The Crack of Doom

"No," Said Mason Bridges, "I don't play poker." There was something about the manner in which he said it that made his friend Tom Ackley look sharply at him. They had been in college together, had been friends for more than fifteen years, and this was the first time Ackley had ever heard just that note in Bridges' voice. He had never thought of Bridges as fanatically puritanical -- indeed, now that he remembered it, hadn't Bridges been one of the very eagerest of the devotees of chance, in their college days?

"Just a little fifty-cent-limit game, Mason," said Ackley. And the other men in the group regarded Bridges and his frowning face with curiosity. They were in the cardroom of the club, and everyone had, temporarily at least, grown tired of bridge. They needed Mason to make a good seven-handed game.

"I wouldn't play if it were a twenty-five-cent-limit game or a ten-cent-limit game," said Bridges. And after a moment's pause he added: "No; nor a one-cent-limit game." And with that he got up and left the room. His companions, all good friends of his, gazed after him wonderingly. One of them turned a face full of inquiry to Ackley, who was Bridges' oldest and best friend.

"Don't ask me," said Ackley, in answer to the unspoken question. "I've never seen Mason like that before." With a facetious remark or two they settled down to the cards.

It was a week later that Ackley asked him outright about his aversion to poker and Bridges, after some urging, told him the story.

You think of me (said Mason Bridges) as an honest man; and so does everybody else. And I am an honest man. I have always been an honest man except ----

Except once. Once, for a few hours, I was a crook; and knew myself for a crook; felt myself a crook. And what I suffered in the way of strain and anguish during those two or three hours ... well, Tom, I don't want to go through with it again. It is by the mercy of a printed symbol upon a piece of pasteboard that my life was not ruined permanently. No; that's not exactly right either, for the printed symbol wasn't even ----

But I'm getting ahead of my story. Ten years ago I was a partner in a promising little business in Clifford Hills, which is, as you know, one of the most exclusive suburbs within a thirty-five-minute ride of the central district of New York City. There were four of us, all active, hustling, ambitious young men, all felt to be assets to the community, if you know what I mean, and all with a taste for sports and social shin digs, when we had the time -- which did not hurt us at all in our business. We dealt in real estate -- sold and leased property and collected rents -- and we dealt in insurance, both life and fire; we also placed a good many bonds with cautious local investors, and acted in an advisory character in a good many ways. One member of the firm was a lawyer, also.

There was but one bank in the village, and the people who ran it were asleep where their opportunities were concerned; and we gradually and unofficially took over some of its functions. That is to say, although we did not have much capital of our own, we made financial connections which enabled us to lend money on mortgages, and all that sort of thing. The bank closed at three o'clock in the afternoon; we discovered that there were a dozen of the local tradesmen who occasionally needed to have money changed after that hour, and just as an accommodation, and to increase our popularity in the community, we made a point of keeping currency on hand in our big safe. What with currency, bonds, securities of various sorts, there was always a rather considerable amount of money in our large steel-and-concrete structure, some of it the assets of the firm, and some of it entrusted to us. I was the inside man, the office manager, with one very efficient woman assistant, and no other help. All of the partners had a loose and easy way of taking from the safe, upon occasion, anywhere from fifty to a couple of hundred dollars, and putting in its place a personal I O U, or a memorandum of some sort, which was always made good to the firm within a day or two. We all trusted each other -- why not?

You know why not, without my telling you, Tom. Poker. I was a poker fiend in college. And in Clifford Hills there was a game; the same bunch met twice a week. When I started in with them it was a mild dollar-limit affair, which hurt nobody. Three years later it had grown to a most prodigious game, considering how gradual the growth was, and how mildly it had started. There were about ten of us implicated; but commonly not more than six or seven got together for any one session. Of that number, I suppose four or five could really afford to lose ten or twelve hundred dollars in one week without being greatly hurt by it -- and the game had grown to those proportions. I couldn't afford it; but for a time I was lucky, and, like a fool, I stuck. None of my partners strung along with the poker-playing crowd.

