Sign you in, what?' They had played for an hour and a half. Jake was
enjoying the game. He liked the style of the establishment, for he
usually played in less salubrious surroundings the back room behind the
bar, an upturned fruit-crate behind the main boiler in an engine room,
or a scratch game in a dockside warehouse.
This was a hushed room with draped velvet curtains, expanses of dark
wood panelling, dark-toned oil paintings and hunting trophies
shaggy-maned lions, buffalo with huge bossed horns drooping
mournfully,
all of them staring down with glassy eyes from the walls.
From the three billiard tables came the discreet click of the ivory
balls, as half a dozen players in dress shirts and braces, black ties
and black trousers, evening jackets discarded for the game, leaned
across the heavy green-topped tables to play their shots.
There were three tables of contract bridge from which came the murmur
of bid and counter bid in the cultivated tones of the British upper
class, all the players in the dress that Jake thought of as penguin
suits black and white, with black bows.
Between the tables, the waiters moved on silent bare feet, in
ankle-length white robes and pillbox fez, like priests of some ancient
religion bearing trays of sparkling crystal glass.
There was only one table of draw poker, a huge teak structure with
brass ashtrays set into the woodwork, and niches and trays to hold the
whisky glasses and the coloured ivory chips. At the table sat five
players, and only Jake was not in evening dress the other three were
the type of poker players that Jake would dearly love to have kept
locked up for his exclusive pleasure.
There was a minor British peer, out in Africa to decimate the wildlife.
He had recently returned from the interior, where a white hunter had
stood respectfully at his elbow with a heavy-calibre rifle,
while the peer mowed down vast numbers of buffalo, lion and
rhinoceros.
This gentleman had a nervous tic under his right eye which jumped
whenever he held three of a kind or better in his hand.
Despite this affliction, a phenomenal run of good cards had allowed him
to be the only winner, other than Jake, at the table.
There was a coffee planter with a deeply tanned and wrinkled face who
made an involuntary little hissing sound whenever he improvised on the
draw or squeezed out a pleasing combination.
On Jake's right hand was an elderly civil servant with thinning hair
and a fever-yellow complexion who broke out in a muck sweat whenever he
judged himself on the point of winning a pot an expectation which was
seldom realized.
In an hour's careful play, Jake had built up his winnings to a little
over a hundred pounds and he felt very warm and contented down there
where his dinner was digesting. The only element in his life that
afforded him any disquiet was his new friend and sponsor.
Gareth Swales sat at his ease, conversing with the peer as an equal,
condescending graciously to the planter and commiserating with the
civil servant on his run of luck. He had neither won nor lost any
