underworld to the tawdrier satellites of the upper. On his right was a stout gentleman whose faded eyes held the unmistakable buccaneering gleam of a prominent rotarian from Grand Rapids out on a tear in the big city.
The stout gentleman leaned over confidentially, exhaling a powerful aroma of young Bourbon.
'Lookin' for action, eh?' he wheezed. 'Well, this is the place for it Eh? Eh?'
'Eh?' asked the Saint, momentarily infected by the spirit of the thing.
'I said, this is the place for action, isn't it, eh?' repeated the devotee of rotation with laborious good will; and a thin little smile edged the Saint's mouth.
'Brother,' he assented with conviction, 'you don't know the half of it.'
His eyes were fixed on the dealer, who, from the stacks of chips and neat wads of bills before him, appeared to be also the organizer of the game; and as the seconds went by it became plainer and plainer to the Saint that there was at least one man at that table who would never be asked to pose for the central nymph in a picture to be entitled
'Well, Mr. Simon, how much is it to be? The whites are Cs, the reds are finifs, and the blues are G.'s.'
The voice was harshly nasal, with a habitual sneer lurking in it. It was the kind of voice which no healthy outlaw could have heard without being moved to pleasant thoughts of murder; but the Saint smiled and blew a smoke ring.
'I'll take twenty grand—and you can keep it in the blues.'
There was a sudden quiet in the room. The other players hitched up closer in their chairs; and the lean-faced watchers in the outer shadows eased their right hips instinctively away from obstructing objects. Without the twitch of an eyebrow Papulos counted out two stacks of chips and spilled them in the centre of the table.
'Twenty grand,' he said laconically. 'Let's see your dough.' His eyes levelled opaquely across the table. 'Or is it on the cuff?'
'No,' answered the Saint coolly. 'It's in the pants.'
'Let's see it.'
The rotarian from Grand Rapids took a gulp at the drink beside him and stared owlishly at the table; and the Saint reached into his trouser pocket. He felt the roll of bills there; felt something else—the crumpled slip of paper that had originally accompanied them. Securing this telltale bit of evidence with his little finger, he pulled the bills from his pocket and counted them out onto the board.
It was an admirable performance, as the Saint's little cameos of legerdemain always were. Under the Greek's watchful eyes he was measuring out twenty thousand dollars, and the scrap of paper had apparently slipped in somewhere among the notes. Halfway through the count it fell out, face upwards. Simon stopped counting; then he made a very clumsy grab for it. The grab was so slow and clumsy that it was easy for Papulos to catch his wrist.
'Wait a minute.' The Greek's voice was a sudden rasp of menace in the stillness.
He flicked the scrap of paper towards him with one finger and stared at it for a moment. Then he shifted his gaze to the banknotes. He looked up slowly, with two spots of colour flaming in his swarthy cheeks.
'Where did you get that money?'
He was still holding the Saint's right wrist, and his grip had tightened rather than relaxed. Simon glowered at him guiltily.
'What's the matter with it?' he flung back. 'It ought to be good—you passed it out yourself.'
