The Camas Hot Springs Exchange

The Mug's Game
By LESLIE CHARTERIS
Published by Special Arrangement With The Chicago-Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Inc.
IN TWO PARTS—PART TWO
Mr. Yoring, who wore the pince-nez was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit. Mr. Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.
"You in business, Mr. Templar?"
He patted his pockets significantly.
"The market's been doing pretty well these days."
Mr. Kilgarry and Mr. Yoring exchanged glances, while the Saint picked up his drink.
"Well, that's fine," said Mr. Yoring happily. He wrapped an arm around Mercer's shoulders.
"You gonna play tonight, Eddie?"
"I don't know," Mercer said hesitantly. "I've just been having some dinner with Mr. Templar—"
"Bring him along," boomed Mr. Kilgarry heartily. "Four's better than three, any day. D'you play cards, Mr. Templar?"
asked Mr. Kilgarry interestedly.
The Saint smiled.
"My business is letting other people make money for me," he said, continuing strictly in the vein of truth.
"Most games," said the Saint cheerfully.
"That's fine," said Kilgarry.
Mr. Yoring looked dubious.
"I dunno. We play rather high stakes. Mr. Templar"
"They can't be too high for me," said the Saint boastfully.
"Fine," said Mr. Kilgarry again,
"then that's settled. What's holding us back?"
Under Mr. Kilgarry's breezy leadership they piled into a taxi and headed for one of the smaller hotels on Ocean Drive, where Mr. Yoring proclaimed that he had a bottle of Scotch that would save them from the agonies of thirst while they were playing.
The room was large and cluttered with a hodge-podge of gilt and lacquer and brocade. In the center of the room there was a card table already set up.
"You fix a drink, Eddie," Kilgarry said. "Let's all make ourselves at home."
He lowered himself into a place at the table, took off his pince-nez, breathed on them and began to polish them with his handkerchief.
Yoring was still polishing his pince-nez when Mercer turned to the table with a glass in each hand. He put one glass down beside Yoring, and as he reached over to place the other glass in front of the Saint the cuff of his coat sleeve flicked the pince-nez out of Yoring's fingers and sent them spinning.
The Saint made a dive to catch them, missed, stumbled, and brought his heel down on the exact spot where they were in the act of hitting the carpet.
"I'm terribly sorry," said the Saint. "I'll pay for them, of course," he said.
"I'll split it with you," said Mercer. "It was my fault. We'll take it out of my winnings."
Yoring looked from one to the other with watery eyes.
"I—I don't think I can play without my glasses," he mumbled.
Mercer flopped into the vacant chair and raked in the cards.
"Come on," he said callously. "It isn't as bad as all that.
"Can't you manage?" urged the Saint. "I was going to enjoy the game, and it won't be nearly so much fun with only three."
Kilgarry crushed his cigar-butt violently into an ashtray.
"You can't back out now," he said and there was an audible growl in the fruity tones of his voice.
"Straight poker. Cut for deal. Let's go."
To Simon Templar the game had the same dizzy unreality that it would have had if he had been supernaturally endowed with a genuine gift of clairvoyance. He knew the value of every card as it was dealt, knew what was in his own hand before he picked it up.
For nearly an hour, curiously enough, the play was fairly even, when he counted his chips he had only a couple of hundred dollars more than when he started.
Presently Kilgarry called Mercer on the third raise and lost a small jack-pot to three nines. Mercer scowled as he stacked the handful of chips.
"Hell, what's the matter with this game?" he protested. "This isn't the way we usually play. Just because my luck's changed we don't have to start playing for peanuts."
"Okay." Kilgarry pushed out two $50 chips with a kind of fierce restraint. "I'll play for a hundred."
He had been playing all the time with grim concentration, and as the time went by he seemed to have been regaining confidence. "Maybe the game is on the level," was the idea expressed by every line of his body, "but I can still take a couple of mugs like this in any game."
He said, almost with a resumption of his former heartiness:
"Are you staying long, Mr. Templar?"
"I expect I'll be here for quite a while!"
"That is fine! Then after Mr. Yoring's got some new glasses we might have a better game."
"I shouldn't be surprised," said the Saint amiably.
He was holding two pairs. He took a card, and still had two pairs. Kilgarry stood pat on three kings. Mercer drew three cards to a pair, and was no better off afterwards. Yoring took two cards and filled a flush.
"One hundred," said Yoring nervously.
Mercer hesitated, threw in his hand.
"And two hundred" snapped Kilgarry.
"And five," said the Saint.
Yoring, with a sigh, pushed his hand into the discard.
"See you," said Kilgarry.
With a wry grin, the Saint faced his hand. Kilgarry grinned also, with a sudden triumph, and faced his.
Yoring made a noise like a faint groan.
"Fix us another drink, Eddie," he said huskily.
He took the pack and shuffled it clumsily. His fingers were like sausages strung together.
Yoring squinted at the hand he had dealt himself. It contained the six, seven, eight and nine of diamonds, and the queen of spades. Simon held two pairs again, but the card he drew made it a full house. He watched while Yoring discarded the queen of spades, and felt again that sensation of supernatural omniscience as he saw that the top card of the pack, the card Yoring had to take, was the ten of hearts.
Yoring took it, fumbled his hand to the edge of the table, and turned up the corners to peep at them. For a second he sat quite still, with only his mouth working. And then he let the cards flatten out again with a defiant click, and drew himself up. He began to count off $100 chips.
Mercer, with only a pair of sevens, bluffed recklessly for two rounds before he fell out in response to the Saint's kick under the table.
There were $5,000 in the pool before Kilgarry, with a straight, shrugged surrenderingly and dropped his hand in the discard.
The Saint counted two stacks of chips and pushed them in.
"Make it another two grand," he said.
Yoring looked at him waveringly. Then he pushed in two stacks of his own.
"There's your two grand." He counted the chips he had left, swept them with a sudden splash into the pile. "And $2,900 more," he said.
