High-Rollers

When Walter Finch received and accepted an offer of $30,000 a year from Bernard and Craig, Publicity Engineers, his wife, Marion, declared that now they must certainly buy, build or rent a place in the suburbs for the summer; it was nothing less than criminal to keep the kiddies cooped up in a cauldron like New York during July, August and September.

“Just think, dear,” she said, “you’re going to make twice as much as you did at Ripley’s and we’ve managed to save a little on what they gave you, besides carrying all that silly insurance. Now we can save nearly twice as much as we have been and still have enough left to enjoy ourselves a little.

“I don’t mean you and me especially, though I do believe in people having fun before they get too old. But the children will be so much better physically and in every way if they can spend three months in the country. Isn’t that true, dear?”

“Yes, dear. I suppose it is,” replied Walter. “Some Saturday or Sunday, we’ll take a run over to Jersey or up in Westchester somewhere and see what we can find. But we must rent, not build or buy, because in the first place, I don’t know if I can make good or not in this job, and in the second place, we don’t want to establish ourselves permanently anywhere till we are sure we like the people.”

“I think that’s wise, dear. People do make all the difference. That’s why we ought to pick out some place where we already know somebody and like them; for instance, Hampton Dunes. You’ve always been fond of Jack Bowen and there’s no one I’d rather be neighbors with than Peggy. The four of us would have a perfect circus together and the kids would get along beautifully with little Jack.

“Last time I saw Peggy, she said why didn’t we come out there this summer and at least rent, but of course then I knew it was impossible. Now, though⁠—Well, I can’t imagine anything more ideal.”

Walter had been married ten years and his record of arguments was, total⁠—3,650; won, 0; lost, 3,650. So it was only half-heartedly that he pointed out the objections to his wife’s plan: That Hampton Dunes was one of the “swellest” and most expensive places on Long Island; that while the Finches and Bowens went to the theater and played bridge together about once a month in town, Jack Bowen’s annual income was five times as big as the salary Bernard and Craig were going to pay Walter and that the Bowens’ friends at the Dunes were all wealthy and much too fast for the Finches to travel around with; that the village was too far away from New York (nearly three hours on the good trains) to permit Walter to make the round trip daily, and that people living in Hampton Dunes without a car were virtually becalmed for the summer.

Walter and Marion and Junior and Anne packed up and moved out there in the latter part of June. Marion had rented a small furnished cottage for four thousand dollars. It was nearly half a mile from the beach, but directly behind the Bowens’ big house right on the ocean and the Finches were welcome to the use of the Bowen beach at any and all times.

Walter would have to go into New York early Monday mornings and stay there till Friday afternoon, but on Saturdays and Sundays he could make up for it by loafing, playing with the kids, swimming, golfing (a membership in the club was only five hundred dollars), enjoying himself in any way he saw fit. They bought a secondhand sedan for eight hundred and life for Marion, at least, became something more than a tedious struggle to keep herself and the kids from megrims and doldrums.

Junior and Anne, chaperoned by a safe and rather inexpensive nurse, went to the beach at the Bowens’ every morning, came home for luncheon and went back to the beach in the afternoon. For the first two weeks, their mother had luncheon with them and sat with them while they ate their supper, but after that she was elected a member of a contract bridge foursome that took all her afternoons and half her nights and made her so sleepy that she barely managed to get up in time to start all over.

Peggy Bowen, Mrs. Dick Parker and Mrs. Kenneth Hart were the others in the quartet and Marion owed her membership to the fact that Mrs. Spears was abroad for the summer. Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Hart were the wives of extremely rich men, men who had inherited money, gone through college and then enjoyed phenomenal luck in the stock market.

The women played for five cents a point, sometimes ten. Marion’s limit previously had been a penny, but in Hampton Dunes she raised it to two-and-a-half cents at first, the others “carrying” her for the balance, and soon was gambling for the same stakes as her companions, with a prayer that Walter would never hear about it.

