“I dealt, didn’t I?” the soldier said. He looked at his cards, shook his head. “What do you figure I had in mind? I pass.”

The policeman, sitting to the dealer’s left-East to his South-nodded, closed his eyes, opened them, and announced: “One club.”

“ Pass,” said the doctor.

The priest said, “You bid a club, partner?” And, without waiting for a response, “One heart.”

The soldier passed. You could tell he was a soldier, as he wore the dress uniform of a brigadier general in the United States Army.

“ A spade,” the policeman said. He too was in uniform, down to the revolver on his hip and the handcuffs hanging from his belt.

The doctor, wearing green scrubs, looked as though he might have just emerged from the operating room. He was silent, looking off into the middle distance, until the priest stared at him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I pass.”

“ Two spades,” said the priest, with a tug at his Roman collar.

“ Pass,” said the soldier.

“ Four spades,” the policeman said, and glanced around the table as if to confirm that the bidding was over. The doctor and priest and soldier dutifully passed in turn. The doctor studied his cards, frowned, and led the nine of hearts. The priest laid down his cards-four to the king in the trump suit, five hearts to the ace-jack-and sat back in his chair. The policeman won the trick with the ace of hearts from dummy and set about drawing trump.

Play was rapid and virtually silent. A fire crackled on the hearth, and the clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour. Smoke drifted to the high ceiling-from the doctor’s cigar, the priest’s cigarette, the soldier’s stubby briar pipe. Books, many of them bound in full leather, filled the shelves on either side of the fireplace, and one lay open in the lap of the room’s only other occupant, the old man who sat by the fire. He had been sitting there when the four began their card game, the book open, his eyes closed, and he was there still.