Chance Elson Read online

  The carnival had opened up a whole fresh life to Chance. He knew everyone on the lot from the pickpockets to the girls in the hula act. He was with it. He was a part of it. He belonged.

  Joe came back with the walnut shells and the bean. Dutch stood up with exaggerated care. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. He lifted the fish bowl from the table and put it on the floor. Then he moved the table over directly in front of Doc and laid the shells on it.

  "All right, you cardsharp. Get your hundred bucks where your mouth is."

  Doc pulled out his roll. Even when they were short. Doc carried a roll. It was his ammimition, his stock in trade. He peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the table. "Let me see yours."

  Dutch had to fumble through his pockets. He had spent most of his money on presents. He made it up finally with small bills and change. That was Dutch's weakness. Money according to him was made to spend.

  He moved now dehberately, shifting the shells with practiced motion, shuffling the bean from one shell to another. Finally he stopped, stepping back.

  "Okay, name it."

  Doc grinned. "It isn't under any of them. It's in the crook of your little finger."

  "Hell it is." Dutch opened both of his big hands, extending them for inspection. "You're so damn smart. It's under the center shell." He lifted the shell and stared at the polished top of the table. The bean was not there.

  "It's on the floor." Chance was laughing inside. He seldom laughed aloud. He had schooled himself to hide emotion. The home had taught him that. To protect yourself, you built up an armor through which you seldom let anyone penetrate.

  Dutch was still staring at the table. Slowly he raised his big head, passing a hand across his eyes. "God, I must be drunk."

  Doc said, "You're always drunk." He was enjoying himself. Doc usually enjoyed himself. "Chance is stiU smarter than you are."

  "He's smarter than all of us." Joe's tone was worship in itself. "Jeese, where would we be without him?"

  Dutch took another long drink. He suddenly used his big hand to sweep the empty walnut shells from the table. "You're telling me. I knew that the first night I saw him, standing there in a pair of beat-up overalls that was too small for him.

  " *What's your name, kid?* I said, and so help me he said it was Ralph Waldo Elson."

  Doc grinned. "His mother must have liked poetry. Did she. Chance?"

  "How do I know? I never saw her."

  "Quit feeling sorry for yourself because you were an orphan. Take me now. I had a father, sure. The bastard was the best Goddamn ladies' doctor in Chicago. Still is for

  that matter. Makes a hundred thousand bucks a year just telling the old bags what their dreams mean when all most of them need is a good, healthy, homy man."

  Joe was looking at him. "So that's why they call you Doc."

  "No," said Doc. "I actually started out to be a doctor, but I liked to gamble. I lost three grand when I was a junior at Northwestern and the old man tossed me out on my ass." He paused to mix fresh drinks for himself and Chance. "Don't ever get educated, Joe. It makes you want things, and that's not good."

  "Chance wants things, and he ain't educated."

  "He's educated," said Dutch. "He's educated good. A blonde educated him, didn't she. Chance?"

  Chance was annoyed. It was the one time in his life when he had opened up and told anyone about his feelings, and he'd been drunk then.

  Dutch was drunk now, and he knew that he couldn't shut him up. If he tried it would only make things worse, and what did it matter? It had happened a long time ago, almost four years ago.

  Dutch was chuckling. The sound was like the rumble of an awakening steam engine. "It was the winter after I foimd him. We went to New Orleans when the show closed for the season. I was dealing poker in a Rampart Street poolroom and Chance was loose on the town. This floozy picks him up and takes him to bed and by God he thinks he's in love." Dutch broke off, laughing so hard that tears ran out of his Httle eyes.

  Chance sat still, anger burning deep inside of him. Dutch made it sound so sordid, so ordinary. It hadn't been that way. It had been an awakening, an unfolding as it were, a glimpse at a kind of life he had never experienced.

  Sex at the home had been a matter of conversation. There were no women except the matrons, and they were fat. One of the boys swore that he'd gone to bed with Mrs. Peabody, but Chance had always doubted it The kid was a chronic liar.