She was a good player and a good holder, and by the middle of July was over eight hundred dollars ahead. But hadn’t been paid.

When her grocery and meat bills came at the end of the first month, she swooned. The prices were terrific. She resolved not to tell Walter the facts and to economize thereafter. She wrote checks and sent them to the grocer and butcher, who, in their turn, fainted dead away when they received them. They were not used to clients who settled their June and July bills before the following April.

Walter arrived home in time for dinner Friday nights. It was nice to get away from the stuffy, dirty, hot city and he made the most of his weekends by golfing, swimming and just lolling on the beach.

At first he golfed alone, but Jack Bowen at length persuaded him to make a fourth in a regular set game that lasted all through Saturday and Sunday. The others concerned were Jack and Kenneth Hart and Dick Parker. It seemed that Walter was filling in for Mr. Spears, who had accompanied his wife to Europe.

It soon became an understood thing that the four families⁠—the Parkers, Harts, Bowens and Finches⁠—would spend their Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings playing contract, at some house other than the Finches’, which was too small. The men always played together at one table and the women at another.

Walter announced that he couldn’t go higher than five cents a point; in fact, that was much higher than he ever had gone before. The other men said that was all right, but they were playing among themselves for ten, which Walter thought at first meant ten cents, but soon discovered was a hundred times that much. He got a shock one night when the totals were announced and it was found that Parker was three thousand points up on Hart. Just a matter of thirty thousand dollars.

“I’ll play you a cold hand for it, Dick,” suggested the loser.

“All right; just one,” said Parker.

Two poker hands were dealt and Parker won with two pair against four clubs and a spade.

“Another one?” asked Hart.

“Not tonight,” said Parker.

“OK. That’s sixty thousand,” said Hart, and set about getting his wife started for home.

This took place at the Bowens’, and Walter and Marion stayed on a while after the Parkers and Harts had gone.

“Are those fellas crazy?” asked Walter.

“No,” replied Jack Bowen, “but I am, to be playing with them. Sixty thousand is less than a month’s income to either Ken or Dick. They’ve both got so much that there’s no thrill for them unless the stakes are up in five figures. Old Spears coaxed me into the game and I was scared stiff when I learned what they were playing for.

“But I’ve had good luck right from the start and I’m pretty well ahead. If I weren’t, I’d have quit long ago. And they know better than to suggest one of those cold hands to me.”

Walter himself had won over three hundred on this particular evening, his debtor being Hart. He hoped there would be a check waiting for him the next weekend. But there wasn’t.

The four were pretty good golfers, one of them occasionally breaking eighty while the average was around eighty-five. Walter considered himself plunging when he agreed to a ten-dollar Nassau. The other three always had quantities of side bets besides the ones laid extemporaneously as the play progressed.

For example, there was an afternoon when they were at the National and Hart and Parker were battling each other for a thousand dollars a hole and a Nassau of five thousand. The two were even on the eighteenth green. Parker left with a four-foot putt and Hart with a six-footer for a par five.

Hart sank his six-footer.

“That means a wasted afternoon for both of us,” remarked Parker.

“Why?” said Hart.

“You’ll concede me this putt, won’t you?”

“I’ll not only not concede it, but I’ll bet you five thousand you don’t sink it.”

Parker took the bet and missed the putt, which meant sixteen thousand dollars.

One Sunday morning, Walter got cocky and raised his limit to a hundred dollars for the Nassau. He went off his game and lost three hundred, the beneficiary being Dick Parker.

That night he mailed a check to Parker and it was duly endorsed, cashed and canceled. But no check had come to Walter for his winnings. He couldn’t mention it to Jack because Jack owed him over two hundred.

The four golfers lunched together nearly every Saturday and Sunday. And they and their wives dined together Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays before opening four new decks.