Simon had twelve hundred left in chips. He pushed them in, opened his wallet and added crisp new bills.
"Making three thousand more than that for you to see me," he said coolly.
Mercer sucked in his breath and whispered: "Oh, boy!"
Kilgarry said nothing, hunching tensely over the table.
Yoring blinked at him.
"Lend me some chips, ole man."
"Do you know what you're doing?" Kilgarry asked, in a harsh, strained voice.
Yoring picked up his glass and half emptied it. His hand wobbled so that some of it ran down his chin.
"I know," he snapped.
He reached out and raked Kilgarry's chips into the pile.
"Eighteen hundred," he said. "I gotta buy some more. I'll write you a check—"
Simon shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'm playing table stakes. We agreed on that when we started."
Yoring groped through his pockets. One by one he untangled crumpled bills from various hiding places until he had built his bet up to $3,250. Then he glared at Kilgarry.
"Lend me what you've got."
"But—"
"All of it!"
Reluctantly Kilgarry passed over his roll. Yoring licked his thumb and numbered it through. It produced a total raise of $4,150.
"Go on," he said thickly, staring at the Saint. "Raise that."
Simon counted out four thousand dollar bills. He had one more; and he held it poised. Then he smiled.
"What's the use?" he said. "You couldn't meet it. I'll take the change and see you."
Yoring's hand went to his mouth. He didn't move for a moment, except for the wild swerve of his eyes. Then he picked up his cards, with trembling slowness he turned them over one by one. The six, seven, eight, nine and ten of diamonds.
Nobody spoke, and for some seconds the Saint sat quite still. He was summarizing the whole scenario for himself, in all its inspired ingenuity and mathematical precision, and it is a plain fact that he found it completely beautiful. He was aware that Mercer was shaking him inarticulately, and that Yoring's rheumy eyes were opening wider on him with a flame of triumph.
And suddenly Kilgarry guffawed and thumped the table.
"Go to it," he said. "Pick it up, Yoring."
Yoring opened both his arms to embrace the pool.
"Just a minute," said the Saint.
His voice was softer and gentler than ever, but it stunned the room to another immeasurable silence. Yoring froze as he moved, with his arms almost shaped into a ring. And the Saint smiled very kindly.
Certainly it had been a good trick, and an education, but the Saint didn't want the others to fall too hard. He had those moments of sympathy for the ungodly in their downfall.
He turned over his own cards, one by one. Aces. Four of them. Simon thought they looked pretty. He had collected them with considerable care, which may have prejudiced him.
"My pot, I think," he remarked apologetically.
Kilgarry's chair was the first to grate back.
"Here," he snarled, "that's not—"
"The hand he dealt me?" The texture of Simon's mockery was like gossamer. "And he wasn't playing the hand I thought he had, either. I thought he'd have some fun when he got used to being without his glasses," he added cryptically.
"Well, I'm afraid that sort of kills the game for tonight," he murmured, and his hand was in his side pocket before Kilgarry's movement was half started. Otherwise he gave no sign of perturbation, and his languid self-possession was as smooth as velvet. "I suppose we'd better call it a day," he said, without any superfluous emphasis.
Mercer recovered his voice first.
"That's right," he said jerkily. "You two have won plenty from me other nights. Now we got some of it back. Let's get out of here, Templar."
They walked along Ocean Drive, past the variegated modernistic shapes of hotels, with the rustle of the surf in their ears.
"How much did you win on that last hand?" asked the young man.
"About $14,000," said the Saint contentedly.
Mercer said awkwardly: "That's just about what I'd lost to them before. I don't know how I can ever thank you for getting it back. I'd never have had the nerve to do it alone . . . And then when Yoring turned up that straight flush—I don't know why—I had an awful moment thinking you'd made a mistake."
"I don't make a lot of mistakes," the Saint said calmly. "That's where a lot of people go wrong. It makes me rather tired sometimes. I suppose it's just professional pride, but I hate to be taken for a mug. And the funny thing is that with my reputation there are always people trying it. I suppose they think that my reactions are so easy to predict that it makes me quite a setup for any smart business.
"Of course I knew that a switch like that was coming—the whole idea was to make me feel so confident of the advantage I had with those glasses that I'd be an easy victim for any ordinary card-sharping. And then, of course, I wasn't supposed to be able to make any complaint because that would have meant admitting that I was cheating too. It was a grand idea, Eddie—at least you can say that for it."
Mercer had taken several steps before all the implications of what the Saint had said really hit him.
"But wait a minute," he got out. "How do you mean they knew you were wearing trick glasses?"
"Why else do you imagine they planted that guy on the train to pretend he was J. J. Perkill?" asked the Saint patiently.
"That isn't very bright of you, Eddie. Now, I'm nearly always bright. I was so bright that I smelt a rat directly you lugged that pack of marked cards out of your beach robe—that was really carrying it a bit too far, to have them all ready to produce after you'd got me to listen in on your little act with Josephine. I must say you all played your parts beautifully, otherwise, but it's little details like that that spoil the effect. I told you at the time you were a mug," said the Saint reprovingly.
"Now why don't you paddle off and try to comfort Yoring and Kilgarry? I'm afraid they're going to be rather hurt when they hear that you didn't manage to at least make the best of a bad job and get me to hand you my winnings."
But Mercer did not paddle off at once. He stared at the Saint for quite a long time, understanding why so many other men who had once thought themselves clever had learned to regard that cool and smiling privateer as something closely allied to the devil himself. And wondering, as they had, why the death penalty for murder had ever been invented.
time that you were a mug,
By LESLIE CHARTERIS

