“But I’ve had good luck right from the start and I’m pretty well ahead. If I weren’t, I’d have quit long ago. And they know better than to suggest one of those cold hands to me.”
Walter himself had won over three hundred on this particular evening, his debtor being Hart. He hoped there would be a check waiting for him the next weekend. But there wasn’t.
The four were pretty good golfers, one of them occasionally breaking eighty while the average was around eighty-five. Walter considered himself plunging when he agreed to a ten-dollar Nassau. The other three always had quantities of side bets besides the ones laid extemporaneously as the play progressed.
For example, there was an afternoon when they were at the National and Hart and Parker were battling each other for a thousand dollars a hole and a Nassau of five thousand. The two were even on the eighteenth green. Parker left with a four-foot putt and Hart with a six-footer for a par five.
Hart sank his six-footer.
“That means a wasted afternoon for both of us,” remarked Parker.
“Why?” said Hart.
“You’ll concede me this putt, won’t you?”
“I’ll not only not concede it, but I’ll bet you five thousand you don’t sink it.”
Parker took the bet and missed the putt, which meant sixteen thousand dollars.
One Sunday morning, Walter got cocky and raised his limit to a hundred dollars for the Nassau. He went off his game and lost three hundred, the beneficiary being Dick Parker.
That night he mailed a check to Parker and it was duly endorsed, cashed and canceled. But no check had come to Walter for his winnings. He couldn’t mention it to Jack because Jack owed him over two hundred.
The four golfers lunched together nearly every Saturday and Sunday. And they and their wives dined together Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays before opening four new decks.
Walter knew that Parker was a graduate of Harvard and Hart of Yale; also that Mrs. Hart had gone to Vassar and Mrs. Parker to Smith. Yet there was never any talk that would lead one to believe the talkers had so much as matriculated in the sub-primary.
The English language was maimed and bruised; the men apparently had never read anything but the market reports and the women had concentrated on J. S. Fletcher and Sidney Lenz. When no one was relating a suggestive story, the conversation dealt with the future of General Motors and Sinclair Oil, things that had happened that day or last night at golf or bridge, and the quality and price of whatever beverages were being served.
Everybody excepting the Finches had made the acquaintance of an honest bootlegger who had access to some mysterious and never-to-be-exhausted supply of antediluvian Scotch, champagne and gin. You had to pay high, but wasn’t it worth it? Just taste that!
Walter, riding in on the train with Jack Bowen, said: “Did these people really get college degrees?”
“Sure.”
“And how?” asked Walter.
“The faculty was sick of them,” said Bowen.
Jack admitted freely that neither Hart nor Parker was an intellectual giant, but he had a tremendous admiration for their courage, their willingness to risk, against odds, amounts that would seem like fortunes to most men, and the unruffled manner in which they took their losses.
“Why, last summer I sat in a no-limit poker game with Ken and Dick and Alex Spears and Bob Morton. Spears opened a pot for ten thousand. Ken stayed with a pair of kings. Spears drew one card and Ken took three, but didn’t help his pair. Then Spears bet two hundred thousand dollars. And Ken called him! Spears had two jacks, an ace, a king and an eight-spot. Ken’s hunch had been right and his kings won.”
“Did Spears pay him?”
“Well, if he didn’t, he will. They keep track and settle later on.”
“How much later on?”
“I don’t know,” said Bowen. “Nobody ever worries about not getting paid. They’re all good for it.”
“How do you stand with them?”
“Me? I’m around seventy thousand to the good. That covers three years.”
“Have you ever got any of it?”
“No, not yet. But I’m not worrying. By the way, Dick Parker thinks you’re a queer guy, sending him that three hundred the day after you lost it.”
“He cashed the check.”
“Why wouldn’t he? But he wondered why you were in such a hurry. He said he’d trust any friend of mine.”
Walter and Marion decided they must give a party at the club to repay some of their playmates’ hospitality.
“I suppose we’ve got to,” said Walter. “But we certainly can’t afford it. We haven’t saved a dime all summer. If—”
“If what?” demanded Marion.
“If Jack and Hart and Parker would come across with what they owe me for bridge and golf—”
“How much do they owe you?”
“Just under two thousand dollars.”
“Heavens! You must have been playing for big stakes!”
“Big stakes for me; chicken feed for them.”
“Well,” said Marion, “I may as well make a confession to you. I’ve played bridge for five and ten cents a point, and I’ve won nearly eight hundred dollars.”
“Where is it?”
“I haven’t got it yet.”
“Of course,” said Walter after a pause, “these people are perfectly good. Jack swears to that. They’ll pay us, probably, before we move back to town. What we want to do now is gamble conservatively and hold on to what we’ve got.”
“Or rather,” said Marion, “what we haven’t got. As far as I’m concerned, I could live comfortably without ever seeing another pack of cards.”
“Well, we’ll give the party and charge it and maybe by the time we get the bill our pals will have liquidated.”
But before the dinner at the club had been in progress three minutes, this dream was shattered by a long, argumentative, mathematical conversation between Parker and Hart, both of them slightly squiffy on Walter’s cocktails, made of gin so young that it didn’t even have
