Part 54 (1/2)
As they sat at supper, with this big bottle before them, Lionel said,
”It will be a bad thing for me if young Miles doesn't show up to-night.”
”I should have thought it would have been an excellent thing for you if Miles had never entered this club,” his companion observed.
”That's true,” said Lionel, rather gloomily. ”But my only chance now is to get some of my property back, and I can only get it back from him.
You fellows are no use to me--not if I were winning all along the line.”
”Look here, Moore,” said the young man, in a more serious tone, ”you may say it's none of my business; but the way you and that fellow Miles have been going on is perfectly awful. If the committee should hear about it, there will be a row, and no mistake!”
”My dear boy,” Lionel protested, as he pushed the unnecessary bottle to his neighbor, ”the committee have nothing to do with understandings that are settled outside the club. You don't see Miles or me handing checks for 200 or 300 across the table. How can the committee expel you for holding up three fingers or nodding your head?”
”Well, then, you'll excuse me saying it, but he's a young a.s.s, to gamble in that fas.h.i.+on,” Johnny remarked, bluntly. ”What fun does he get out of it? And it's quite a new thing with him--that's the odd business. I know a man who was at Merton with him; and certainly Miles got into a devil of a sc.r.a.pe--which cut short his career there; but it had nothing to do with gambling. He never was that way inclined at all; it's a new development, since he joined this club. Well, I suppose he can do what he likes. The heir to a baronetcy and such a place as Petmansworth can get just as much as he wants from the Jews.”
”My good man, he doesn't need to go to the Jews,” said Lionel, with grim irony.
”Where does he get all that money from? Do you think his father is fool enough to encourage him in such extravagance? I should hope not! At the same time I wish I had a father tarred with something of that same brush.”
”Where does he get all the money from? So far he has got it from me,”
Lionel said, with a bit of a shrug. ”He doesn't need to go to his father, or to the Jews either, when he can plunder me. And such a run of luck as he has had is simply astounding--”
”It isn't luck at all,” the other interrupted. ”It's your play. You play too bold a game--too bold when you know he is going to play a bolder.
Twice running he caught you last night bluffing on no hand at all; and I don't know what fabulous stakes were up--with your nods and signs. It's no use your trying to bluff that fellow. He won't be bluffed.”
”The thing is as broad as it's long, man,” Lionel said, impatiently. ”If he is determined to see me every time, he must be caught when I have a good hand--it stands to reason. The only thing is that my luck has been so confoundedly bad of late.”
”Yes; and when the luck's against you, you go betting on no hands at all--with Miles waiting for you!” his companion exclaimed. ”All right; every man must play the game his own way. You don't seem to have found it profitable so far.”
”Profitable!” Lionel said, with a dark look in his eyes. ”I can tell you I am in a tight corner, and I reckoned on to-night to settle it one way or the other--not with you fellows, I can't get anything worth while out of you, but with Miles. And now he's gone away home with--”
He stopped in time; ladies' names are not mentioned in clubs--at least, not in such clubs as the Garden.
”The odd thing is,” continued Johnny, as he lit a cigarette, and definitely refused to have any more of the wine, ”the extremely odd thing is that he doesn't seem to care to win from the rest of us. He lets us share our modest little pots as if they weren't worth looking at. It's you he goes for, invariably.”
”And he's gone for me to some purpose,” Lionel said, morosely. ”I'm just about broke--broke five or six times over, if it comes to that--and by that pennyworth of yellow ribbon!”
”You needn't call him names,” said Johnny, as he lay back in his chair.
”Upon my soul I think Miles is somebody in disguise--a priest--an Inquisitor--somebody with a mission--to punish the sin of gambling. What does he care about the game? Nothing--I'll swear it! He's only watching for you. He's an avenger. He has been sent by some superior power--”
”Then it must have been by the devil,” said Lionel, with a sombre expression, ”for he has got the devil's own luck at his back. Wait till I get four of a kind when he is betting on a full hand--and then you'll see his corpse laid out!” This was all he could say just then; for here was the young man himself, who must have come back from the Edgeware Road in a remarkably swift hansom.
Almost directly there was an adjournment to the card-room; and the players took their places.
”I propose we have in the joker,”[2] Lionel called aloud, as the cards were dealt for deal.
[Footnote 2: The joker is a fifty-third card, of any kind of device, which is added to the pack; the player to whom it is dealt can make it any card he chooses. For example, if the other four cards he holds are two queens and two sevens, he can make the joker card a third queen, and thus secure for himself a full hand.]
”I don't see the fun of it,” objected the young man who had been Lionel's companion at the supper-table. ”You never know where you are when the joker is in. What do you say, Miles?”