Murder & the Married Virgin by Brett Halliday

it aside. “Here—you can have mine,” he said, and poured a cup of coffee.
    “I’ll have to take you in hand, Red,” Lana said, “and teach you the wonders of the French Quarter.”
    “Let’s start with the game room,” he suggested.
    Lana finished both the drinks, drank half a cup of coffee, and got up. Shayne paid the bill and she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, pressed it hard, and led him to the rear of the dining-room and on a circuitous route not easily discovered by the uninitiated, to the gaming room.
    A tall man with wide shoulders bulging his dinner coat smiled and said, “Good evening, Miss Moore.”
    The room evidenced the same discreet good taste which characterized the rest of the Laurel Club. There was a crap table and a roulette wheel, three green baize card tables and a 4-5-6 game was in progress at the table nearest the door. All the games were getting a fair play from a quiet and well-mannered group of men and a few women.
    Lana stopped Shayne by squeezing his arm and holding him back just inside the door. “You don’t have to play heavy,” she said in a low, husky voice. “Just enough to keep me in right.”
    Shayne grinned at her upturned face.
    “If I’ve got money to throw away, why not throw it at you instead of the wolves? Is that it, Lana?”
    She shrugged and smiled. “Figure it out any way you want to.”
    He said, “By God, Lana, you’re a wonder,” and meant it. “Let’s try our luck at four-five-six.”
    He drew her to the table and changed a fifty-dollar bill into chips, divided them into two piles and pushed one toward her. Lana pressed close to him and moved the chips back into one pile. “I never gamble that way, darling,” she whispered.
    A fat man had the bank. A couple of hundred dollars in chips were stacked in front of him and he was perspiring freely. Shayne took ten of it and watched while the rest of the chips were covered. The fat man threw a pair of fives and a trey, then passed the three dice to the first player on his left who had faded part of the money.
    Shayne was next in line. His first throw was a natural: a 4-5-6 which brought the dice and the bank to him after the play was ended. He added another hundred to the sixty and said to Lana, “I have been hot in this game a couple of times.”
    When the dice came to him he rattled them in the cup while the houseman called the size of the bank and checked the bets against him. When he was completely faded, Shayne rolled the dice against the backboard and crapped out with a pair and an ace,
    Shayne grimaced at Lana and got two more hundreds from his wallet. He rattled the dice gently while the other players covered his money, then bounced them out again. He got a five for his point, and passed the dice on.
    By the time the dice returned to him, his bank had increased to three hundred and twenty dollars. He waited impassively until it was all faded, then rolled a six with a pair of deuces—a natural.
    As he watched the chips come in he heard a smooth and softly modulated voice say to Lana “Good evening, Miss Moore. Is everything all right?”
    The voice was so distinctive that Shayne instantly recognized it as the one that had offered to sell him the emerald necklace over the telephone. He turned his head enough to see the speaker as Lana replied, “Everything is fine, Mr. Trueman.”
    The proprietor of the Laurel Club was a tall, spare man with sharp features and elongated eyes that drooped slightly at the outer corners. Shayne judged him to be in his early forties, and he looked more like a successful lawyer than a gambler. He nodded pleasantly to Lana and passed on to another table.
    With six hundred and forty dollars in front of him, Shayne got only a little more than four hundred of it faded. He watched Dan Trueman’s spare frame going out of the room through a side door as he rolled the dice. They stopped on a straight 4-5-6.
    He waited until his winnings were gathered in, then calmly