Knock Three-One-Two by Fredric Brown

Ray Fleck still stood at the bar in Jick's, where Hoff and his partner had left him, nursing a drink and moodily making wet circles on the bar with the bottom of his glass. Twice Jick, who wasn't very busy, had said something to him but he'd answered briefly and without looking up so Jick knew he hadn't wanted to talk and had moved along the bar to someone else.

He was thinking about the poker game that would be starting soon now and he was blowing hot and cold on the idea of trying to get into it. There was still one chance that he could: the diamond ring. It was a strictly cash game, no checks cashed and no borrowing. But he might be able to make an exception to the borrowing rule if he had security like that to offer. Sure, he could. He remembered now one night when Luke Evarts had gone broke and had managed to keep going a while by borrowing thirty-five bucks from Doc Corwin, putting up as security an almost new and quite expensive wrist watch. And the diamond ring, damn it, _looked_ good, looked like it ought to be worth several hundred dollars, and none of the boys was a jeweler or carried a magnifying glass. One of them might be willing to lend him a hundred on it, or at least fifty.