One man particularly annoyed me in the game -- Sam Clinker, his name was; and he was a politician with some vague connections with "the Street." From the moment he entered the game he began to "bull" it, brutally. The old pretense of neighborly friendliness went out of it. As you know, a man with a large bankroll has a terrific advantage over players who have to be careful. The very weight of his money wins for him. And the more money I lost to Sam Clinker, the more I resented his existence, his presence in Clifford Hills; I told myself he didn't "belong" with our crowd anyhow. Within six months after Clinker's advent it was a no-limit game, usually stud poker; with sometimes as much as five to six hundred dollars bet on a single card: and an opportunity to drop several thousand in the course of an hour. I couldn't afford anything like it. The queer vanity of the poker player kept me telling myself I would "get" Clinker in spite of his bankroll; like a fool I stuck.

There came a night, one that I will never forget, when I realized that I was more than $4,000 in debt to the firm. It was a very great deal more than any of us partners had ever permitted ourselves to leave paper and memoranda for, and it was all the result of my two last poker games. My position as office manager made it easy enough for me to carry even this comparatively large sum along unnoticed for four or five days; and I was not in the slightest worried about my ability to make it good. My wife and I had $9,000 worth of negotiable securities in a safe deposit box in the bank across the street, from which I could make good what I had borrowed at a moment's notice. But that very evening there was to be a game in Sam Clinker's apartment at the inn and I wanted to get into it.

"If I win a couple of thousand back tonight," I told myself, "I'll quit this damned foolishness." Poker players, you know, Tom, tell themselves that again and again.

But I had no assets with which to enter the game that night. My account at the bank -- such had been my losses rerecently -- was down practically to nothing. We usually started nowadays, since Sam Clinker had "bulled the game," by purchasing a thousand dollars' worth of chips when we sat down. It was a cash game ... we took checks, but they were supposed to be as good as cash, and up to this time they always had been. I felt that premonition of winning which comes to every confirmed poker player ... and which so often treacherously deserts him ... but how was I to get into this game tonight?

"This last time will put me somewhere near even," I said to myself, "and then I am through."

I was sitting alone in the office, where I had come after dinner, to wait for the time when the clan would be quietly gathering at Clinker's rooms. Suddenly I remembered that Clinker had been in that afternoon, and had left with us $10,000 in U.S. four per cent bonds, of an issue then listed at par. He was to have made the closing payment on a parcel of land and to have taken title, but the seller had failed to meet him, phoning that he had been unavoidably detained.

The appointment had been postponed until ten o'clock the next morning, at our office, and Clinker, the bank being closed, had asked us to keep the bonds in our safe overnight. They were unregistered -- they were, in effect, ten one-thousand-dollar bills. Clinker hadn't even had their numbers, I remembered, for when my office assistant had asked him, and had started to copy the numbers down for him. he had said, indifferently: "Oh, what's the use? It's $10,000 cash."

I put two of the bonds in my inside coat pocket, left a careful note of the transaction, and went over to Clinker's apartment, where I found the game beginning. I was idiot enough to feel amused at the idea of getting back some of my own from Clinker by using his own bonds. I didn't feel the slightest sense of dishonesty -- for there was the $9,000 worth of my own bonds in the safe deposit box across the street, to make everything good with, if the game went wrong. But I felt an imbecile confidence that it wouldn't.

It did. I rose from the table at eleven o'clock trying to absorb as quietly as I could the first great jolt of that night -- and there were other jolts to come. Clinker, who was banking the game, had his $2,000 worth of bonds; he had in addition my check for $2,500 -- and on top of that I already owed my firm $4,000. The check wasn't worth the paper it was written on, and wouldn't be until I got my own $9,000 worth of bonds from the safe deposit box as soon as the bank opened in the morning, cashed them, and made everything good. But I would be there when the bank was opened and make everything good.

Thank heaven for that $9,000 worth of bonds in the safe deposit box! -- I said that to myself a dozen times in the walk of a dozen blocks to my home. Thank heaven for those bonds. They were all that kept me from being a defaulter! There was the $4,000 which I owed the firm; there was the $2,500 check to make good, there was the $2,000 worth of bonds which I had taken from Clinker's deposit, of the same series as my own bonds -- but I wasn't dishonest. My own bonds kept me from being dishonest -- I would make all good at one minute past nine o'clock in the morning!

