第18章 CHAPTER IX. HAROLD SITS IN A GAME.(1)

When Elizabeth Compton broached to her father the subject of a much-needed rest and a trip to the Orient, he laughed at her. Why, girl," he cried, "I was never better in my life! Where in the world did you get this silly idea?"

"Harold noticed it first," she replied, "and called my attention to it; and now I can see that you really have been failing."

"Failing!" ejaculated Compton, with a scoff. "Failing nothing! You're a pair of young idiots. I'm good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that he can take my place."

"Couldn't he do it now?" asked the girl.

"No, I am afraid not," replied Compton. "It is too much to expect of him, but I believe that in another year he will be able to."

And so Compton put an end to the suggestion that he travel for his health, and that night when Bince called she told him that she had been unable to persuade her father that he needed a rest.

"I am afraid," he said "that you don't take it seriously enough yourself, and that you failed to impress upon him the real gravity of his condition. It is really necessary that he go--he must go."

The girl looked up quickly at the speaker, whose tones seemed unnecessarily vehement.

"I don't quite understand," she said, "why you should take the matter so to heart. Father is the best judge of his own condition, and, while he may need a rest, I cannot see that he is in any immediate danger." "Oh, well," replied Bince irritably, "I just wanted him to get away for his own sake. Of course, it don't mean anything to me."

"What's the matter with you tonight, anyway, Harold?" she asked a half an hour later. "You're as cross and disagreeable as you can be."

"No, I'm not," he said. "There is nothing the matter with me at all."

But his denial failed to convince her, and as, unusually early, a few minutes later he left, she realized that she had spent a most unpleasant evening.

Bince went directly to his club, where he found four other men who were evidently awaiting him.

"Want to sit in a little game to-night, Harold?" asked one of them.

"Oh, hell," replied Bince, "you fellows have been sitting here all evening waiting for me. You know I want to. My luck's got to change some time."

"Sure thing it has," agreed another of the men. "You certainly have been playing in rotten luck, but when it does change--oh, baby!"

As the five men entered one of the cardrooms several of the inevitable spectators drew away from the other games and approached their table, for it was a matter of club gossip that these five played for the largest stakes of any coterie among the habitues of the card-room.

It was two o'clock in the morning before Bince disgustedly threw his cards upon the table and rose. There was a nasty expression on his face and in his mind a thing which he did not dare voice--the final crystallization of a suspicion that he had long harbored, that his companions had been for months deliberately fleecing him. Tonight he had lost five thousand dollars, nor was there a man at the table who did not hold his I. 0. U's. for similar amounts.

"I'm through, absolutely through," he said. "I'll be damned if I ever touch another card."

His companions only smiled wearily, for they knew that to-morrow night he would be back at the table.

"How much of old man Compton's money did you get tonight?" asked one of the four after Bince had left the room.

"About two thousand dollars," was the reply, "which added to what I already hold, puts Mr. Compton in my debt some seven or eight thousand dollars."

Whereupon they all laughed.

"I suppose," remarked anther, "that it's a damn shame, but if we don't get it some one else will."

"Is he paying anything at all?" asked another.

"Oh, yes; he comes across with something now and then, but we'll probably have to carry the bulk of it until after the wedding."

"Well, I can't carry it forever," said the first speaker. "I'm not playing here for my health," and, rising, he too left the room. Going directly to the buffet, he found Bince, as he was quite sure that he would.

"Look here, old man," he said, "I hate to seem insistent, but, on the level, I've got to have some money."

"I've told you two or three times,"' replied Bince, "that I'd let you have it as soon as I could get it. I can't get you any now."