k in at the Blue Chip, if I may." Thode sheered the
topic away from his late antagonist, and Billie followed his lead.

"Of course you must," she said cordially. "You'll find the whole works
going; monte, Fairbank, stud and blackjack. There's roulette and
craps, too, but it's mostly the women who go after them."

"And you--do you play?" He could not forebear the question.

"Dad says there never was a good bartender yet who drank." Billie
grimaced. "He even stopped me being mascot; it always raised a riot.
It isn't the winning hand or the stakes themselves that I care for,
it's the fun of the game, but Dad says gambling is a poor game for
women. They never count the odds they stack up against, and when they
over-play, they're bad losers. You'll like Dad, Mr. Thode; he's the
whitest hombre that ever crossed the Rio."

Secretly, Thode was beginning to think that he should. The girl was an
anomaly and he was curious to see what manner of man her idol was and
learn how he had kept her so singularly free from the dross of his
world and managed to hold so unswervingly before her the real stakes of
the game, truth and honor and a high heart.

When he left her at the side door of the Blue Chip, the young engineer
held her hand for an appreciable moment longer than the occasion
demanded.

"I'm coming to-night," he announced. "Will you--will I see you?"

"In the patio," she dimpled swiftly. "Buena suerte!"

"Good luck!" The phrase echoed in his brain, but oddly enough his
thoughts did not go forward to the hot, crowded, smoke-hung card-room,
or the girl waiting in the cool, fragrant darkness of the inner court,
but instead there arose before his mental eyes the vision of a
petrified wooden cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously
with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it,
with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly
expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory
in the great game they two were playing?

CHAPTER III

THE COMING OF EL NEGRITO

When he entered the Blue Chip that night, Thode found play already in
full blast. The tables were crowded, smoke hung in low-banked clouds
below the flaring oil lamps, and the glittering bar at the far end of
the room was phalanxed three deep by a jostling, good-natured throng.
Soft-footed, wooden-faced Chinese mozos glided about, and the whining
monotone of the croupier came f