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best of fritz leiber
was fearfully hot under its crust. The crap-table-size hole must pipe up that heat, so that any gambler
taking the Big Dive would fry before he d fallen a furlong and come out less than a cinder in China.
As if his blistered hand weren t bad enough, the Big Mushrooms were all hissing at him again and Mr.
Bones had purpled once more and was opening his melon-size mouth to shout for his bouncers.
Once again a lift of the Big Gambler s hand saved Joe. The whis-pery, gentle voice called, Tell him,
Mr. Bones.
The latter roared towards Joe, No gambler may pick up the dice he or any other gambler has shot. Only
my dice-girl may do that. Rule of the house!
Joe snapped Mr. Bones the barest nod. He said coolly, Rolling a dime less two, and when that still
peewee bet was covered, he shot Phoebe for his point and then fooled around for quite a while, throwing
anything but a five or a seven, until the throbbing in his left hand should fade and all his nerves feel rock-
solid again. There had never been the slightest alteration in the power in his right hand; he felt that
strong as ever, or stronger.
Midway of this interlude, the Big Gambler bowed slightly but respectfully towards Joe, hooding those
unfathomable eye sockets, before turning around to take a long black cigarette from his prettiest and
evilest-looking sporting girl. Courtesy in the smallest matters, Joe thought, another mark of the master
devotee of games of chance. The Big Gambler sure had himself a flash crew, all right, though in idly
looking them over again as he rolled, Joe noted one bummer towards the back who didn t fit in a
raggedly-elegant chap with the elflocked hair and staring eyes and TB-spotted cheeks of a poet.
As he watched the smoke trickling up from under the black slouch hat, he decided that either the lights
across the table had dimmed or else the Big Gambler s complexion was yet a shade darker than he d
thought at first. Or it might even be wild fantasy that the Big Gambler s skin was slowly darkening
tonight, like a meerschaum pipe being smoked a mile a second. That was almost funny to think of
there was enough heat in this place, all right, to darken meerschaum, as Joe knew from sad experience,
but so far as he was aware it was all under the table.
None of Joe s thoughts, either familiar or admiring, about the Big Gambler decreased in the slightest
degree his certainty of the supreme menace of the man hi black and his conviction that it would be death
to touch him. And if any doubts had stirred in Joe s mind, they would have been squelched by the
chilling incident which next occurred.
The Big Gambler had just taken into his arms his prettiest-evilest sporting girl and was running an
aristocratic hand across her haunch with perfect gentility, when the poet chap, green-eyed from jealousy
and lovesickness, came leaping forward like a wildcat and aimed a long gleaming dagger at the black
satin back.
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best of fritz leiber
Joe couldn t see how the blow could miss, but without taking his genteel right hand off the sporting
girl s plush rear end, the Big Gambler shot out his left arm like a steel spring straightening. Joe couldn t
tell whether he stabbed the poet chap in the throat, or judo-chopped him there, or gave bun the Martian
double-finger, or just touched him, but anyhow the fellow stopped as dead as if he d been shot by a
silent elephant gun or an invisible ray pistol and he slammed down on the floor. A couple of darkies
came running up to drag off the body and nobody paid the least attention, such episodes apparently
being taken for granted at The Boneyard.
It gave Joe quite a turn and he almost shot Phoebe before he intended to.
But by now the waves of pain had stopped running up his left arm and his nerves were like metal-
wrapped new guitar strings, so three rolls later he shot a five, making his point, and set in to clean out
the table.
He rolled nine successive naturals, seven sevens and two elevens, pyramiding his first wager of a single
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