Hopscotch

The fifth card of the hand was dealt around; Kendig’s was a queen and it gave him three hearts face-up. The woman had two nines in sight but she checked them. Kendig checked as well; Jaynes had a pair of fives showing and was eager to bet them—he was cheerfully transparent about it. There were a thousand francs in the pot by then; Jaynes opened the round’s betting with a hundred-franc wager and two of the players beyond him called the bet; the German folded and then it was Mlle Stein’s turn and she saw the bet and raised five hundred francs. It made a nineteen-hundred-franc pot and when Kendig saw the raise it doubled the size of the pot; and Kendig raised the limit. “The raise is three thousand eight hundred.” About a thousand dollars by the day’s exchange rate.

Jaynes called the raise without hesitation but he didn’t raise back; it meant he had his third five but not his full house. The Swede and the Frenchman folded their hands. The woman smiled a little, thought about it and then called the raise. It ended the round’s betting and there was a good sum on the table now: a little over fifteen thousand francs. Two cards remained to be dealt to each player; there would be two more rounds of betting in the hand.

Mlle Stein’s card was another four-spot and gave her two pair in sight, nines over fours. The Swede dealt Kendig the king of spades—no visible improvement of his three-hearts-to-the-queen. Jaynes bought the jack of diamonds: his third suit and no evident help for his matched fives. The three-handed betting began with the woman: she counted out five thousand francs into the pot. It could mean anything. Either she had her boat and wanted to build the pot or she didn’t have it and wanted to frighten her opponents into not raising.

It was Kendig’s turn and he knew every card that had been shown. The hearts were a screen; he had two more queens wired in the hole and he hadn’t seen a single king or deuce anywhere in the table’s up-cards. Caution dictated a straight call but he made the ten-thousand-franc raise and it folded Jaynes and then the woman was smiling again with her valentine mouth and she bumped him back: “I think I must raise you twenty thousand.”

It was as much as some men made in a year. Kendig shrugged and turned to Paul Jaynes. “Can you cover my check?”

“What bank?”

“American Express. Paris branch.”

“Will it buy me a peek at your hole cards?”

“No.”

Jaynes said, “You’ve got enough to cover it of course.” He said it with a bit of an edge on his voice: not quite a threat.

“Yes.” Kendig had a hundred thousand in that bank and a lot more than that in Switzerland. Most of it had come from gambling of one kind or another. Jaynes knew that much about him. Jaynes said finally, “All right. You can play shy here.”

“Thank you.” Kendig said it without inflection; he really hadn’t cared that much. He pulled the woman’s stack of twenty thousand shy and said, “Call.”

“What, no reraise M’sieur?” She was amused. It meant nothing about her cards; she was too good a player to coffeehouse any revelations.

The final card was dealt face-down and of course the woman had to come out betting; it would have made no sense to sandbag and in any case the bet only encouraged one’s opponent to believe it was a bluff: checking the bet couldn’t be a bluff.

She bet twenty-five thousand and Jaynes nodded tautly, covering Kendig. Kendig didn’t have to perform any calculations to know there were one hundred and ten thousand francs in the pot which the woman could collect if he folded his hand. If he were to call the bet it would make it a 135,000-franc pot—nearly thirty-five-thousand dollars. She had been reading him for the heart flush but if he raised she would have to change her thinking.

He looked at Paul Jaynes. “Blank check?”

“The size of the pot? Christ that’s more than I have to pay a top star for two weeks’ location work.” Jaynes looked at the three men who’d dropped out of the hand. “Anybody want to lay a side bet against Kendig?”

The German had been very impressed by the woman’s play tonight; and perhaps he wanted to prove something because she was a Jew.… The German said, “Fifty thousand francs?”

“You’re faded,” Jaynes said. “All right, Kendig.”

Kendig looked at the woman. She was watching him, waiting without expression. He said, “Raise the pot.”

“I don’t have that much in chips.” But she was smiling.

“It’s not a table-stakes game,” Kendig said.

She studied him. He’d doubled the pot and it would cost her 135,000 francs to call his bet. It was a big pot now and if she called the bet it would be a hundred-thousand-dollar pot—that much on a single poker hand. Kendig had never wagered as much in his life; such a hand came only once in a lifetime, win or lose. It didn’t matter. His mind began to drift, He accepted the woman’s scrutiny, neither evading it nor challenging it. Jaynes looked on, agape, hands trembling with anticipation. The German watched with his face as stiffly controlled as that of an addict who was declining a fix three weeks after taking the cure. The Frenchman and the Swede were hardly breathing.

She had two pair showing; she probably had her full house; she might even have four nines or four fours. Kendig was a stranger betting with another man’s money—a man he didn’t appear to know too well—and she’d know Jaynes well enough to know he wouldn’t shill for anybody. So it was honest play and she had to make her decision on the assumption that Kendig wouldn’t bluff with Jaynes’s money. She had therefore to conclude Kendig had four queens.

She did not call his raise; she folded her hand. “Well done, M’sieur.”

Jaynes buttonholed him at the bar. “Well?”

“She didn’t pay to see it.”

“But I did, didn’t I? At least I offered to. How was I to know whether you had that much in the bank?”

“Why should I have lied about it?”

That stupefied Jaynes. “You had four queens. You must have had.”

“I’ll tell you this much. I had three queens going in.”

“Then you bought the fourth queen on the last down-card?”

“I don’t know,” Kendig said. “I never looked.”

“The hell you didn’t. I saw you look at it.”

“I shuffled them around. That wasn’t the seventh card I looked at.”

Jaynes smiled slowly. “Jesus H. Christ. How the hell could you keep from looking?”

Kendig shrugged. The plain fact was he hadn’t cared; but it wouldn’t be worth the effort to convince Jaynes of that.

“Well we both did all right, didn’t we,” Jaynes said.

Kendig escaped into the toilette and afterward went back into the poker chamber to collect his wi

“Leaving this game.”

“That’s hardly sporting.” But it was not said unkindly; she was smiling. “You don’t take much of an interest in it, do you.”

“I suppose not.”

“Such a shame,” she murmured. Then her smile changed. “I don’t know which is worse—a helpless puppy or a lost American. The only thing you really want is to get home, isn’t it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve never met an American who didn’t. Why don’t you?”

“Perhaps I will.”

“You’ll feel better then.”

“Will I?” He nodded to the houseman, who swept the chips into a sack and went away with them after Kendig finished making the count.

She said, “You are the one who hounded my trail in Algiers, aren’t you?”

“I was one of them. For a little while. They moved me out after a few months.”

“And now?”

“I’m retired,” Kendig said.

“I see.” She didn’t believe it for a minute but she was amused rather than angry. “Our Swedish friend just finished telling me what a success you’ve been on the Continent. Gambling, motorcars, skiing, flying aeroplanes. You’ve a rather interesting sort of retirement.”