inking of doing?"

"Well, he has eighteen hundred pounds, and he talked of drawing out
the amount and paying up, and then exchanging into some other
regiment. The question, however, is, whether he ought to pay."

The others looked up at him in surprise.

"Why, of course he must pay," Tritton said; "at least he must pay,
or quit the service, a disgraced man."

"I think there is an alternative," Lisle said, "and that is why I
have sent for you."

"What alternative can there be?"

"Well, you know I don't play; but I like sitting watching the game,
and I am quite convinced that Sanders doesn't play fair."

"You don't say so!" Tritton said. "That is a very serious
accusation to make, you know, Bullen!"

"I am perfectly aware of that, and I feel that it would be mad for
me to make an unsupported accusation against Sanders. But I want
you three fellows to join me in watching Sanders play. My word,
unsupported, would be of no avail; but if four of us swore that we
saw him cheating, there could be no doubt about the result.

"For one thing, Sanders would have to leave the army. That would be
no loss to the service, for he is an overbearing brute; to say
nothing of the fact that several young officers have had to leave
the service, owing to their losses at play with him."

"I know of two cases," Lindsay said. "There was a very strong
feeling against him, but no one suspected him of unfair play. It
was he who introduced baccarat here, when his regiment first came
up. It had never been played here before, and you may notice that
very few of his fellow officers ever take a hand.

"Well, there will be no harm in our watching. It is a thing that
one doesn't like doing but, when it comes to a fellow officer being
swindled, it is clearly our duty to expose the man who is doing
it."

"Very well, then, this evening two of us will take our stand behind
Gordon, and the other two behind Sanders."

"But how did he cheat? It seems a fair game enough."

"He does it in this way. He puts five sovereigns under his hand.
That is the limit, you know. Then he looks at his card, and pushes
it out. With his hand still touching it, he watches the dealer and,
if he can see by his face that his card is a good one--and you can
generally tell that--he withdraws his hand with four of the
sovereigns, leaving only one on the card. If, on the other hand, he
thinks it is a bad one, he leaves the whole five there. He does the
trick cleverly eno