  At the carnival two of the girls had taken him to bed, but mostly they had concentrated on rubes who had money to

  spend. The girl in New Orleans had been very different. She was blond, beautiful. He could not guess her age, somewhere in the early twenties. Certainly she was older than he.

  Her roadster was red and powerful, her fur coat expensive. They met in the lobby of a picture show when he retrieved her fallen purse and she asked him to dinner as a reward, prying out of him a meager outline of his life.

  Afterward in her apartment the furnishings took his breath away. He was especially impressed by the deep Chinese rug and the Persian lamps of brass filigree. Then in bed she taught him arts of which he had never dreamed. Before, love-making had been a furtive action, to be hurried in the fashion of a panting rabbit.

  They rested, and talked, and then passion came again until his yoimg strength was entirely drained. They slept, and he roused first, lying at her side, watching her in the morning Hght which drifted in through the St. Charles Street windows.

  This, he thought, was the way to live—car, money, apartment. If others had them, why couldn't he? Why must he trail a carnival as Dutch did, swilling up cheap booze, never having decent clothes, always worrying about the law and the weather?

  The sheet had slipped down, exposing her shoulder and bare breast. It was firm, a httle pear shaped, with the reddest nipple he had ever seen.

  He reached out and touched it, and saw her eyes open slowly, and knew a sudden fierce tenderness.

  She was still, not moving, her eyes vacant, without recognition. Then suddenly she smiled as if she had just recalled who he was. Her arm curled imder and about his neck, drawing his sHm body over, on top of her.

  She kissed him, the aggressor, for he was still spent. Then he felt the soft warmth of her hand forcing him between her legs, joining them together.

  He came to life in response and she met him, a writhing, straining frenzy, her body arching to meet him, her tinted nails digging their sharp points into the skin of his shoulders.

  Finally it was done, and she lay with the motionlessness of death, her arms tight about him, imprisoning him against

  her. A shudder ran through her body, transmitting itself to him, and her eyes, which had been tightly closed, opened.

  "May"—it was the only name he knew for her—"May, I love you."

  He whispered it against her cheek, meaning every word. He was not prepared for her laughter, sharp, shrill, cruel.

  "God, I wish Nick had it the way you do."

  "Nick!" He sat up, angered that she should bring another man's name into this moment. "Who in hell is Nick?"

  She sat up also. Now that it was over she was terribly matter-of-fact. She got out of bed, unconscious of her nakedness. In the morning sunlight she seemed bathed in gold. It was a picture Chance could never forget.

  "Nick," she indicated the apartment with a gesture, "pays for this."

  Chance stiffened, his anger a deep, hot coal within him. "To hell with Nick. I'U take care of you. I'll go to work and . . ."

  Her laughter cut through his words. She came back to the bed, leaned against him, kissed his cheek. "Baby, you have no idea what I cost. Nick's a big shot, a topflight red hot, and I keep him broke. You couldn't buy my stockings for a week. Now get dressed and get out of here."

  Chance's anger was beginning to center on her. "You mean I'm not to come back?"

  She was suddenly very serious. "You're damn right you aren't coming back. Nick's in Memphis, but I took a real risk at tha
t, one I'm not fool enough to repeat."

  Chance stood up, feeling very young and very helpless and very naked. "Then why the devil did you do it?"

  She looked at him. Her eyes were now unreadable, her voice tired. "You wouldn't imderstand," she said. "You don't have to sleep with Nick."

  That afternoon he got drunk for the first time in his life, and when he staggered into their room after midnight he told Dutch all about it. "I found out who he is," he said. "I asked the bartender on the comer. His name's Nick Far-rie."

  Dutch was worried. "My God, Idd, take it easy. Fame's one of the worst guns in the country."

  "I'll kill the son of a bitch myself. Imagine a goon like Farrie having a dame like May."

  "Why not?" said Dutch. "He can pay for it. In this life, kid, you can buy anything you can pay for. Forget it. Only the gangsters make enough dough to interest that kind of a broad."

  "To hell with gangsters, the stupid bastards." Chance knew that his hatred of hoodlums probably dated from this time.