Published by Special Arrangement With The Chicago-Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Inc.

THE SAINT, THAT MAGNIFICENT ROGUE, AGAIN JUSTIFIES HIS FAITH IN DESTINY.

IN TWO PARTS-PART ONE

HE STOUT, jovial gentleman in the shapeless suit pulled a card out of his wallet and pushed it across the table. The printing on it said. "Mr. J. J. Naskil."

The Saint looked at it. and offered his cigaret case. "I'm afraid I don't carry any cards," he said. But my name is Simon Templar."

Mr. Naskill beamed, held out a large, moist hand to be shaken, took a cigarette, mopped his glistening forehead, and beamed again,

"Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Templar," he said neartily. "I get bored with my own company on these long journeys. Hate traveling, anyway. It's a good thing my business keeps me in one place most of the time. What's your job, by the way?"

Simon took a pull at his cigaret while he gave a moment's consideration to his answer. It was one of the few questions that ever embarrassed him. Without causing a certain amount of commotion, he couldn't say to a perfect stranger. "I'm a sort of benevolent brigand. I raise hell for crooks and racketeers of all kinds, and make life miserable for policemen. and rescue damsels in distress, and all that sort of thing."

The Saint had often thought of it as a deplorable commentary on the stodgy unadventurousness of the average mortal's mind. but he knew that it was beyond his power to alter.

He said, apologetically: "I'm just one of those lazy people. I believe they call it 'independent means.'"

This was true enough for an idle moment. The Saint could have exhibited a bank account that would have dazzled many men who called themselves wealthy, but it was on the subject of how that wealth had been accumulated that several persons who lived by what they had previously called their wits were inclined to wax profane.

Mr. Naskill sighed.

"I don't blame you," he said. "Why work if you don't have to? Wish I was in your shoes myself. Still, I've got a good business now, so I shouldn't complain. Expect you recognize the name."

"Naskill?" The Saint frowned slightly. When he repeated it, it did have a faintly familiar ring. "It sounds as if I ought to know it—"

The other nodded.

"Some people call it No-skill," he said. "They're about right. too. That's what it is. Magic for amateurs. Used to be a conjurer myself." Naskill explained. "Then I got rheumatism in my hands, and I was on the rocks. Didn't know any other job, so I had to make a living teaching other people tricks."

