The Three Wise Men

In the dusty boomtown of Calent, the marshal, mayor, and judge gather upstairs for their regular poker game, running local government like a private club. Their dry, comic banter exposes a town where law, vice, and habit mingle freely, and where rough justice is delivered with a shrug. When the marshal brings up Peg Nell, a woman with a scandalous past who once promised to reform, the evening shifts from cards to gossip, suspicion, and moral judgment. Calent's history hangs over them: once tolerant of prostitution, the town later drove most of the women out when respectability became fashionable. Peg Nell was allowed to remain and took work at a Greek restaurant, but rumors now suggest she may have slipped back into old ways. The officials summon Kirschberg, a sly local opportunist, and use him as both informant and pawn, letting his oily self-interest deepen the hypocrisy of the scene. Yet after quietly taking his money at cards, they reveal the winnings will be given to Peg, exposing their contradiction: public censure, private compassion. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.