Stanley Weyman eBooks

Under the Red Robe. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Stanley Weyman   -  Jovian Press, 2016  - 

'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 the eating-house whom his voice had not already attracted. But I did not relax my face. I waited until all was quiet again, and then waving aside two or three who stood between us and the entrance, I pointed gravely to the door...