Sally Cheney - The Wager

“Mr. Carstairs?” the dealer prompted.

“I’m in,” the third man said sourly, removing several coins from the short stack left before him.

“The dealer meets the bet.” A banknote was added to the collection.

The four men—Phillips, Abbot, Carstairs and the dealer, Mr. Peter Desmond—were not close intimates. Friends was too strong a word. Even acquaintances was. It was not at all certain that if two of them met on the street in daylight they would recognize each other, or, if recognizing the other, would exchange greetings. They met several times a year to play cards. One or more of them always went away a loser, which did nothing to endear them to one another.

“Mr. Phillips? Do you wish to raise or call?” the dealer prompted now.

“I wish to do many things,” Phillips said. “But one’s wishes are not always granted, are they? I fold.”

“Well, Mr. Carstairs, once again it appears only you and I will play out the hand,” the man dealing said. His voice was low, his manner suave and perfectly charming.

Mr. Carstairs pictured his nose smashed and bleeding and wondered how suave and charming he would be then. Although the winners and losers varied with each game the four men played, Mr. Desmond usually left the table with money in his pocket, and Mr. Carstairs usually left with none in his.

“You have most of the money I brought with me, and I would like very much to recoup some of those losses. Let us waste no time. It is all or nothing, Desmond.”

Carstairs pushed the rest of his funds into the center of the table.

Desmond picked up the cigar smoldering in the ashtray at his elbow and put it to his lips as he carefully studied the cards he held and, even more carefully, the man sitting next to him. He squinted against the aromatic cloud of smoke he exhaled, but neither the smoke nor the squint could disguise the fact that he was a vividly handsome man, with dark brown hair, dark gray eyes and a set to his jaw suggesting an iron will.

He tapped the ash from the end of his cigar, then returned it to his mouth, holding it between his teeth. “Unfortunately, Mr. Carstairs, you are in no position to dictate terms,” he said, a silken smile on his lips. “I need only to increase your bet and you lose.”

He began to gather enough coins and bills to do exactly that, but Carstairs, almost frantically, stopped him. “Wait!” he cried. “I said all or nothing.”

“You did,” Desmond agreed. “And you have wagered all and have nothing left.”

“No, no. I have…”

“What, Mr. Carstairs?”

“I have…here, give me a piece of paper.”

“Now, Mr. Carstairs, you know our policy. We have agreed to play only for the monies we brought to the table.” The gentleman sounded genuinely grieved by the fact.

“Not money,” Carstairs murmured, finding a paper and pen on his own person and scribbling something as he spoke. “Better than money.” He reached inside his coat again, found a little pocketbook and, after rummaging through its contents for a moment, extracted a bent and tattered daguerreotype. He passed it and the paper across the table.

“Better than money? I doubt it,” Desmond said, picking up the items Mr. Carstairs had passed to him and studying them both. He raised one eyebrow and then looked up at his fellow gambler for confirmation. “Indeed?” he asked.

“I guarantee it,” Carstairs said firmly.

Desmond took the cigar from between his teeth and laid it carefully in the ashtray again. “I will admit you pique my curiosity.”

“You accept the wager, then?” Carstairs urged.

Desmond hesitated for another moment, but finally nodded. “Very well,” he said. “It might prove something of a…lark. My winnings against this.” He held up the paper and the daguerreotype. “What have you got, Mr. Carstairs?”

Carstairs smiled gloatingly and turned his cards over for the others to see.

“Full house!” he announced triumphantly, splaying the cards on the table before him.

Mr. Phillips and Mr. Abbot murmured in appropriate tones of awe.

Mr. Desmond studied the three knaves and the pair of twos and shook his head slightly.

“Well,” he said, “that beats three of a kind.” Carefully he laid down three threes.

Carstairs chuckled and reached across the table to claim the money.

“However,” the younger gentleman continued, “a full house does not beat four of a kind,” and he coolly laid down a fourth three.

Carstairs fell back in his chair as if he had been dealt a physical blow.

“Buck up, old man,” Desmond said, pulling the winnings across the table, including the scrap of paper and the sepia-toned photograph. “Here’s a little something to get you home.” He selected the heavy coin that had been Mr. Phillips’s last bet and tossed it across the table to the other man. “I would not want to discourage you from letting me win more money from you the next time. Ah, but this—” he picked up the picture and studied it gloatingly “—on this I will expect full payment.”

“Of course,” Carstairs said. “We are at your convenience.”

“What is that?” Mr. Phillips asked curiously, nodding toward Desmond and the picture he held.

“I thought we determined not to play for notes of debenture,” Abbot said reproachfully.

“Indeed we did. But Mr. Carstairs did not offer me a promissory note. It seems he has given me title to his ward, a Miss Marianne Trenton.”

The other two gentlemen laughed as Desmond took up his cigar again with a broad wink.

The night was warm for so early in the summer. The windows were open, inviting every passing breath of fresh air to enter, but they were few and far between and often merely flirted with the window shade.

A young girl sat on the end of the bed, fully dressed.

The ensemble she wore was too warm for the season and too complete for the hour, so it was not surprising if little droplets of sweat had gathered on her brow. But, in fact, the perspiration was there, and running down her back in hot, lazy rivulets, for another reason.

Marianne was waiting for her uncle Horace. His temper was usually vile, but he became violent if he lost at cards. And unfortunately, more often than not, when Horace Carstairs gambled he lost.

The man was not actually her uncle. After the death of her parents the previous year, her father to a hunting accident and her mother three months later to an influenza that found her in a weakened condition owing to her grief, the girl had been assigned by the court to Mr. Carstairs, whose misfortune it had been to be bequeathed some monies in her father’s will to clear an outstanding debt.

“I cannot take the girl,” Carstairs had objected. “I am unmarried. Surely you would not burden an old bachelor like myself with such a responsibility?”

But the court reminded Mr. Carstairs that with the girl a ward of the state, it could, in fact, dispose of her and her modest legacy as it saw fit. Carstairs might have objected further, but the judge agreed to pay him, as guardian, an annual stipend out of the girl’s inheritance.

Mr. Carstairs pursued various ventures in order to make money—some, but not all of them, legal—and being no more an astute businessman than he was a clever card player, he often found himself in need of extra cash. The payment the judge named appeared very attractive to him just then.

Thus it was that Marianne Trenton, so recently part of a loving home and family, had her grief compounded by suddenly becoming the ward of a man she did not know and soon found detestable.

Her schooling had been haphazard, and at the death of her parents, her formal education ended abruptly. But Marianne, alone and largely unnoticed in Mr. Carstairs’s house, became an avaricious reader—almost exclusively of the penny dreadfuls she was able to purchase with the small allowance her “uncle” afforded her.