The Devil's Company Read Free

me another card. The three of diamonds. Again, a poor showing. I added another ten, as did Bailor. My final card was the four of spades; a losing hand if I ever saw one. We both put in our ten pounds and then Bailor called me to lay my hand flat. I had nothing of value; He, however, presented a cacho, three cards of the same suit. In a single hand he had unburdened me of eighty pounds—approximately half as much as I might hope to earn in a year’s time. However, as it was not my money and I had been instructed to lose it, I could not much lament its passing.

    Bailor laughed as rudely as a puppet-show villain and asked if I wished to further mortify myself by playing another hand. I told him I would not shrink from his base challenge, and once more I signaled the dealer that I wished to lose. Accordingly, I soon lost another eighty pounds. I now began to affect the countenance of a man agitated by these events, and I grumbled and muttered and gulped angrily at my wine.

    “I would say,” Bailor told me, “that you have lost this duel. Now be gone with you. Go back north, paint yourself blue, and trouble no more our civilized climes.”

    “I’ve not lost yet,” I told him. “Unless you are such a coward that you would run from me.”

    “I should be a strange sort of coward who would run from taking your money. Let us play another hand, then.”

    Though I may have had some initial reservations about my involvement in this deception, I began now to develop a genuine loathing of Bailor, and I looked to his defeat with great anticipation. “No more of these lassie wagers,” I said, opening my notebook and taking out three hundred pounds’ worth of notes, which I slapped down on the table.

    Bailor gave the matter a moment’s consideration and then matched my wager. I placed my right hand on the table with the index finger out—the signal that I would now win, for it was time to present this man with his unhappy deserts.

    I received my first card, the six of clubs. A fine start, I thought, and added another two hundred pounds to the pile. I feared for a moment that Bailor would grow either suspicious or afraid of my bold maneuver, but he had offered the challenge himself and could not back down without appearing a poltroon. Indeed, he met my two hundred and raised me another hundred. I matched the bet quite happily.

    The dealer presented our next cards, and I received the six of spades. I attempted to hide my pleasure. In cacho, the highest hand possible is that of three sixes. My employer’s man meant to assure my victory. I therefore put in another two hundred pounds. Bailor met the wager but did not raise it. I could not be surprised that he grew uneasy. We had now both committed to eight hundred pounds, and its loss would surely hurt him a great deal. He was a man of some means, I had been told, but not infinite ones, and none but the wealthiest of lords and merchants can relinquish such sums without some distress.

    “You’re not raising this time, laddie?” I asked. “Are ye beginning to quake?”

    “Shut your Scots mouth,” he said.

    I grinned, for I knew he had nothing, and my Scots persona would know it too.

    And then I received my third card. The two of diamonds.

    I strained against the urge to tell the dealer he had made a mistake. He had meant to give me a third six, surely. With so much of my patron’s money on the table, I felt a tremor of fear at the prospect of losing. I quickly calmed myself, however, recognizing that I had been merely anticipating something far more theatrical than what the dealer had planned. A victory of three sixes might look too much like the deception that we, indeed, perpetrated. My collaborator would merely give Bailor a less distinguished hand, and our contest would be determined by a high card. The loss for my opponent would be no less bitter for its being accomplished by unremarkable means.

    All about us the crowd had grown thick with spectators, and the