No Comebacks (35 page)

'I'll make it up to five pounds, Father,' said Judge Comyn. 'There. Four ladies.'

O'Connor whistled. The priest looked at the spread-out queens and then at his own hand.

'Are not kings above queens?' he asked in puzzlement.

'They are if you have four of them,' said the judge.

The priest laid his cards on the table.

'But I do,' he said. And he did. 'Lord save us,' he breathed, 'but I thought all was lost. I thought you must have the royal thing there.'

They cleared the cards and matches away as they rolled into Tralee. O'Connor got his cards back. The judge put the broken matches in the ashtray. O'Connor counted out twelve single pound notes from his pocket and handed them over to the priest.

'God bless you, my son,' said the priest.

Judge Comyn regretfully got out his cheque book. 'Fifty pounds exactly, I believe, Father,' he said.

'If you say so,' said the priest, 'sure and I have forgotten what we even started with.'

'I assure you I owe the orphanage fifty pounds,' said the judge. He prepared to write. 'You said the Dingle Orphanage? Is that what I should write?'

The priest appeared perplexed.

'You know, I do not believe they even have a bank account, so small is the place,' said the Father.

'Then I had better make it out to you personally,' said the judge, waiting for the name.

'But I do not have a bank account myself,' said the priest in bewilderment. 'I have never handled money.'

'There is a way round it,' said the judge urbanely. He wrote rapidly, tore out the cheque and offered it to the priest. 'This is made payable to bearer. The Bank of Ireland in Tralee will cash it and we are just in time. They close in thirty minutes.'

'You mean they will give me money at the bank for this?' asked the priest, holding the cheque carefully.

'Certainly,' said the judge, 'but be careful not to lose it. It is payable to the bearer, so anyone in possession of it would be able to cash it. Well now, O'Connor, Father, it has been a most interesting, albeit expensive trip. I must wish you good day.'

'And for me,' said O'Connor sadly. 'The Lord must have been dealing you the cards, Father. I've seldom seen such a hand. It'll be a lesson to me. No more playing cards on trains, least of all with the Church.'

'And I'll see the money is in the most deserving of orphanages before the sun sets,' said the priest.

They parted on Tralee station platform and Judge Comyn proceeded to his hotel. He wished for an early night before the start of the court hearings on the morrow.

The first two cases of the morning were very straightforward, being pleas of guilty for minor offences and he awarded fines in both cases. The empanelled jurors of Tralee sat in enforced idleness.

Judge Comyn had his head bowed over his papers when the third defendant was called. Only the top of his judge's wig was visible to the court below.

'Put up Ronan Quirk O'Connor,' boomed the clerk to the court.

There was a scuffling of steps. The judge went on writing.

'You are Ronan Quirk O'Connor?' asked the clerk of the new defendant.

'I am,' said the voice.

'Ronan Quirk O'Connor,' said the clerk, 'you are charged with cheating at cards, contrary to Section 17 of the Gaming Act of 1845. In that you, Ronan Quirk O'Connor, on the 13th day of May of this year, in the County of Kerry, by fraud or unlawful device or ill-practice in playing at, or with, cards, won a sum of money from one Lurgan Keane to yourself. And thereby obtained the said sum of money from the said Lurgan Keane by false pretences. How say you to the charge? Guilty or not guilty?'

During this recitation Judge Comyn laid down his pen with unusual care, stared for a few more seconds at his papers as if wishing he could conduct the entire trial in this manner, and finally raised his eyes.

The wispy little man with the spaniel eyes stared back at him across the court in dumb amazement. Judge Comyn stared at the defendant in equal horror.

'Not guilty,' whispered O'Connor.

'One moment,' said the judge. The court sat in silence, staring at him as he sat impassive on his bench. Behind the mask of his face, his thoughts were in a turmoil. He could have stopped the case at once, claiming that he had an acquaintance with the defendant.

Then the thought occurred to him that this would have meant a retrial, since the defendant had now been formally charged, with all the extra costs to the taxpayer involved in that procedure. It came down, he told himself, to one question: could he trust himself to conduct the court fairly and well, and to give a true and fair summing up to the jury? He decided that he could.

'Swear in the jury, if you please,' he said.

This the clerk did, then inquired of O'Connor if he had legal representation. O'Connor said he did not, and wished to conduct his own defence. Judge Comyn swore to himself. Fairness would now demand that he bend over backwards to take the defendant's part against prosecuting counsel.

This gentleman now rose to present the facts which, he said, were simple enough. On 13 May last, a grocer from Tralee, one Lurgan Keane, had boarded the Dublin to Tralee train in Dublin to return home. He happened perchance to be carrying a quantity of cash upon his person, to wit, £71.

During the course of the journey he had entered into a game of chance with the defendant and another party, using a pack of cards produced by the defendant. So remarkable had been the losses he had incurred that he became suspicious. At Farranfore, one stop before Tralee, he had descended from the train on an excuse, approached a servant of the railway company and asked that the police at Tralee be present upon the platform.

His first witness was a police sergeant of the Tralee force, a large, solid man who gave evidence of arrest. He swore that, acting on information received, he had been present at Tralee station on 13 May last, when the Dublin train rolled in. There he had been approached by a man he later knew to be Mr Lurgan Keane, who had pointed out to him the defendant.

He had asked the defendant to accompany him to Tralee police station, which the man did. There he was required to turn out his pockets. Among the contents was a pack of cards which Mr Keane identified as those that had been used in a game of poker upon the train.

These, he said, had been sent to Dublin for examination and upon receipt of the report from Dublin the accused O'Connor had been charged with the offence.

So far, so clear. The next witness was from the Fraud Squad of the Garda in Dublin. He had evidently been on the train of yesterday, mused the judge, but travelling third class.