Walter knew that Parker was a graduate of Harvard and Hart of Yale; also that Mrs. Hart had gone to Vassar and Mrs. Parker to Smith. Yet there was never any talk that would lead one to believe the talkers had so much as matriculated in the sub-primary.

The English language was maimed and bruised; the men apparently had never read anything but the market reports and the women had concentrated on J. S. Fletcher and Sidney Lenz. When no one was relating a suggestive story, the conversation dealt with the future of General Motors and Sinclair Oil, things that had happened that day or last night at golf or bridge, and the quality and price of whatever beverages were being served.

Everybody excepting the Finches had made the acquaintance of an honest bootlegger who had access to some mysterious and never-to-be-exhausted supply of antediluvian Scotch, champagne and gin. You had to pay high, but wasn’t it worth it? Just taste that!

Walter, riding in on the train with Jack Bowen, said: “Did these people really get college degrees?”

“Sure.”

“And how?” asked Walter.

“The faculty was sick of them,” said Bowen.

Jack admitted freely that neither Hart nor Parker was an intellectual giant, but he had a tremendous admiration for their courage, their willingness to risk, against odds, amounts that would seem like fortunes to most men, and the unruffled manner in which they took their losses.

“Why, last summer I sat in a no-limit poker game with Ken and Dick and Alex Spears and Bob Morton. Spears opened a pot for ten thousand. Ken stayed with a pair of kings. Spears drew one card and Ken took three, but didn’t help his pair. Then Spears bet two hundred thousand dollars. And Ken called him! Spears had two jacks, an ace, a king and an eight-spot. Ken’s hunch had been right and his kings won.”

“Did Spears pay him?”

“Well, if he didn’t, he will. They keep track and settle later on.”

“How much later on?”

“I don’t know,” said Bowen. “Nobody ever worries about not getting paid. They’re all good for it.”

“How do you stand with them?”

“Me? I’m around seventy thousand to the good. That covers three years.”

“Have you ever got any of it?”

“No, not yet. But I’m not worrying. By the way, Dick Parker thinks you’re a queer guy, sending him that three hundred the day after you lost it.”

“He cashed the check.”

“Why wouldn’t he? But he wondered why you were in such a hurry. He said he’d trust any friend of mine.”

Walter and Marion decided they must give a party at the club to repay some of their playmates’ hospitality.

“I suppose we’ve got to,” said Walter. “But we certainly can’t afford it. We haven’t saved a dime all summer. If⁠—”

“If what?” demanded Marion.

“If Jack and Hart and Parker would come across with what they owe me for bridge and golf⁠—”

“How much do they owe you?”

“Just under two thousand dollars.”

“Heavens! You must have been playing for big stakes!”

“Big stakes for me; chicken feed for them.”

“Well,” said Marion, “I may as well make a confession to you. I’ve played bridge for five and ten cents a point, and I’ve won nearly eight hundred dollars.”

“Where is it?”

“I haven’t got it yet.”

“Of course,” said Walter after a pause, “these people are perfectly good. Jack swears to that. They’ll pay us, probably, before we move back to town. What we want to do now is gamble conservatively and hold on to what we’ve got.”

“Or rather,” said Marion, “what we haven’t got. As far as I’m concerned, I could live comfortably without ever seeing another pack of cards.”

“Well, we’ll give the party and charge it and maybe by the time we get the bill our pals will have liquidated.”

But before the dinner at the club had been in progress three minutes, this dream was shattered by a long, argumentative, mathematical conversation between Parker and Hart, both of them slightly squiffy on Walter’s cocktails, made of gin so young that it didn’t even have a name or a birth certificate.

“This is our last weekend, Ken,” said Parker. “You’ve only got tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night to get even with me on the season.”

“What do you figure I owe you?”

“This season or altogether?”

“Just this season.”

“I make it $180,000.”

“Well,” said Hart, “you’re $45,000 off. It’s really only $135,000.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said Parker, “but I’ll split the difference with you and call it $157.500.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Marion. “Don’t they keep any record?”

