AT ZATON'S

'Marked cards!'

There were a score round us when the fool, little knowing the man
with whom he had to deal, and as little how to lose like a
gentleman, flung the words in my teeth. He thought, I'll be
sworn, that I should storm and swear and ruffle it like any
common cock of the hackle. But that was never Gil de Berault's
way. For a few seconds after he had spoken I did not even look
at him. I passed my eye instead--smiling, BIEN ENTENDU--round
the ring of waiting faces, saw that there was no one except De
Pombal I had cause to fear; and then at last I rose and looked at
the fool with the grim face I have known impose on older and
wiser men.

'Marked cards, M. l'Anglais?' I said, with a chilling sneer.
'They are used, I am told, to trap players--not unbirched
schoolboys.'

'Yet I say that they are marked!' he replied hotly, in his queer
foreign jargon. 'In my last hand I had nothing. You doubled the
stakes. Bah, sir, you knew! You have swindled me!'

'Monsieur is easy to swindle--when he plays with a mirror behind
him,' I answered tartly.

At that there was a great roar of laughter, which might have been
heard in the street, and which brought to the table everyone in