I was a fool, an utter fool, a vain idiot; I had lost in less than two weeks between eight and nine thousand dollars, practically all my liquid assets. An idiot, but honest, I kept telling myself. And oh, what a lesson I had had! Off of it, off of it forever!

Thank heaven for those bonds in the safe deposit box! Still saying this, I went into my wife's room to wake her up. A pretty hard thing was before me -- I had to tell her that I needed those bonds the first thing in the morning. The safe deposit box was a joint affair; each of us had a key to it -- and I remembered with a pang that about $2,200 of the money that had gone into the bonds had been her own: They were lying there, on agreement between us, waiting for an opportunity for some very attractive investment. And they were all we had in the way of capital, irrespective of my business; we had both been rather extravagant. But Jessie, I told myself, would be a sport about it -- she was always that, a loyal little sport. Debating in my mind as to how much of my situation to tell her at once, I waked her.

She sat up in bed.

"Jessie," I said, "I'm going to need those government bonds of ours the first thing in the morning -- as soon as the bank opens."

She murmured something inarticulate. I thought she had not understood. I repeated my statement.

She slowly turned in the bed, and put her feet out, and sat on the edge of it. Then she turned on the pink-shaded reading lamp at the head of it. One of her hands clutched at the jacket of her sleeping suit over her breast -- but it was not really the jacket she was clutching at; it was the sudden fearful leap of her heart that she was trying to still with a shaking hand, as I realized a moment later.

She tried to speak, and could only gulp. I noticed then that her face, ordinarily high in color, had gone gray -- it was gray even under the added color of the night lamp.

"What's the matter?" I said, alarmed at her appearance -- alarmed for her as well as for myself.

"They're ... they're ... gone!" she gasped.

"Gone?" I felt as an ox must feel when he is struck on the head by a butcher's mallet.

She flung herself upon me in a passion of weeping. "Oh, Mason," she sobbed,."I don't ... I don't know how to tell you ... Oh, don't be hard on me ... don't ... don't ... I've been trying to tell you for two weeks ... Oh, what I've gone through ... what I've gone through!"

I held her closely to me, while the story sobbed and shook itself out of her; held her in a growing, numb despair. I suffered with her and for her; and with an added suffering that she could not comprehend -- for her story was, in its essence, my own. She had lost twelve or fourteen hundred dollars at bridge; she had been ashamed to tell me. She had tried to recoup by taking a flyer on the stock market -- and had lost. And had tried to make back her losings, and had lost again. They were gone, all gone, the whole $9,000 of them -- and the poor girl had been feeling like a criminal for two weeks.

"Oh, Mason, don't be hard on me!" she kept saying. I thank heaven that I wasn't -- and I wished that there was someone to whom I could make a similar plea. I tried to comfort her; but I couldn't say much. I couldn't find any comfort in my own situation. She felt my despair, for suddenly she writhed free from me, and held me at arm's length, and studied my face for a moment in the dim light with a fresh access of alarm.

"Is it something ... something terrible ... something I don't know about yet?" she cried. "Is it some terrible emergency you need them for?"

Whatever might be going to happen to me the next day, I couldn't let her have the full force of it now, on top of what she had already gone through.

"It's pretty serious," I said woodenly.

"Oh, Mason, forgive me, forgive me!" she wailed.

If she only knew how much she had to forgive me! But I couldn't tell her, right then.

"Have I ruined us?" she asked.

"Listen, dear," I said, "whatever happens, you haven't ruined us. If I'm ruined, it's my own doing, not yours. You took securities that you had as much right to as I did. and invested the money hoping for a profit for both of us -- and whatever happens you're to blame for nothing. Now go to bed and get to sleep."

"But it is my fault," she said. "The gambling -- the gambling that led up to (continued on page 14)Crack of Doom(continued from page 12) it -- that's the wrong part of it, the gambling and not telling when I lost, is what led up to it!"