“Just in their heads,” said Mrs. Hart.

“All right,” said Hart. “Make it $157,500, and that’s giving you all the best of it. You must have forgot the $25,000 you laid me on the Harvard crew against Yale. Anyway, making you a present of the $45,000 or $25,000 or $22,500 or whatever it is, you still owe me $240,000.”

“What do you mean, I owe you!”

“I mean since we began betting, in 1911.”

“You know that ain’t right. You owe me, not I owe you. And what you owe me is about $200,000 even. If that ain’t so, when you asked me what I figured you owed me and I asked you if you meant this season or altogether, why didn’t you speak up and say that you naturally meant just this season, because altogether I owed you, not you owed me?”

“I didn’t put it that way.”

“What way?”

“Whatever way you claim I put it.”

“Do you still claim I owe you $240,000?”

“I certainly do!”

“Well, let’s go back and I’ll show you how wrong you are. In 1911, I bet you $100,000 Yale wouldn’t score in the Harvard game, and they didn’t.”

“Neither did Harvard.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it. But that was the first bet we made, and that starts me off $100,000 to the good.”

“You don’t have to go back that far. We figured it up in the fall of 1918 and agreed that you then owed me $185,000.”

“And in 1919, I beat you for $225,000 at golf and cards and $65,000 on the World’s Series.”

“Do you mean to say you’re going to hold me to a bet on a crooked series?”

“All right. We’ll throw out the $65,000. That still leaves you $40,000 to the bad going into the year 1920.”

“Yes, and in 1920 I won $150,000 from you in golf and bridge and $40,000 that Lowden wouldn’t be nominated.”

“But you bet me $80,000 that Brooklyn would beat Cleveland and you lost that.”

“That still gives me a margin of $70,000 at the start of 1921.”

“Wait a minute!” said Parker. “If I remember right, we totaled it up two years ago and you owed me just an even $20,000. And that was before I bet you $150,000 on Tooney against Dempsey. So I was $170,000 up on you a year ago last spring, but that summer you cut it down to $42,500 and with the $157,500 I win from you this year, that makes it $200,000, just as I said in the first place.”

“I suppose you don’t count the $300,000 you bet me on the Argentines.”

“When did I bet you that?”

“In August. You were tight, but Jack will bear witness you made the bet and you said next morning that it went. Ain’t I right, Jack?”

“He bet you,” said Jack, “but I thought it was $150,000 instead of $300,000.”

“I’ll concede it,” said Parker, “and if it’s true, that makes us so close to even that we might as well start all over.”

“Even my foot!” objected Hart. “You either owe me $240,000⁠—”

“Or else,” interrupted Parker, “you owe me $200,000. Now which is it?”

“Well, there’s no use discussing it tonight. Let’s get down to business.”

As they rose from the table Walter called Jack Bowen aside.

“Does this mean that they have been making those bets for seventeen years and no money has ever changed hands?”

“I’m afraid it does,” said Jack.

“Well,” said Walter, “before this night is over, I’m going to be even with everybody.”

When he and Marion had reached their home at three o’clock and Marion had reported a loss, on the night’s play, of only two dollars, Walter triumphantly told her how he not only had wiped out the debt the others owed to her and to himself, but had actually finished $8,400 to the good.

“You see,” he explained, “after listening to that argument, I decided to do a little plunging of my own. I announced I was playing for five dollars a point and I lost twenty-eight hundred. Then I said to Parker, ‘If you’ll give me 2 to 1, or $5,600 against $2,800, I’ll bet you I can cut a spade.’ He took me and I cut a diamond.

“Then I bet Hart $5,600 to $2,800 that he couldn’t cut a spade, and he did. The first $2,800, that I lost at bridge, squared their previous indebtedness. And the $8,400 I lost afterwards is clear profit.”

Marion didn’t quite understand. In fact, she was too sleepy to try.