Part 5 (1/2)

Never was victory more certain than at the present time.

”If I win,” at last he said with great earnestness, ”you will swear to leave me--you will leave _us_ alone?”

Challoner nodded.

Hargraves seized his gla.s.s and extended it to bind the bargain.

Challoner seized his, but found it empty. He left his seat and came back with it filled.

”It's a go!” he said, and pressed a b.u.t.ton.

With the same sense of responsibility upon him, Pemmican responded; and on Challoner's order he went out and returned with ten new packs of cards, tossing them on the table with their wrappers unbroken.

”Cold hands,” announced Challoner, ”five hundred a throw.”

Hargraves pulled forth his roll of bills and placed it on the table; then, placing a hand on the arm of Challoner, he exclaimed vehemently, so that the other should not forget it:--

”It's understood now, Challoner, that if I win you're to leave us alone--sure?”

Pemmican left the room and closed the door behind him. Challoner smiled across the table, and a new, strange expression crossed his features that Hargraves did not, could not understand.

”Sure,” repeated Challoner, placing the decanter upon the table. Then they started in to play.

Twenty minutes later Pemmican rushed pell-mell into Room A.

”There's a big row on,” he said to himself; ”a row over a lady and a game of cards.”

And so it proved.

There was a row on between the men who occupied Room A, and but for the isolation of the room it was a row that might well have roused the house.

”You've lost, I tell you!” one of the men exclaimed; the other laughed boisterously, defiantly, victoriously.

”If I've lost, so have you!” he answered.

What followed happened in an instant and before Pemmican had been in Room A thirty seconds. For suddenly one of the men there had whipped from his coat-pocket a weapon that glinted in the white light; as suddenly he had taken aim, and then came a flash, a report, a cloud of smoke.

Pemmican looked on, speechless.

Presently one of the men crossed the room and sank into a chair in a dazed sort of fas.h.i.+on, his head lolling across the upholstered arm; while the other glanced about him for an instant, looked at Pemmican, looked at the figure lying on the chair, and then started suddenly toward the door.

Three minutes later Pemmican switched off the lights and plunged the room in darkness.

”A row over a lady,” he murmured breathlessly, ”a row over a lady and a game of cards.”

At two o'clock that morning, Officer Keogh of the night squad, patrolling a dimly lighted thoroughfare in the rear of Cradlebaugh's, stumbled over an object lying in deep shadow.

”Good Lord! It's a man!” said Keogh, stooping down suddenly and as suddenly drawing back. He drew himself together, bent down again, felt cautiously about, wiped his hands and shuddered, and drew back once again, as he whispered to himself:--