said, "No, thank you, kind sir."

The note mentioned no names. It said, "Wednesday, at Maddock's, 11
P.M. Show this card."

And to Maddock's, on Wednesday, at an hour something earlier than
eleven, the New Yorker led his guest after a call at one or two clubs.

Even from the outside the place had a dilapidated look that surprised
Lindsay. The bell was of that brand you keep pulling till you discover
it is out of order. Decayed gentility marked the neighborhood, though
the blank front of the houses looked impeccably respectable.

As a feeble camouflage of its real reason for being, Maddock's called
itself the "Omnium Club." But when Clay found how particular the
doorkeeper was as to those who entered he guessed at once it was a
gambling-house.

From behind a grating the man peered at them doubtfully. Bromfield
showed a card, and after some hesitation on the part of his inquisitor,
passed the examination. Toward Clay the doorkeeper jerked his head
inquiringly.

"He's all right," the clubman vouched.

Again there was a suspicious and lengthy scrutiny.

The door opened far enough to let them slide into a scantily furnished
hall. On the first landing was another guard, a heavy, brutal-looking
fellow who was no doubt the "chucker-out." He too looked them over
closely, but after a glance at the card drew aside to let them pass.

Through a door near the head of the stairs they moved into a large
room, evidently made from several smaller ones with the partitions torn
down and the ceilings pillared at intervals.

Clay had read about the magnificence of Canfield's in the old days, and
he was surprised that one so fastidious as Bromfield should patronize a
place so dingy and so rough as this. At the end of one room was a
marble mantelpiece above which there was a defaced, gilt-frame mirror.
The chandeliers, the chairs, the wall-paper, all suggested the same
note of one-time opulence worn to shabbiness.

A game of Klondike was going. There were two roulette wheels, a faro
table, and one circle of poker players.

The cold eyes of a sleek, slippery man sliding cards out of a faro-box
looked at the Westerner curiously. Among the suckers who came to this
den of thieves to be robbed were none of Clay's stamp. Lindsay watched
the white, dexterous hands of the dealer with an honest distaste. All
along the border from Juarez to Calexico he had seen just such soft,
skilled fingers fleecing those who toiled. He k