"Yes," I said -- and as I spoke I felt a kind of grimace twist through my whole being -- "yes, gambling isn't always so good!"

I couldn't say anything more, and I started out of the room. But she caught me, and clung to me, wanting to know ... everything. I couldn't tell her, then. She was thoroughly frightened by my manner, especially as I wouldn't tell her why I must have the money the first thing in the morning. She was afraid I was going to kill myself. I got away at last, with a promise to do nothing so idiotic -- told her I must go.

I had to be alone to think. And almost the first thing I thought, when I sat down in my office -- for my feet had taken me there almost without my volition -- was that I might as well kill myself. That was nonsense, of course ... but what way out was there?

I had gone into my wife's room knowing myself to be a fool, but feeling an honest fool. I had come out of it feeling a thief. Maybe you are enough of a moralist, Tom, to put your finger on the line of demarcation; I'm not. Was it dishonest to use money not mine when I knew I could return it at nine o'clock in the morning? Not strictly businesslike, of course -- but we all left memoranda for the small sums we took, and made good at our early convenience; and if the principle of the thing was not wrong, not dishonest, where a small sum was concerned, how was it wrong just because a larger sum was concerned? And the larger sum had been at my command.

"No," I said to myself, "I wasn't crooked when I had the $9,000 in bonds to make good with; I wasn't crooked when I thought I had that $9,000, even though I didn't have it. But now that I haven't got it, I am a crook!" That's the trouble with gambling, Tom -- it lends itself to a kind of moral confusion; it creates a fog in which the nicer points of honor become imperceptible.

You may be astonished at the intensity of my despair over a matter of $8,500. Well, we're both fairly well to do now, and $8,500 wouldn't make us or break us. But in those days it was a considerable sum. I made a good income, for my age and the time and place, but I lived up to it. All of us in the firm were rather popular young fellows, hustlers, active; but careless spenders. And while it wouldn't ruin the firm, it would ruin me personally. Even if I didn't go to jail -- as I well might -- I was finished as far as that community was concerned. And these things follow a young man from place to place. I was an idiot -- an idiot whom unforeseen circumstances had turned into a thief -- and I was finished.

My partners might rally to my support, in spite of my -- I hated to say it, but I had to -- in spite of my stealing from them. But Sam Clinker and I detested each other, and if he could jail me, he would do it; and he would gloat over it as he did it. He had my bad check; but he had worse than that against me -- he had the actual abstraction of two bonds which were his personal property, and their use. He had the political influence to have me railroaded. And if I estimated the man correctly, and his feelings toward me, he'd lose no time about it. We loathed each other with one of those intense personal animosities that grow out of poker games. I had finished myself.

An unbusinesslike habit, pardonable so long as its consequences could be easily met, had been turned into a felony the instant its consequences could no longer be met! And that's the fruit of gambling, Tom. Forgive me if I seem to labor the point -- but as I tell you of it there comes back to me something of what I suffered that night.

None of us four young fellows in the firm was a heavy drinker; but there was generally a quart or two around the office at that. It wasn't a bad thing, now and then, in a business way, to be able to give the right customer or prospect a nip of good stuff. I suddenly wanted a drink -- I told myself, desperately, that it would help me think. What I really wanted it for, I guess, was to help me not to think for a few minutes. I took out a bottle of Scotch. I sat there in the gloom for some time thinking about what Sam Clinker was going to do to me next day, and every few minutes I took a nip from the bottle.

I suppose a man who is born a crook, or who has been at it a long time, doesn't mind being one. But I did. It was new to me. It had come on me suddenly. A few hours ago I wasn't one. Now, those bonds were gone, and I was one! I sat there and thought of Jessie at home, and thought of jail, and what my life might have been, and what it would probably be now, and took a drink, and another drink, and another one. The drink didn't appear to me to intoxicate me; it seemed to contribute to the coldness of my despair. The longer I sat there, the more I hated Sam Clinker -- not only for what he had done, but for what he would surely do to me tomorrow. I hated him almost as much as I hated myself, and that was as much as anyone can be hated and live.