  He was half hstening to Dutch, half reviewing the past. He heard Dutch say, "The kid was sure burned up when he foimd his lovely belonged to Farrie. The next night he told me he was going to be a big shot, and I said forget it. We were small time, and we'd stay small time. But, by Jesus, he proved me wrong. He made me teach him all the tricks and in a week he could handle a deck of cards better than I ever could. Then he goes out and takes four salesmen for three hundred bucks. The thing is, he has a natural sense for cards."

  "Til say he has." Doc laughed out loud. "Ill never forget the first time I ever saw you two. I'd been working the cruise boats south, the pickings were poor, and I caught the I.e. north, and who do I meet but a big farmer and his nephew."

  Dutch said half angrily, *'What do you mean, 'farmer'?"

  "That's what I took you for. Remember? Chance had won seventeen himdred bucks, and he'd dressed you up like he thought gentlemen would dress. I got you in my compartment, and, by God, you took me."

  Dutch was grinning. "Siure we took you. You tried to stack the deck. You threw Chance three queens and yourself a four-card straight, and he suckered you by splitting his queens and changing the draw. I never saw a man so sold out in my life as you were."

  Chance agreed with Doc. The best thing that had happened had been his meeting with Liller. Doc had taught him everything he knew, how to dress right, and talk right, and act as if he had had money all his life.

  Doc had explained it carefully. Chance was to be a college kid on a grand tour, Mulhauser his bodyguard. "It will be easy," he said. "I'll drop the word to every sharpie on board that your old man has oil milHons, and they'll fight to get you in a game. Then between us we'U whipsaw them. I like cleaning sharpies, they can't squawk to the captain, and they'll never really figure whether they've been taken or not.'*

  Two years of it. They had done all right, but it could not go on forever. On the last ride they had met three men whom Chance had played with before.

  Joe got up to pour a full round of drinks. Dutch now had his third bottle under fair control. "What about the dame. Chance? Ever see her again?'*

  Chance tasted his drink. Yes, he had seen her once more. A year ago he had read in the papers that she had stuck a knife into Farrie. He had gone clear to New Orleans and had slipped into the courtroom.

  Under the glaring fights she had looked old and tired and haggard. He didn't stay. He couldn't help her. She got twenty years to life.

  "Yes, I saw her once. She didn't look as good."

  Joe cackled. "That's the way. A dame never looks as good in the second round." He shadowboxed across the floor and then back.

  Dutch said, "Sit down before you kick over the fish/'

  "Just keeping in training."

  "For what? You couldn't pimch your way out of a paper bag."

  "Up yours." Joe sat down. "I'm sure glad you guys come to Cleveland. Jeese, I never had no fun until Doc won me."

  They'd come to Cleveland because Doc had chosen it. Chance had been thinking about opening a club. He put it to them after the last trip. "We're getting nowhere," he said. "We'll always be tinhorns as long as we stay on the wrong side of the table. Look what Bradley did in Florida, look how the boys operate in JeflFerson Parish in New Orleans."

  "Damn bunch of gangsters." It was Doc.

  "Bradley was no gangster. You don't have to be a gangster

  if you have a class spot for the dress-suit trade. We'll pick a town, a good town, and work our way in."

  Doc had picked Cleveland. "The town isn't organized," he explained, "not the way the Capones have Chicago or the Purple Mob has Detroit. It's spHt a dozen ways and I have friends there. I even know some of the boys in the sheriff's office."

  So they had come to Cleveland, taking their time, finding the former country club, remodeling it to suit their purpose. Doc had taken care of the juice and arranged the payoffs.

  "It's a perfect setup," he said, "and I've even got a guy to handle the horse book. You need a book because it brings people into the place afternoons and a lot of them stay to buck the tables after dark."

  Chance hadn't hked the idea of letting an outsider in and said so.

  "It's all right," Doc promised him. "This guy is a brother-in-law of one of the deputies. His name is Cellini and he has a lot of local connections which will help. Besides, he's paying ten grand and a percentage. The way you're spending dough fixing up the dining room and all, we'll need every cent we can get to open."

