Dewing won quietly, mostly from the alleged lumbermen.
The statement that nothing particular had occurred is hardly accurate.
There had been one little circumstance of a rather peculiar nature.

Once or twice, when it came Pete's turn to deal, he had fancied that he felt a stir of cold air at the back of his neck; cooler, at least, than the smoke-laden atmosphere of the card room.
On the third recurrence of this phenomenon Pete glanced carelessly at his watch before picking up his hand, and saw in the polished back a tiny reflection from the wall behind him--a small horizontal panel, tilted transomwise, and a peering face.

Pete scanned his hand; when he picked up his watch to restore it to his pocket, the peering face was gone and the panel had closed again.
Boland, sitting beside Johnson, saw nothing of this.

Neither did the lumbermen, though they were advantageously situated on the opposite side of the table.

Pete played on, with every sense on the alert.