," returned Harvey with a grin. "That's the price of a murder
in this town."

"Come up, and I'll coax you," laughed Wallingford.

He walked away quite thoughtfully. Harvey Willis, who had left Filmore
on account of his fine sense of honor--he had embezzled to pay a poker
debt--seemed suddenly to fit an empty and an aching void.

CHAPTER VIII

A THIRD ARM TO THE OLD-FASHIONED DOUBLE CROSS

"The fresh Hick!" observed Mr. Pickins savagely. "I'd like to hand him
a bunch of knuckles."

Mr. Pickins was not now in character, but was clad in quite ordinary
good clothes; his prominent cheek-bones, however, had become two white
spots in the midst of an angrily red countenance.

"I don't know as I blame him so much," said Phelps. "The trouble is
we sized him for about the intelligence of a louse. Anybody who would
stand for your Hoop-pole County line of talk wouldn't need such a
careful frame-up to make him lay down his money."

"There's something to that," agreed Short-Card Larry. "I always did
say your work was too strong, Pick."

"There ain't another man in the crowd can play as good a Rube,"
protested Mr. Pickins, touched deeply upon the matter of his art. "I
don't know how many thousands we've cleaned up on that outfit of
mine."

"Ye-e-es, but this Wallingford person called the turn," insisted
Phelps. "The only times we ever made it stick was on the kind of
farmers that work in eleven-story office buildings. You can fool a man
with a stuffed dog, but you can't fool a dog with it; and you couldn't
fool Yap Wallingford with a counterfeit yap."

"Well," announced Mr. Pickins, with emphatic finality, "you may have
my part of him. I'm willing to let him go right back to Oskaloosa, or
Oshkosh, or wherever it is."

"Not me," declared Phelps. "I want to get him just on general
principles. He's handed me too much flossy talk. You know the last
thing he had the nerve to say? He invited us up to play stud poker
with him."

"Why don't you?" asked Pickins.

"Ask Larry," said Phelps with a laugh, whereat Larry merely swore.

Badger Billy, who had been silently listening with his eyes half
closed, was possessed of a sudden inventive gift.

"Yes, why don't you?" he repeated. "If I read this village cut-up
right, and I think I do, he'll take a sporting chance. Get him over to
the Forty-second Street dump on a proposition to play two-handed stud
with Harry there, then pull off a phoney pinch for gambling."

"No c