Suddenly, either out of my despair, or out of the Scotch, or both together, an idea came to me. I put it from me at first. But it came again and again. And finally I extended it a welcome, which had in it a kind of grim humor.

I took from the safe $5,000 more of Sam Clinker's bonds, and went back to the poker game. It was between one and two o'clock in the morning, but they were still going strong, and Clinker was, as usual, the big winner.

"Give me nine of the yellows, and ten of the reds," I said to Sam Clinker, who was banking, and tossed $5,000 of his own bonds at him. Clinker had succeeded in getting the game up to the place where the yellow chips were worth $500 each, the blues $100 each, the reds $50 and the whites $10 -- and this, Tom, is in itself a great commentary on poker! This was the game that had started three years before as a friendly game at a dollar limit!

Clinker glanced at the bonds, and handed over the chips.

"Those bonds were listed at exactly par in the afternoon paper quotations," I said to him.

He stared at me, as if he found the phrase reminiscent. Indeed, he might well have. He had used almost exactly the same words when he handed those same bonds over to one of my partners to put in the safe nine or ten hours previously. But he had no way of knowing -- or, at least, of proving -- that they were the same bonds.

On the inside, I was all fever and chills and wild, illogical hope, and wilder despair. And mixed with this, and perhaps due to the Scotch I had drunk, a kind of queer, jeering humor--a humor that jeered at myself, sneering at me: "Well, fool, if you're going to jail for using $2,000 worth of Sam Clinker's bonds, you might as well take a chance on $5,000 more of them; if you lose, it won't get you any longer prison sentence, probably."

I had only been a crook an hour or two; but you see, Tom, I was already thinking like a crook! Gambling! I don't want to talk to you like a tract, Tom -- but there it is; the confirmed gambler does not gamble merely with money; he eventually gambles with the very essence of honor and life.

On the inside of me was this queer jumble and turmoil of emotion; but the outside must have been cool and quiet enough. Nevertheless, the other men in the game seemed to catch something of the inner feeling, for they looked at me strangely and with a certain gravity. It was only now and then that a few of the yellow chips got into the game, in spite of Sam Clinker's forcing methods -- and I had come in and bought $4,500 worth of them. They all knew that I couldn't afford it, or anything like it. It was an announcement, in itself, that I intended to "bull" the game. And I had sense enough left to realize that if I were to be ruined I was already alienating the sympathy of several very influential citizens by my present attitude.

I could see in the faces of three or four of them -- there were eight of us all told at the table, and the game was now exclusively stud -- that they didn't want to win my money, but I was the big loser, and they were more prosperous men than myself, and they felt in honor bound to stick on and play to give me the chance to get something back. That wasn't Sam Clinker's idea. There was a deep and deadly animosity between him and myself; he would delight in my utter ruin. I had never told him what I thought of him; but he knew it; he knew it as deep as the marrow in his bones, and returned the sentiment with interest.

(continued overleaf)Crack of Doom(continued from page 14)

I won. I lost. I won. I lost. I bulled the game. I drank Sam Clinker's Scotch. I got as low as $200 worth of chips. I got as high as $4,000 again. I bulled the game. I drank more highballs. I was not myself. Outwardly I must still have been deadly quiet. Inwardly I was burning flame. My vision was blurred. I played rotten poker. Then I would make myself settle down and play good poker and hold myself to it.

The disconcerting thing was that when I took the wildest and most idiotic chances with the cards I was as apt to have good luck as when I played sensibly. I can't tell you the details of the last hour of that game, because I don't remember them; they were a whirl, a blur, to me, a shifting madness, an unreality, an insanity, a whirl and blur of colored cards and chips.

But I can tell you the details of the very last hand -- the last hand of poker I ever played, or ever will play.

Clinker and I faced each other across a board piled high with stacks of blue and red chips -- with a few of the yellow ones worth $500 each mixed in with them -- and he had three tens and a king showing.

And I had three queens and a king showing.

He had got his third ten to show, and I my third queen, on the last card.

