Part 10 (1/2)

He walked away quite thoughtfully. Harvey Willis, who had left Filmore on account of his fine sense of honor--he had embezzled to pay a poker debt--seemed suddenly to fit an empty and an aching void.

CHAPTER VIII

A THIRD ARM TO THE OLD-FAs.h.i.+ONED DOUBLE CROSS

”The fresh Hick!” observed Mr. Pickins savagely. ”I'd like to hand him a bunch of knuckles.”

Mr. Pickins was not now in character, but was clad in quite ordinary good clothes; his prominent cheek-bones, however, had become two white spots in the midst of an angrily red countenance.

”I don't know as I blame him so much,” said Phelps. ”The trouble is we sized him for about the intelligence of a louse. Anybody who would stand for your Hoop-pole County line of talk wouldn't need such a careful frame-up to make him lay down his money.”

”There's something to that,” agreed Short-Card Larry. ”I always did say your work was too strong, Pick.”

”There ain't another man in the crowd can play as good a Rube,”

protested Mr. Pickins, touched deeply upon the matter of his art. ”I don't know how many thousands we've cleaned up on that outfit of mine.”

”Ye-e-es, but this Wallingford person called the turn,” insisted Phelps. ”The only times we ever made it stick was on the kind of farmers that work in eleven-story office buildings. You can fool a man with a stuffed dog, but you can't fool a dog with it; and you couldn't fool Yap Wallingford with a counterfeit yap.”

”Well,” announced Mr. Pickins, with emphatic finality, ”you may have my part of him. I'm willing to let him go right back to Oskaloosa, or Oshkosh, or wherever it is.”

”Not me,” declared Phelps. ”I want to get him just on general principles. He's handed me too much flossy talk. You know the last thing he had the nerve to say? He invited us up to play stud poker with him.”

”Why don't you?” asked Pickins.

”Ask Larry,” said Phelps with a laugh, whereat Larry merely swore.

Badger Billy, who had been silently listening with his eyes half closed, was possessed of a sudden inventive gift.

”Yes, why don't you?” he repeated. ”If I read this village cut-up right, and I think I do, he'll take a sporting chance. Get him over to the Forty-second Street dump on a proposition to play two-handed stud with Harry there, then pull off a phoney pinch for gambling.”

”No chance,” returned Phelps. ”He'd be on to that game; it's a dead one, too.”

”Not if you work it this way,” insisted Billy, in whom the creative spirit was still strong. ”Tell him that we're all sore at Harry, here; that Harry threw the gang last night and got me put away. I'll have McDermott take me down and lock me up on suspicion for a couple of hours, so you can bring him down and show me to him. Tell him you've found a way to get square. Harry's supposed to have a grouch about that stud poker taunt and wants to play Wallingford two-handed, five thousand a side. Tell him to go into this game, and that just when they have the money and the cards on the table, you'll pull off a phoney pinch and have your fake officer take the money and cards for evidence, then you'll split up with him.”

Billy paused and looked around with a triumphant eye. It was a long, long speech for the Badger, and a vivid bit of creative work of which he felt justly proud.

”Fine!” observed Larry in deep sarcasm. ”Then I suppose we give him the blackjack and take it all away from him?”

”No, you mutt,” returned Billy, having waited for this objection so as to bring out the clever part of his scheme as a climax. ”Just as we have Dan pull off the pinch, in jumps Sprig Foles and pinches Dan for impersonating an officer. Then Sprig cops the money and the cards for evidence, while we all make a get-away.”

A long and thoughtful silence followed the exposition of this great scheme of Billy's. It was Phelps who spoke first.

”There's one thing about it,” he admitted: ”it's a new one.”

”Grandest little double cross that was ever pulled over,” announced Billy in the pride of authors.h.i.+p.

It was a matter of satisfaction, to say nothing of surprise, to Short-Card Larry to note the readiness, even the alacrity, with which young Wallingford fell into the trap. Would he accept the traitorous Mr. Phelps' challenge if guaranteed that he would win? He would! There was nothing young Wallingford detested so much as a traitor.

Moreover, he had a grouch at Mr. Phelps himself.

Short-Card Larry had expected to argue more than this, and, having argument still lying heavily upon his lungs, must rid himself of it.