Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/66

52 Stone shrugged his shoulders and backed out. No one had noticed his trivial bets. At the crap table Lefty was staking with silver dollars, his left hand stacked with them, his right throwing the dice for himself and those who bet with or against him on every conceivable combination.

"Seven!" cried Lefty, triumphantly, as the cubes rebounded from the back of the board and fell to a four and a three. He dropped the coins in his left hand into a side pocket that already clinked with his winnings, took over the stack the croupier pushed to him, and threw again. ""Four straight passes," he called, "now for the fifth. Hell! I'm hoodoo'd. Craps!"

He looked ruefully at the two and the one that marked his throw and his neighbour took up the dice. Stone moved silently off as Lefty made a bet, wondering whether his own ill fortune might not affect the Cockney's success. Healy sat silent and motionless at the faro-table, waiting for his plays, watching the case-keeper until a card had won or lost twice before he slid out his chips. He looked, Stone thought, like a hawk watching a covert. Apparently he was neither winning nor losing.

The gambling rooms were hot, the air stifling, and Stone made for the patio, in no humour to watch others play where he could not. A dance was just ending, the girls leading their partners quickly off the floor, most of them on the outlook for a new prospect, eager to get rid of the old. Only a few of them acted as waitresses. Mexicans in white with red sashes