Simon slid back his sleeve from his wrist watch and glanced out of the window at the speeding landscape. There was still about an hour to go before they would be in Miami, and he had nothing else to take up his time.

Besides. Mr. Naskill was something novel and interesting in his experience, and it was part of the Saint's creed that a modern brigand could never know too much about the queerest things that went on in the world.

He caught the eye of a waiter at the other end of the dining car and beckoned him over.

"Could you stand a drink?" he suggested.

"Scotch for me," said Mr. Naskill gratefully. He wiped his face again while Simon duplicated the order. "If I'm boring you-

"Not a bit of it." The Saint was perfectly sincere. "I don't often meet anyone with an unusual job like yours."

Mr. Naskill polished a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, fitted them on his nose and hitched himself forward.

"Look." he said eagerly. He hauled out a pack of cards.

"You take 'em. Look 'em over as much as you like. See if you can find anything wrong with 'em. : : . All right. Now shuffle 'em. Shuffle 'em all you want." He waited. Now spread 'em out on the table. Take any card you like. Look at it-don't let me see it. All right. You've got the six of diamonds."

Simon turned the card over. It was the six of diamonds.

The Saint grinned. He drew a handful of cards towards him, face downwards as they lay, and pored over the backs for two or three minutes before he sat back again with a rueful shrug.

Mr. Naskill chortled.

"There's nothing wrong with your eyes." he said. "You could go over 'em with a microscope and not find anything. All the same, I'll tell you what you've got. The king of spades, the two of spades, the ten of hearts —"

"I'll take your word for it." said the Saint resignedly. "But how on earth do you do it?"

Naskill glowed delightedly.

"Look." he said.

He took off his glasses and passed them over. Under the flat lenses Simon could see the notations clearly printed in the corners of each card- KS. 2S. 10H. They vanished as soon as he removed the glasses and it was impossible to find a trace of them with the naked eye.

"Invented it myself. Special ink and special kind of glass. There is a tint in it. of course. but it's too faint to notice." Naskill shoved the cards over the cloth. "Here. Keep the lot for a souvenir. You can have some fun with your friends. But don't go asking 'em for a game of poker. mind."

Simon gathered the cards together.

"It would be rather a temptation." he admitted. "But don't you get a lot of customers who buy them just for that?"

"Sure. A lot of professionals use my stuff. I know 'em all. Often see 'em in the shop. It isn't only professionals. either. You'd be surprised at some of the people I've had come in and ask for a deck of readers that's the trade name for 'em. I remember one fellow .."

He launched into a series of anecdotes that filled up the time until they had to separate to their compartments to collect their luggage.

Two days later Simon Templar was relaxing his long. lean body on the private beach of the Roney Plaza when two voices reached him sufficiently clearly to force themselves into his drowsy consciousness. They belonged to a man and a girl, and it was obvious that they were quarreling. And then he heard the girl "say: "My God are you so dumb that you can't see that they must be crooks?"

The Saint rolled over and looked at the girl. She was only a few feet away from him. and even at that range it was easier to go on looking than to look away. From her loose raven hair down to her daintily enameled toe-nails there wasn't an inch of her that didn't make its own demoralizing demands on the eye, and the clinging silk swimsuit she wore left very few inches any secret.

"Why must they be crooks?" asked the man stubbornly. He was young and tow-headed. but the Saint's keen survey traced hard and haggard lines in his face. "Just because I've been out of luck-"

"Luck!" The girl's voice was scornful and impatient. "You were out of luck when you met them. Two men that you know nothing about, who pick you up in a bar and suddenly discover that you're the bosom pal they've been looking for all their lives —who want to take you out to dinner every night, and buy you drinks and show you the town-and you talk about luck! D'you think they'd do all that if they didn't know they could get you to play cards with them every night and make you lose enough to pay them back a hundred times over?'

"I won plenty from them to begin with—

"Of course you did! They let you win-just to encourage you to play higher. And now you've lost all that back. and a lot more that you can't afford to lose. And you're still going on, making it worse and worse." She caught his arm impulsively. and her voice softened. "Oh. Eddie. I hate fighting with you like 'this, but can't you see what a fool you're being?

"Well, why don't you leave me alone if you hate fighting?"

He shrugged himself angrily away from her. and as he turned he looked straight into the Saint's eyes. Simon was so interested that the movement caught him unprepared, still watching them, as if he had been hiding behind a curtain and it had been abruptly torn down.

It was much too late for Simon to switch his eyes away without looking even guiltier, and the young man went on scowling at him and said uncomfortably: "We aren't really going to cut each other's throats, but there are some things that women can't understand."