  Yes, they had needed the money to open, and they still needed it. They had opened the day after Thanksgiving and the play had been slow in building. Perhaps it had been a foohsh gesture to stay dark tonight, but then it was worth it. The boys were certainly having a good time and he was enjoying it himself.

  He reviewed what they had already accomphshed. They'd done well, but they still had a long, long way to go.

  He yawned. Dutch had just finished his third bottle. He heaved it into the comer and it broke.

  "Jeese," Joe said. "I should be keeping house for a bunch of pigs, yes, that's what I mean, pigs."

  Dutch stood up. He was reehng a httle. "You know something? I'm going to wake up oin- star boarder. That's what I'm going to do, wake her up and give her her present."

  "Look," said Joe, "you leave that kid be. You'd scare hell

  out of her, a drunken bum like you that she never sees before, stumbling into her room."

  "Who's drunk?*'

  "Who's drunk, he says. Look at him, Chance. The bum is out on his feet and don't know it."

  Chance had been watching. "Go to bed, Dutch."

  "Hell with you. This bastard said I was drunk. I'm not. Think I'll poke his head."

  "Better not." Joe had fallen into a crouch.

  Chance stood up. This had gone far enough. Dutch for all his fat could be a mean guy in a fight. Chance had seen him lay out a canvasman with an iron stake, and he'd told about the talker he had shot in Denver.

  "That's enough."

  Neither heard him. Dutch was stalking Joe, his broad hands extended, his hamlike arms as big as any wrestler's.

  Joe feinted with his left and when Dutch lowered both hands to block the blow he threw a sucker punch which caught the bigger man squarely on the jaw.

  Dutch stumbled back two steps and sat down. His huge rear landed directly on the fish bowl, crushing it beneath him, sending water and broken glass and frantic fish in all directions.

  Doc doubled over and rolled on the floor, laughing so hard that he could not stand. Dutch came oflF the floor as if it were hot.

  "God, I'm stabbed. I'm full of glass."

  "Hell with you," said Joe. "I gotta save the fish." He ran into the kitchen after the dishpan.

  ^^^a^it&iB

  It was snovting when Judy Swensen woke up on Christmas morning. For a full minute she did not know where she was, then she remembered and raised to her knees to look around the room. Hie night before she had been terrified, but she

  had
also been so tired that she did not actually care. Now with nearly ten hours of sleep behind her, her sharp, active mind considered the position in which she found herself.

  Her impulse was to get out of here as fast as she could. She pushed back the blankets, tiptoed, shivering, to the door and opened it a crack.

  Someone was whistling softly in the kitchen at the far end of the hall, occasionally banging a pot or pan. No other soimd reached her. She shut the door and looked around for her clothes. They were nowhere to be seen. And then she remembered that the one called Joe, the one who had given her a bath, had said that he burned them.

  She got back into bed, pulling the covers tight about her, and lay there, considering. The bath had not really bothered her. She thought of herself as hep in all things and only the fact that she had matured slowly had kept her out of more serious trouble. For seven years of her life she had stayed at the orphanage, having entered it when her mother died, on her fourth birthday. For the last three years she had been at the reformatory, and it had been a liberal and impressive education.

  She thought of the reformatory with cold, smoldering rage. It had not been her fault that Mr. Pryor at the orphanage had liked to feel up imder her dress whenever the opportunity offered, or that he had promised her a dollar if she would take off her clothes in his office that afternoon.

  She did not like Pryor or the feel of his dry, hot hands, but what had she been supposed to do? And it was bad luck that Mrs. Pryor chose that afternoon not to visit her mother as she usually did on Thursdays.

  She still remembered the look on the superintendent's face when the door opened and his v^dfe walked in. She still remembered the burning sting of the leather belt that cut her dress and raised the red welts that still showed across her back.

  She had run away from the reformatory four times, which had automatically lengthened her sentence. Her running away was prompted by natural rebellion rather than by definite plan, and for the last six months she had been a model