgil slowly covers the stake, and then pushes over a card.

“Stick,” says Luke.

Taking from his blazer pocket an inordinately large handkerchief, the old man mops his brow and turns his own cards over: a queen; and — an ace!

Luke merely shrugs his shoulders and pushes the kitty across. “That’s the way to do it, pop! Just you keep dealing yourself a few hands like that and—”

“No!” cries Minny, who’d been bleating her forebodings intermittently from the very beginning.

But Virgil lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be cross with me, old girl. And don’t worry ! I’m just a-goin’ to deal myself one more li’l hand and...”

And another, and another, and another. And the gods were not smiling on the little man from Omaha: not the slightest sign of the meanest grin. Was it merely a matter of saving Face? Of preserving Honour? No, sir! It seemed just plain desperation as the old boy chased his losses round and round that smooth-topped table, with Minny sitting there beside him, her eyes tightly closed as if she was pinning the remnants of her hopes in the power of silent prayer. (I hitched the briefcase tighter under my right arm as I caught sight of Lucy behind the crowd, her eyes holding mine — again unsmilingly.)

By half-past ten Virgil K. Perkins Jnr. had lost one thousand dollars, and he sat there crumpled up inside his chair. It wasn’t as if he was short of friends, for the large audience had been behind him all along, just willing the old fellow to win. And it wasn’t as if anyone could blame our nimble-fingered Lukey anymore, for it was Virgil himself who had long since been dealing out his own disasters.

Not any longer, though. He pushed the deck slowly across the table and stood up. “I’m sorry, old girl,” he says to Minny, and his voice is all choked up. “It was your money as much as mine...”

But Luke was leaning across and he put his mighty palm on the old boy’s skinny wrist. And he speaks quietly. “Look, pop! You’ve just lost yourself a thousand bucks, right? So I want you to listen to me carefully because I’m gonna tell you how we can put all that to rights again. Now, we’ll just have one more hand—”

“NO!” (The little lady’s voice was loud and shrill this time.) “He won’t ! He won’t lay down another dollar, d’you hear me? He’s just — he’s just a poor old fool, can’t you see that? He’s just a gullible, poor old—” But the rest of her words were strangled in her throat, and Virgil sat down again and put his arm round her shoulder as she began to weep silently.

“Don’t you want to get all your money back?” Luke’s voice is quiet again, but everyone can hear his words.

“Don’t listen to him!” shouts one.

“Call it a day, sir!” shouts another.

Says Luke, turning to all of them: “Old pop, here, he’s got one helluva sight more spunk in him than the rest o’ you put together! And, what’s more, not a single man jack o’ you knows the proposition I’m proposin’. Well?” (Luke looks around real bold.) “Well? Do you?”

It was all silence again now, as Luke looks across to Virgil and formulates his offer. “Look, pop. I’ve been mighty lucky tonight, as I think you might agree. So, I’m going to give you the sort o’ chance you’ll never have again. And this is what we’ll do. We’ll have just one last hand and we’ll take two points off my score. Got that? I pick up eighteen — we call it sixteen. And just the same whatever score it is. What do you say, pop?”

But old Virgil — he shakes his head. “You’re a good sport, Luke, but—”

“Let’s make it three off then,” says Luke earnestly. “I pick up twenty — we call it seventeen. OK? Look, pop!” (He leans across and grips the wrist again.) “Nobody’s ever gonna make you any better offer than that. Nobody . You know something? It’s virtually certain you’re gonna get all that lovely money right back into that wallet o’ yours, now, isn’t it?”

It was tempting. Ye gods, it was tempting! And it was soon clear that the audience was thinking it was pretty tempting, too, with a good many of them revising their former estimate of things.

“What d’you say?” asks Luke.

“No,” says Virgil. “It’s not just me — it’s Minny here. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself for one night, haven’t I, old girl?”

Then Minny looked at him, straight on, like. A surprising change had come over her tear-stained face, and her blue eyes blazed with a sudden surge of almost joyous challenge. “You take him on, Virgil!” she says, with a quiet, proud authority.

But Virgil still sat there dejected and indecisive. His hands ran across that shock of wavy white hair, and for a minute or two he pondered to himself. Then he decided. He took most of the remaining notes from his wallet, and counted them with lingering affection before stacking them neatly in the centre of the table. “Do you wanna count ’em, Luke?” he says. And it was as if the tide had suddenly turned; as if the old man sensed the smell of victory in his nostrils.

For a few seconds now it seemed to be Luke who was nervy and hesitant, the brashness momentarily draining from him. But the offer had been taken up, and the fifty or sixty on-lookers were in no mood to let him forget it. He slowly counted out his own bills, and placed them on top of Virgil’s.

Two thousand dollars — on one hand.

Luke has already picked up the deck, and now he’s shuffling the spots with his usual, casual expertise.

“Why are you dealin’?”

Luke looks up, and stares me hard in the eye. “Was that you just spoke, mister?”

I nod. “Yep. It was me. And I wanna know why it is you think you got some goddam right to deal them cards — because you don’t deal ’em straight, brother. You flick ’em off the top and you flick ’em off the bottom and for all I know you flick ’em—”

“I’ll see you outside, mister, as soon as—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” I replies quietly. “I just ain’t goin’ to be outside no more tonight again — least of all for you, brother.”

He looked mighty dangerous then — but I just didn’t care. The skin along his knuckles was growing white as he slowly got to his feet and moved his chair backwards. And then, just as slowly, he sat himself down again — and he surprises everybody. He pushes the deck over the table and he says: “He’s right, pop. You deal!”

Somehow old pop’s shaking hands managed to shuffle the cards into some sort of shape; and when a couple of cards fall to the floor, it’s me who bends down and hands them back to him.