thrown a greasy pack of playing cards into the circle of meager, indifferent light.
"Let the cards decide, old boy," he had shouted. "One hand of poker—and no drawing to your hand. Show-down! That's square, isn't it?"
"Sure!" the other had replied, still staring straight ahead of him. "Go ahead and deal"
His voice had drifted into a mumble while Stuart McGregor had picked up the deck, had shuffled, slowly, mechanically.
As he shuffled, it had seemed to him as if his brain was frantically telegraphing to his fingers, as if all those delicate little nerves that ran from the back of his skull down to his finger tips were throbbing a clicking little chorus:
"Do—it—Mac! Do—it—Mac! Do it—Mac!" with a maddening, syncopated rhythm.
And he had kept on shuffling, had kept on watching the motions of his fingers—and had seen that his thumb and second finger had shuffled the ace of hearts to the bottom of the deck.
Had he done it on purpose? He did not know then. He never found out—though, in his memory, he lived through the scene a thousand times.
But there were the little knives. There were the