Three other men, who had had possibly winning hands, had gone along with us until the last cards to fall had destroyed their chances, and then had dropped out. But there was at least $5,000 in the pot in front of us.

He looked steadily at me, and all the partially hidden animosity he had long been feeling flared into his eyes. And this permanent animosity was intensified by the fact that twice before I had bluffed him out of pots with $2,000 bets, and then had let him know it afterwards.

"Five hundred dollars," he said; and tossed a yellow chip upon the table.

I read him for four tens, the three showing and one in the hole -- and oh, how I hoped that I read him correctly! For I was betting on four queens. That is the essential brutality of stud poker; you know, at times, when you have an antagonist at your mercy.

"I'll raise you five hundred," I replied, and tossed in two yellow chips.

He did not hesitate an instant -- and I realized with an accession of fever that must have shown in my bloodshot eyes, although my face was quiet, that he thought I was trying to repeat my former bluffs and get away with another pot without the goods.

"Five hundred more," he said, without hesitation; and then I was certain that I had read him correctly -- read not only his hidden card, but his thoughts about myself.

Inwardly I gloated. I had him! I would play him for all it was worth. I raised him $2,000 in one bet, and it took the last chip in front of me.

According to the way in which we had been playing, all he could do was to call -- a man who had to put in his last chip was entitled to a "sight" for what he had bet, and no one could buy more chips from the bank during the actual playing of a hand. But he was as sure that he had me out on a limb with a foolish attempt to steal the pot -- to repeat my previous successful raids -- as I was that I had him where I wanted him. My whole maneuver arose, to his thinking, from the desperation which he could not have helped but notice in me. And Sam Clinker was the man to take advantage of it. I saw in his face the desire to ruin me.

"Don't you," he said provocatively, as I announced my $2,000 bet, "want to buy some more chips?"

Without waiting for me to answer, he raised my bet to the tune of $1,000. This, as I have said, was irregular, by the rules of the game we had been playing. But he was so sure he had me hooked! There was no reason why I should not take advantage of the irregularity which he had started, as we were the only two players in the pot. I was so sure I had him hooked!

"Yes," I said. I hastily scribbled a check -- with not a penny in the bank to meet it! I tossed it to him. "Five thousand dollars' worth of yellows," I said.

My voice broke with sheer inward hysteria. There was a cackle of laughter in it that must have sounded like utter imbecility. It confirmed Sam Clinker in his estimate that he had to do with a sucker gone mad. He took my check and passed me over the $5,000 worth of chips.

I shoved the entire pile into the pot. "I raise you $4,000," I said.

There was a murmur from the other men around the table: they shifted uneasily in their chairs; they were not enjoying this, nor my manner, nor Sam Clinker's. I felt their unspoken sentiment that this ought to be stopped. I felt their unspoken conviction that I had departed utterly from my senses; they were estimating my desperation, my hysteria, my vain idiocy, just as Sam Clinker was.

Sam looked at me frowningly. He was sure I had gone temporarily mad. I saw it in him. And he was the man to take advantage of it.

He shoved into the pot the $7,000 worth of bonds which he had brought to our office in the afternoon, and on top of them he laid the check for $2,500 which I had given him earlier in the evening, and on top of that he laid the check for $5,000 which I had just given him -- $14,500 in all.

"I raise," he breathed. And the whisper was as malignant as the hiss of a snake. He thought he had me!

It amounted to a raise of $10,500. I began to wonder if he really had his four tens, or was trying to steal the pot from me by this prodigious bet -- or if he rated me at four queens, and was still trying to beat me down. Never mind which! I had him! I wrote a worthless check for $20,000 and tossed it on the heap that lay between us.

"I raise," I said -- and how I hoped he would call me! For I had him; with my four queens I had him.

There was a period of intense silence in the room, except for the hard breathing of the others who were now but astonished onlookers.

Clinker bent up the corner of his hole card and looked at it. He looked at me. He looked at my three queens showing. I had him stopped -- and I was sorry for it; I wanted him to go on.

"Of course you know, Bridges," he murmured, "that I've got four tens."

