Gold Comes in Bricks by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) Page A

slipped a dollar into her palm. “That’s the extent of my donation, kid,” I said, “and it’s lucky. Play it on the double O.”
    She put it on the double O and won straight up.
    “Let it ride,” I said.
    “You’re crazy.”
    I shrugged my shoulders, and she raked down all but live dollars of her winnings.
    I’ll never know what made me say that about the double O.I was skating on thin ice, sticking my neck out. It was just a crazy hunch I had, but one of those things a man gets sometimes when he feels hot all over, as though he had clairvoyant powers. I was absolutely certain that it was going to come double O again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just knew. That was all.
    The ball rattled around the wheel and finally came to rest in one of the pockets.
    I heard Esther Clarde gasp, and looked over just to make certain where the ball had stopped.
    It was in number seven.
    “You see,” she said, “you’d have made me lose.”
    I laughed. “You’re still playing on velvet.”
    She said, “Well, maybe the seven will repeat,” and played it for two bucks. It repeated. After that, I quit feeling lucky, and stuck around. Esther ran her roll up to about five hundred bucks, and then cashed in.
    There was a brunette hanging around the tables, a slinky girl with snake hips, nice bare shoulders, and eyes that were filled with romance like a dark, warm night on a tropical beach. She and the blonde knew each other, and after Esther had cashed in I saw them swapping signals. Later they were whispering together.
    Shortly afterward the brunette started making a play for Arthur Parker, and it was a play. She was asking his advice, getting her bare shoulder within an inch of his lips as she leaned across him to place a bet at the far end of the board, looking up at him with a smile.
    I took a look at the expression on Parker’s face and knew I was stuck with the blonde.
    “All right,” I said to Esther Clarde, “you win. Where do
    we go?”
    “I’ll sneak out to the cloakroom first,” she said. “I’ll be waiting. Don’t try any funny stuff. In case you’re interested, there isn’t any back way out.”
    “Why should I want to get away from a good-looking girl like you?”
    She laughed, and then after a moment said softly, “Well, why should you?”
    I stuck around long enough to put a few bets on the roulette table. I couldn’t lay off the double O. I never even got a smell. Parker was all wrapped up with the brunette. Once he gave a guilty start and started looking around. I heard the brunette say something about the restroom, then slip a bare arm around his shoulder and whisper in his ear. He laughed.
    I went out to the cloakroom. Esther Clarde was waitings for me. “Got a car?” she asked. “Or do we ride in taxis?”
    “Taxis,” I said.
    “All right, let’s go.”
    “Any particular place?”
    “I think I’ll go to your apartment.”
    “I’d rather go to yours.”
    She looked at me for a minute, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Why not?”
    “Your friend, Mr. Parker, won’t show up, will he?”
    “My friend, Mr. Parker,” she said grimly, “is taken care of for the evening, thank you.”
    She gave the address of her apartment to the cab driver. It took about ten minutes to get there. It was her apartment, all right. Her name was on the bell marker, and she used her key and went up. Well, after all, as she’d said, why not? I knew where she worked. I could have found out all about her. The newspapers had carried her picture and an interview with her describing the man who had asked her the questions about Ringold. She had nothing to fear from me.
    On the other hand, I was in it, right up to my necktie. It wasn’t a bad apartment. One look told me she didn’t keep it from the profits she made out of running the cigar stand at a second-rate hotel.
    She slipped off her coat, told me to sit down, brought out cigarettes, asked me if I wanted some Scotch, and sat down on the sofa beside