"If a man told him that elephants laid eggs he'd believe it. just because it was a man who told him." said the girl petulantly, and she also looked at the Saint.' "Perhaps if you told him-

"The trouble is, she won't give me credit for having any sense-"

"He's so damned pig-headed-"

The Saint held up his hands.

"Wait a minute."he pleaded. 'Don't shoot the referee he doesn't know what it's all about. I couldn't help hearing what you were saying, but ft isn't my fight."

The young man rubbed his head shamefully, and the girl bit her lip. Then she said quickly:"Well, please won't you be a referee? Perhaps he'd listen to you. He's lost $15,000 already and itisn't all his own money-"

"For God's sake," the man burst out savagely, "are you trying to make me look a complete heel?"

The girl caught her breath, and her lip trembled. And then, with a sort of sob, she picked herself up and walked quickly away without another word.

Tho young man gazed after her in silence, and his fist clenched on a handful of sand as if he would have liked to hurt it.

"Oh, hell," he said expressively.

Simon drew a cigaret out of the packet beside him and tapped it meditatively on his thumbnail while the awkward hiatus made itself at home.

"It's none of my damn business." he remarked at length, "but isn't there just a chance that the girl friend may be right? It's happened before, and a resort like thisis rather a happy hunting ground for all kinds of crooks."

"I'know it is," said the other sourly. He turned and looked at thc. Saint again miserably. "But I am pig-headed and I can't bear to admit to her that I could have been such a mug. She's my fianceeI supposed you guessed that. My name's Mercer."

"Simon Templar is mine."

The name had a significance for Mercer that it apparently had not had for Mr. Naskill. His eyes opened wide.

"Good God, you don'tmean-you're not the Saint!"

Simon smiled. He was still immodest enough to enjoy the sensation that his name couldsometimes cause.

"That's what they call me

"Of course. I've read about you. but -well, it sortof"the young man pettered out incoherently. "And I'd have argued with you about crooks!

But-well, you ought to know. Do you think I've been a mug?"

The Saint's brows slanted sympathetically.

"If you. took my.adyice." he answered, "you'd let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it offto experience, and don't do it again."

"But I can't!" Mercer's response was desperate. "She she was telling the truth. I've lost money that wasn't mine. I've only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn't pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They've found me a better job here. starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us $20,000 to buy it and furnish it. and that's the money I've been playing with. Don't you see? I've got to'go on and win it back!"

"Or go on and lose the rest."

"Oh. I know. But I thought the luck must change before that. And yet -I don't see how they. could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them and I couldn't catch them making a single move that wasn't aboveboard. Then I began to think about marked cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I've been looking at it this morning. I'll swear there isn't a mark on them. Here, I can show you."

He fumbled feverishly in a pocket of his beach robe and pulled out a pack of cards. Simon glanced through them. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see. and it was then that he remembered Mr. J. J. Naskill.

"Does either of these birds wear glasses?" he asked.

"One of them wears pince-nez," replied the mystified young man. "But

"I'm afraid." said the Saint thoughtfully, "that it looks as if you are a mug.

Mercer swallowed.

"If I am,"he said helplessly, "what on earth am I going to do?"

Simon hitched himself up.

"I'll keep these cards and make sure about them. if you don't mind. Then suppose we meet in the bar for a cocktail about six o'clock, and maybe I'll be able to tell you something."

When he returned to his own room, the Saint put on Mr. Naskill's horn-rimmed glasses and examinedthe cards again. Every one of them was clearly marked with the value ofthe card and the initial of the suit, exactly like the deck that Naskill had given him: and it was then that the Saint knew that his faith in Destiny was justified again.

Shortly after six o'clock he strolled into the bar. and saw that Mercer and the girl were already there. It was clearthat they had buried their quarrel.

Mercer introduced her: "Miss Grange -or you can just call her Josephine."

She said: "we're both ashamed of ourselves for having a scene in front of you this afternoon, but I'm glad we did. You've done Eddie a lot of good."

"I hadn't any right to blurt out all my troubles like that," Mercer said sheepishly.

"You were damnednice aboutit.

The Saint grinned.

"I'm a pretty nice guy," he murmured. "And now I've got something to show you. Here are your cards."

He spread the deck out on the table and then he took the horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and held them over the cards so that the other two could lookthrough them.

The girl gasped.

"I told you so!"

Mercer's fists clenched.

"By God, if I don't murder those swine-

She caught his wrist as he almost jumped up from the table.

"But that wouldn't help . . . Wait!"

She clung to him frantically. "I've got it. You could borrow Mr. Templar's glasses and play them at their own game. You could break Yoring's glasses -sort of accidentally. They wouldn't