"I don't know anything of the kind," I said provocatively. "I think you're trying to steal this pot with three tens and a big bankroll -- the way you've been stealing good pots for six months!" I was trying to goad him into another bet; at least into calling me. I was as sure that he had four tens as that I had four queens.

"It begins to look to me," said Clinker, "as if you really have four queens."

"It will cost you another ninety-five hundred dollars to find out for sure," I taunted him.

And still gloating mentally I turned up the corner of my hole card.

It was not a queen. It was a jack -- the jack of spades. The queen of hearts, the queen of diamonds, the queen of clubs, lay exposed before me, and I ----

My bloodshot eyes, and my eager and fevered brain, had misread the hole card on my first blurred and hasty glance. I had been playing it for a queen -- and it was a jack!

The man had me. My enemy had me. My life was over. It was ruin. Disgrace. Prison. For me. What for my wife? God knows! I did not dare to think of Jessie. I turned cold, in an immobile, dumb agony. I stared at the I on the corner of that jack that should have been a queen. My folly. My idiocy. My -- yes, my crookedness! They had brought me to this.

I think my breath stopped. I lost all count of time. How I sat upright I do not know. My mind was in a black whirl. No thought, but only jumbled fragments of thoughts, swung round and round in the dark eddy ... a thankfulness that my father and mother were dead, and I had no child nor relative ... a flash of Jessie bringing me a book and handing it to me through iron bars ... a flash of myself standing before a judge. I was through.

I lifted my face, and it must have been blank with my utter suspension of life to the cruel eyes of Sam Clinker, as if he were the judge I stood before ... as indeed he was! I held up the dead head on my dead spine and waited sentence. Was it seconds? Or minutes? Or hours? I don't know. Time was gone. It meant nothing. Do you wonder that since that night I have never touched a card, Tom? I wouldn't bet a soiled lump of sugar against a burnt match. I (concluded on page 64)Crack of Doom(continued from page 16) know what agony is.

Time, I say, was through. I lay on one of the grids which eternity has waiting for idiots and crooks. I waited for the shattering blast of the last trump, for the crack of doom, for Sam Clinker's voice. Finally it came.

"I guess you got 'em, kid," he said. He flung his hand into the discard, and pushed the pile of chips, checks, and bonds toward me.

I did not move. I could not. I had stood upon the trap of the gallows. And a reprieve had come. Heart, lungs, brain, nerves, were not functioning yet. Slowly I came back to life; I drew a breath. I felt the blood begin to move in me. Then I let out one wild yelp of insane laughter -- the utter irony of it! I would not have had the nerve to try to bluff Sam Clinker again, to make such a large bet, unless I had known that I had four queens -- and I had won the pot, and I didn't have them! My own mistake had saved me from a disgrace that I deserved. My career, my fortunes, my future, my good name, the stuff of my honor itself, the sweetness of my life, had come back to me because my blurred eyes had misread one face-card for another.

The hideous unreality of gambling came home to me in that instant more poignantly because I had won, through that idiotic mistake, than if I had lost and paid the penalty for my folly. Never again would I put myself at the mercy of a symbol on a slip of paper.

I rose, and tore up the checks I had made out. I stuffed the $7,000 worth of bonds into the inside pocket of my coat. I shoved the pile of yellow and red and blue chips to Sam Clinker.

"Cash these; I'm through," I said.

He counted them and wrote me a check, silently. I put it into my vest pocket. Then I tossed my hand into the discard. One of the men made a sudden snatch for the hand, and turned all the cards over.

"Cripes!" he said.

"Mason stole that pot!" breathed another, with incredulous admiration in his voice.

It is impossible to describe the look on Sam Clinker's face. It was mottled. His jaw dropped. And then, with a sudden flash of complete comprehension, he glanced at the pocket into which I had placed the bonds and said, with conviction in his voice:

"Yes; and I'll bet you it's not the first thing Bridges has stolen tonight."

"You'll never know, Clinker," I said, and left the room and went home to tell Jessie not to worry about bridge losses or stock markets. And that, Tom, is why I'm such a stickler for complete business regularity today -- and why I would not even join you in a game of penny ante.