induced to take a hand in the game.

The lightning-like glances that passed between the newcomer and the
Western Mr. Johnson, while entirely unnoted by the investigator of
municipal vice, aroused the interest of the athletic young man to the
point of assenting to make the fourth. Here, evidently, was something
about to be pulled off, and he decided to be actively among those
present.

The game progressed through several uneventful deals. Suddenly Johnson,
scrutinizing a hand dealt him by the cigar salesman, emitted a low
whistle.

"If we were playing poker now I'd have something to say!"

"Oh, I don't know! I've got some poker hand myself," opined the dealer.
"Discard one, to make a five-card hand, and I bet you five dollars I
beat you."

"You're on!" Each produced a bill which he handed to the athletic young
man to hold.

"Three eights and a pair of deuces," boasted the Westerner, exposing
the full hand upon the board.

"Beats three kings," admitted the other, ruefully laying down his hand.
The winner pocketed the money with an exaggerated wink in the direction
of the newspaper youth who had been an interested spectator.

The game progressed, and before many deals another challenge was passed
and accepted between the two. This time it was the salesman who
profited to the extent of twenty-five dollars which he received from
the stakeholder with the remark that he would bet his whole roll on a
jack full any old day.

The elderly gentleman smoked in silence and amused himself by mentally
cataloguing the players. Suddenly his attention became riveted.

What he saw jarred harshly upon his estimate of the athletic young man
who, at the conclusion of his deal, dexterously slipped some cards
beneath the table from his pile of tricks, then, bunching the pack,
passed it to the Westerner for the next deal.

He was on the point of exposing this cheap bit of knavery when the
young man glanced in his direction. Something in the steady gaze of the
gray eyes, though for the life of him he could not have told what,
stayed his purpose, and he settled into his seat, more puzzled than
before.

"If it had been any one of the others," he thought to himself; "and
then to think that he turns around and with a look virtually makes me a
party to his tuppenny trickery!"

His reflections were cut short by a sharp exclamation from the
investigator of vice who, in spite of his desire to appear composed,
was evidently laboring unde