"Dexter, Colin - Inspector Morse 11 - Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

"Yep."

"You always quit when you're winning?"

"Yep."

Luke says nothing for a few seconds. He just picks up the deck and looks at it sourly, as if something somewhere in the universe has gone mildly askew. Then he calls on the power of the poets and he quotes the only lines he's ever learned: "Barty," he says, '"If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss ..."

Remember that? What about it? You've taken seventy-odd dollars offo' me, and I'm just suggestin' that if you put 'em in the middle and if I cover 'em .. . What do you say? One hand, that's all."

The audience was about thirty strong now, and as many were urging Barty on as were urging him off. And they were all pretty committed, too one way or the other. One of them in particular ...

I'd seen him earlier at the bar, and a quaint little fellow he was, too. By the look of him he was in his mid, or late seventies no more than four-ten, four-eleven, in his built-up shoes. His face was deeply tanned and just as deeply lined, and he wore a blazer gaudily striped in red and royal blue.

Underneath the blazer pocket, tastelessly yet lovingly picked out in purple cotton, was the legend: Virgil K. Perkins Jnr.

Which made you wonder whether Virgil K. Perkins Snr was still somewhere in circulation although a further glance at his senile son seemed to settle that particular question in the negative. Well, it's this old-timer who tries pretty hard to get Bartey to pocket his dollars and call it a night. And for a little while it seemed that Barty was going to listen. But no.

He's tempted and he falls.

"Okey doke," says Barty.

"One more hand it is."

It was Luke now who seemed to look mildly uneasy as he covered the seventy-odd dollars and squared up the deck.

From other parts of the room the crowd was rolling up in force again: forty, fifty of them now, watching in silence as Luke dealt the cards.

Barty let his pair of cards lie on the table a few seconds and his hands seemed half full of the shakes as he picked them up. A ten; and a six. Sixteen. And for the first time that evening he hesitated, as he fell to figuring out the odds. Then he said, "Stick'; but it took him twice to say it because the first 'stick' got sort of stuck in hislarynx. So it was Lukey's turn now, and he slowly turned over a six and then a nine. Fifteen. And Luke frowned a long time at his fifteen and his right hand toyed with the next card on the top of the deck, quarter turning it, half turning it, almost turning it and then putting it back.

"Fifteen," he said.

"Sixteen," says Barty, and his voice was vibrant as he grabbed the pile of notes in the middle.

Then he was gone.

The on-lookers were beginning to drift away as Luke sat still in his seat, the cards still shuttling endlessly from one large palm to the other. It was the old boy who spoke to him first.

"You deserve a drink, sir!" he says.

"Virgil K. Perkins Junior's the name, and this is my ii'l wife, Minny."

"We're from Omaha," says Minny dutifully.

And so Virgil gets Luke a rye whiskey, and they start talking.

"You a card player yourself, Mr. Perkins?"

"Me? No, sir," says Virgil.