The detective constable swore that upon close examination the deck of cards had been seen to be a marked deck. The prosecuting counsel held up a deck of cards and the detective identified it by his own mark. The deck was passed to him. In what way were the cards marked, inquired counsel.

'In two manners, my lord,' the detective told the judge. 'By what is called "shading" and "trimming". Each of the four suits is indicated on the back of the cards by trimming the edges at different places, on each end of the card so that it does not matter which way up the card is held. In the trimming, the white border between the edge of the pattern and the edge of the card is caused to vary in width. This variation, though very slight, can be observed from across the table, thus indicating to the cheat what suits his opponent is holding. If that is clear?'

'A model of lucidity,' said Judge Comyn, staring at O'Connor.

'The high cards, from ace down to ten, were distinguished from each other by shading, that is, using a chemical preparation to cause slight darkening or lightening of tiny areas of the pattern on the backs of the cards. The areas so affected are extremely small, sometimes no larger than the tip of one whorl in the complex pattern. But enough to be spotted by the card-sharp from across the table, because he knows exactly what he is looking for.'

'Would it be necessary for the cardsharp to deal dishonestly as well?' asked counsel. He was aware the jury was riveted. It made such a change from stealing horses.

'A crooked deal might be included,' conceded the detective from the Fraud Squad, 'but it would not be necessary.'

'Would it be possible to win against such a player?' asked counsel.

'Quite impossible, sir,' the witness told the bench. 'The cardsharp would simply decline to wager when he knew his opponent had a better hand, and place high bets when he knew his own was better.'

'No further questions,' said counsel. For the second time O'Connor declined to cross-examine.

'You have the right to ask the witness any question you may wish, concerning his evidence,' Judge Comyn told the accused.

'Thank you, my lord,' said O'Connor, but kept his peace.

Counsel's third, last and star witness was the Tralee grocer, Lurgan Keane, who entered the witness box as a bull to the arena and glared at O'Connor.

Prompted by the prosecuting counsel, he told his story. He had concluded a business deal in Dublin that day, which accounted for the large amount of cash he had been carrying. In the train, he had been inveigled into a game of poker, at which he thought he was a skilled player, and before Farranfore had been relieved of £62. He had become suspicious because, however promising the hand he held, he had always been bettered by another and had lost money.

At Farranfore he had descended from the train, convinced he had been cheated, and had asked for the police to be present at Tralee.

'And I was right,' he roared to the jury, 'your man was playing with marked cards.'

The twelve good men and true nodded solemnly.

This time O'Connor rose, looking sadder than ever and as harmless as a calf in the byre, to cross-examine. Mr Keane glowered at him.

'You say that I produced the pack of cards?' he asked sorrowfully.

'You did,' said Keane.

'In what manner?' asked O'Connor.

Keane looked puzzled. 'From your pocket,' he said.

'Yes,' agreed O'Connor, 'from my pocket. But what did I do with the cards?'

Keane thought for a moment. 'You began to play patience,' he said.

Judge Comyn, who had almost begun to believe in the possibility of the law of remarkable coincidence, got that sinking feeling again.

'And did I speak first to you,' asked the accused, 'or did you speak first to me?'

The burly grocer looked crestfallen. 'I spoke to you,' he said, then turning to the jury he added, 'but your man was playing so badly I could not help it. There were blacks on reds and reds on blacks that he couldn't see, so I pointed a couple out to him.'

'But when it came to the poker,' persisted O'Connor, 'did I suggest a friendly game of poker or did you?'

'You did,' said Keane heatedly, 'and you suggested we make it interesting with a little wagering. Wagering indeed. Sixty-two pounds is a lot of money,'

The jury nodded again. It was indeed. Enough to keep a working man for almost a year.

'I put it to you,' said O'Connor to Keane, 'that it was
you
who suggested the poker, and
you
who proposed the wager. Before that we were playing with matchsticks?'

The grocer thought hard. The honesty shone from his face. Something stirred in his memory. He would not lie.

'It may have been me,' he conceded, then a new thought came to him. He turned to the jury. 'But isn't that the whole skill of it? Isn't that just what the cardsharp does? He
inveigles
his victim into a game.'

He was obviously in love with the word 'inveigle' which the judge thought was new to his vocabulary. The jurymen nodded. Quite obviously they too would hate to be inveigled.

'One last point,' said O'Connor sadly, 'when we settled up, how much did you pay me?'

'Sixty-two pounds,' said Keane angrily. 'Hard-earned money.'

'No,' said O'Connor from the dock, 'how much did you lose to
me,
personally.'

The grocer from Tralee thought hard. His face dropped. 'Not to you,' he said. 'Nothing. It was the farmer who won.'

'And did I win from him?' asked O'Connor, by now looking on the edge of tears.

'No,' said the witness. 'You lost about eight pounds.'

'No further questions,' said O'Connor.

Mr Keane was about to step down when the judge's voice recalled him. 'One moment, Mr Keane. You say "the farmer won"? Who exactly was this farmer?'

'The other man in the compartment, my lord. He was a farmer from Wexford. Not a good player, but he had the devil's own luck.'

'Did you manage to get his name?' asked Judge Comyn.

Mr Keane looked perplexed. 'I did not,' he said. 'It was the accused who had the cards. He was trying to cheat me all right.'

The prosecution case ended and O'Connor took the stand on his own behalf. He was sworn in. His story was as simple as it was plaintive. He bought and sold horses for a living; there was no crime in that. He enjoyed a friendly game of cards, but was no dab hand at it. A week before the train journey of 13 May he had been having a quiet stout in a Dublin public house when he felt a hard lump on the wooden pew near his thigh.