George Kibbe Turner

“ John Schmaar perceived the queer coincidence—he remembered again in a flash that earlier time when he was a boy.
A groan went up around the table.
“Too high! Too high!” screamed Billie Bannerman.
“This is excruciating,” exclaimed the Hunter girl. “Excruciating!”
John Schmaar's hand went out to the spread cards, and cut—his ten-spot!
A groan went up.
“The gent wins!” the Bannerman girl exclaimed, letting her shoulders and arms sink in mock despair. And the rest groaned with her. But Schmaar kept his eyes on Aileen Dulcifer, watching her, seeing if she would even now wake up. ”

“ THE faces of the little group, which had been laughing before, grew rigid now—almost as rigid as Aileen's. There was something in the atmosphere, in the girl's face, that they didn't understand, of course, but that reached them just the same. Even John Schmaar, staring with his gray agate eyes, could feel the tension. ”

“ Not I!” said Schmaar.
“No, you never did. So you never had any experience with women.”
“No,” said Schmaar, “I guess not.”
“No. The trouble with you is, you've got the wrong idea of them,” she said. “Too limited by your own mind. You think a woman's a nice, expensive table d'hôte dinner. She isn't—honest! She's something different—as you'd know, if you ever got one in love with you.” ”

“ THERE was a change in her—Schmaar had to admit it to himself—in her face and in her manner! In some ways, one wouldn't have said it was the same girl. Hysteria, of course.
“Why?” he asked her. “What would you get out of it, if you did kill me?”
“You dead!” she replied blankly.
“Can you beat them?” thought Schmaar to himself, studying her. Here was this soft, pretty, luxury-loving little waster, afraid of every street-corner without a policeman on it. A fool boy comes along from nowhere and tells her what he thinks she is, and what she'll do—feeds her moonshine ”

“ She breathed hard—the disguise of her smile was all gone now.
“Ladies and gents,” the Bannerman girl called out in her best circus manner, “first round! The woman leads!”
“Shall I cut first?” Schmaar asked a second time.
“No, I'll go first. All the time,” she said, recalling once again her smile—and losing it immediately.
The girl's hands were shaking a little; her eyes, you'd think, would burn a hole in the back of the cards.
She cut a queen, John Schmaar a five-spot.
“The gent wins!” cried the Bannerman girl, shouting her circus stuff into the silence. ”

“ John Schmaar put the cards down on the big table between him and Aileen Dulcifer. He looked into her eyes—not smiling now, but with the cold, sinister businesslike eye of the professional gambler. She had wanted it, had she? Well, she was going to have it.
“How many cuts?” he asked. “One or three?”
“I don't care,” said the girl.
“Three—by all means! Three!” called Eloise Hunter.
“Absolutely. We want our money's worth. All the thrills there are!”
The big Westerner stood in the background, still doubtful, still scowling—and beside him the silent Armitage. ”

“ She was a little older than the other girl. “Crazy—of course they're crazy then. That's the normal thing to be. But you wouldn't know it! Because you never were there—in your life. You never were normal that way,” she said.
“Normal!” repeated Schmaar, his mind going back to yesterday. “How? I suppose all that slush we heard from Gladden was normal!”
“For him—yes, in his condition.”
“And what about her?” he asked, looking over at her again, mocking the Westerner's voice. “A good woman—the bravest thing in the world! The great sacrifice! ”

“ Schmaar said.
That stirred her up again as he thought it would.
“Not I!" she came back at once. “You know that. I wouldn't welch. I couldn't welch—if I lost. I'd rather die a thousand times!”
“Die a thousand times!” cried the Bannerman girl, catching it up. “Some excitement! But what's it all about?”
“It's something we can't talk about,” Aileen told them, dodging. “Or it couldn't happen.”
“And he wont do it?” inquired the Bannerman girl, keeping the game interesting.
“No,” said Aileen Dulcifer. “I wouldn't have believed it myself. I thought he would take any bet. ”

“ But I do know, that she put some great importance on saying good night tonight. You'd have thought, to hear her, when she was coming to, that it was her last night on earth!”
John Schmaar covered the little start he gave at that, and made to close the talk as soon as he could. But the Bannerman girl had to continue awhile of course, airing her opinion.
“You make me laugh, your kind—always,” she told him. “You know all about women. You know how to find your way around anywhere at night, as well as day. But there's one place you've never been.” ”

“ They are good at that kind of play—such women—clever at concealing their secret feelings. If Aileen was changing her mind, however, she didn't show it.
After dinner they all stopped at the center-table again in the living-room, and the Hunter girl—always full of tricks to draw the crowd around her—started telling the Dulcifer girl's fortune with the cards—“more man-and-woman stuff,” Schmaar muttered to himself.
She saw a dark man, she said, rolling her eyes at Schmaar—and a light man, with another roll toward Gladden. And a journey! ”

“ Schmaar answered, his mind about made up now. He'd be likely to stand here taking that kind of stuff—from a pack of women!
“A good woman is the bravest thing in the world, huh?” said John Schmaar to himself. ”

“ And he went on and told her the story with all details, of that thing he had seen in the old days in that old gambling-house in the West—that fight by cutting the cards between the crippled gambler and the gunman.
“He never carried a gun,” he explained to her. “They generally knew it—let him alone, knowing he was a cripple. But that wouldn't do for the other man. He just had to kill off one more!”
John Schmaar could see them still—their faces through the cigar-smoke, twenty years ago—as he told it to her. ”

“ JOHN SCHMAAR was quite sure that he knew women for what they were—light things, beautiful, expensive toys. He'd had little experience with them in his early days as a professional gambler in the West; of late, however, he had found them useful in the more highly evolved financial operations he carried on at his country place on the Hudson.
Take Aileen Dulcifer, for instance, the pretty little waster who had run through her inheritance and to pay a bridge-debt had given Schmaar a check which was returned N. S. F., by the bank ”

“ And when, that afternoon, a group of Schmaar's guests, men and women, were out on the cliff above the river in front of his place, and the Bannerman girl told again the story of the Indian maiden who had jumped over in the effort to save her lover—and thus gave the place the name Lovers' Leap—Schmaar again showed his opinion by offering a thousand dollars to any modern woman who would make even the first partial descent. ”

“ Summing it all up, your idea is that we'll cut the cards—on the bet that the loser takes the Lovers' Leap—that first one. Must try it! That's the way it will listen to the outside public. But instead, what will really happen—the loser will walk out, when he's ready, and just step off over the cliff into five hundred feet of moonshine. And they'll find him there in the morning.”
She didn't smile. She just sat there with her eyes on his face and nodded.
It was too much for John Schmaar, finally. He burst out laughing. He had to. ”

“ He was angry: he wasn't feeling so friendly toward her as he had. But he hadn't changed his mind about her really. He never saw her look better. They are apt to, when they start to fight, he reminded himself. ”

“ That broke up the game, of course The women assisted the girl upstairs when she came to. Captain Armitage after sitting around a few minutes, his mind and tongue completely frozen, finally excused himself and started back to New York.
Schmaar sat there alone, waiting and figuring on what should come next, just when and how the girl would come around to him, and what they would have to do to square that thing she had started with that fool envelope and make it seem sensible when they opened it. ”

“ Schmaar!” said Eloise Hunter.
They all stood now around the two principals—waiting, laughing, or pretending to, anyway—even John Schmaar's anemic sister with her patient, bloodless smile!
“Ladies first,” said John Schmaar, smiling faintly, his eyes gray agate, “unless—”
“Oh, no. I'll cut,” she said at once. The speech was hurried. “I'm glad to!” ”