denouement in the Nine Stones Circle.
'Do not play cards with Mr. Goldthwait, sir,' she had said.
The odds did not favor him. Never mind: the stakes were too great. Play he must.
Mr. Goldthwait's smile was now both sweet and confident. 'Mr. Pickering's creations are undamaged, I trust, and undiminished?'
'They are, sir.'
'Word of a gentleman?'
Hoare did not dignify the question with so much as a glance of contempt.
'Well, then,' Goldthwait said. 'It is important to me that they not remain in your possession. I could take them from you now, of course, by force instead of in play, without recompense or return. But I choose otherwise.
'The likenesses of some of my people and Sir Thomas's as well are among them, as you will have astutely guessed. It would be most unreasonable of me to allow you to retain them in your possession; the identities must be privy to myself, and to Sir Thomas, of course.'
At that, Sir Thomas uttered a croak of outrage. 'Then it was you who destroyed the portrait I commissioned from Pickering at such great expense? You who burnt it, and my priceless port with it?'
From Sir Thomas's voice, Hoare could not tell whether it was the loss of his 'portrait'-whatever it might portray-or the port that one of his guests was sipping with such evident enjoyment, that the knight-baronet missed the more deeply. Nor, at this juncture, did it seem important.
'Piffle,' Goldthwait said.
'Well,' the knight said in a surly voice, 'thanks to you, sir, I must now pay the poor man for it, without having the pleasure of possessing it. You are in my debt for a hundred fifty guineas, sir.'
A hundred fifty guineas, Hoare thought, would lift poor Pickering out of penury for good.
'When you come into your own, your… Sir Thomas,' Goldthwait replied calmly, 'neither of us will have to worry about a mere hundred fifty guineas.
'Speaking of guineas, Sir Thomas, I think that, as umpire, you are the only one of the three of us-friends-who is impartial enough to convert into nominal counters the prices of the various goods Captain Hoare and I bring to the table. More convenient than passing the goods themselves-or parts of them-across the board, don't you think? As well as being less messy? Certainly, none of the ton would stoop to soil his hands with anything so crass as silver, or paper, or flesh.'
To this jibe, Hoare made no reposte. Under the circumstances, he felt himself hopelessly handicapped in any attempt to haggle with John Goldthwait, Esquire.
Sir Thomas went to the sideboard where he had stored the sealed decks of cards and withdrew a long rack of ivory counters, dyed in various jolly hues. He mumbled out their respective values, then, as he had been instructed, assigned values to Pickering's likenesses, counting out the markers in front of Hoare as he went and placing the sketches themselves tidily in a corner of one bookshelf. Hoare noted that the knight-baronet priced his own lineament, Goldthwait's, and those of several others considerably higher than the rest; Hoare's own, Thoday's, Selene Prettyman's would bring considerably less, while the double portrait of Mrs. Pickering and her Beatrice was a paltry affair.
'And now, Sir Tom, to set values on my stakes.'
For this task, Sir Thomas deliberated at greater length. At last he returned to his treasure chest and took out another set of ivory markers, these cut into various suggestive shapes. After deliberating still further, he laid a small stack of high-value markers in front of Mr. Goldthwait.
'For the girl,' he said.
Over his last evaluation, he procrastinated still longer. As Hoare knew well, Sir Thomas's feelings toward Eleanor were complex, and this showed. At last, he counted out markers in an amount that, as best Hoare could judge, was three or four times the value he had attributed to little Jenny. These, too, he placed in front of his associate.
'There,' he said. The two piles, Hoare's and Goldthwait's, were quite unequal, and Hoare commented accordingly.
'Of course, Captain Hoare,' was the reply. 'After all, you hold only pieces of paper with markings drawn upon them. I, on the other hand, hold specimens of flesh and blood which, I believe, you treasure.'
Since there was nothing Hoare could do, he did it. The charade must be played out, and on terms over which he had no control.
Each man placed a chip in the center of the table. Sir Thomas broke the seal on the first deck, shuffled the cards swiftly, and gave the deck to each player for him to cut. Goldthwait did so; Hoare shook his head and rapped the deck with his knuckles instead.
'A Yankee custom,' he whispered in response to the puzzled looks of the other two.
Sir Thomas tossed a card in front of each player. Goldthwait's was the four of hearts, while Hoare's was the nine of hearts. Sir Thomas retrieved the cards and buried them in the pack.
'Pray deal, Sir Thomas,' Mr. Goldthwait said.
In answer, Sir Thomas swiftly dealt three cards to each player, beginning with Hoare-the first two facing down, the third exposed. Goldthwait had the six of hearts, Hoare the five of the same suit.
'Your bet, sir,' came Sir Thomas's voice.
Goldthwait tossed a low-value chip into the center of the table, and Hoare followed suit.
When each player had four cards face-up before him, Goldthwait had a king showing, while Hoare's highest card was a seven. Sir Thomas dealt the last card to each, facedown.
'You have the high card, Mr. Goldthwait. Bet your hand, sir,' he said.
Goldthwait bet three small chips, and Hoare raised the bet. Goldthwait matched it.
'Declare your hand, Captain,' Sir Thomas said.
Hoare complied, disclosing his winning hand. With that, Goldthwait gave a nod and gathered his cards, and the two passed them to the dealer. Hoare drew in his meager winnings.
So the night wore on, hand after hand after hand. Sometimes Hoare had a run of luck, sometimes Mr. Goldthwait. There was little talk, save Sir Thomas's flat, guttural declarations as the cards appeared. Arbitrarily, one or the other player might call for a fresh deck; the knight-baronet promptly complied. Once and only once, when Mr. Goldthwait echoed Hoare's demand before cards were dealt, did Hoare hear a muffled batrachian snort.
Another time, before Sir Thomas could deal the first card, Hoare intervened.
'Burn it,' he whispered. Sir Thomas made to set it aside.
'No, sir,' Hoare said. 'Burn it, if you would be so kind.' He felt in dire need of any petty victory he could achieve.
In a corner of the paneled room, a high clock ticked away the seconds, solemn and disregarded. Outside, over the sleeping city, the bells of a neighboring church tolled each hour. Each hour, unbidden, one of Sir Thomas's shabbier servants entered silently and replenished the fire before making sure his master and his guests were properly supplied with wine. By request, Hoare received coffee instead; although he was sparing in its use, he found his nerves drawing ever more tightly as the night wore on. Tonight, this was all to the good as far as he was concerned, for his vis-a-vis seemed tireless. Goldthwait smiled, bet, smiled, folded, smiled, won.
'I'll smile, and smile, and be a villain,' Hoare recited to himself from some source that escaped him for the moment.
During one of their moves from labor to refreshment, Mr. Goldthwait appeared even more at ease than usual. Perhaps, Hoare thought, it was because he had just won several interesting drawings.
'I suppose you have noticed these chairs, Captain Hoare,' he said.
Hoare nodded.
'They are in the nature of an award, or decoration. They are the same as those in my possession, which you may also recall. There are others.'
Hoare remembered one other, which had lain, overset and ripped apart, in Mr. Ambler's lodgings.
'If you do well for me, you may become entitled to one,' Mr. Goldthwait said.
'I should prefer to decline the privilege,' Hoare whispered.
'Suit yourself, sir. Come to play.'
'I have a winning hand, sir,' Hoare said, displaying his cards. It had been a close affair; Hoare's reserve had
