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Behind the stranger pressed his three companions now, whilst the troopers across the room forgot their card-play to watch the altercation that seemed to impend. The foreigner for such, indeed, his French proclaimed him turned half-contemptuously to the host, ignoring Garnache with an air that was studiously offensive. "Jackanapes?" murmured Garnache again, and he, too, turned to the host.
Then came, in the intervals of steady card-play, more personal histories of adventure and things seen and suffered: panics among white folk, when the blind terror ran from man to man on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the people crushed each other to death they knew not why; fires, and faces that opened and shut their mouths horribly at red-hot window frames; wrecks in frost and snow, reported from the sleet-sheathed rescue-tug at the risk of frost-bite; long rides after diamond thieves; skirmishes on the veldt and in municipal committees with the Boers; glimpses of lazy tangled Cape politics and the mule-rule in the Transvaal; card-tales, horse-tales, woman-tales, by the score and the half hundred; till the first mate, who had seen more than us all put together, but lacked words to clothe his tales with, sat open-mouthed far into the dawn.
"Well, I can show you some keen card-play and perhaps a clever game of billiards, besides a girl who's a great deal prettier than the dancer. But it's four miles out of town." Dick glanced at his watch. "I can take you on the carrier," he said. "I've plenty of time yet." They set off, and presently stopped at a tall iron gate on the edge of a firwood.
His attention shifted back to Farnham with a swift remembrance of the stern purpose which had brought him there. The gambler was playing out his case silently, emotionless as ever. If he had observed anything unusual, if he considered anything beyond his card-play, no eye could have detected it in that impassive countenance, those cold, expressionless eyes.
My aunt lived in summer on the farther slope of Chestnut Hill, where, when the road was in order, came her friends for a night, and the usual card-play. When of a Saturday I was set free, I delighted to ride over and spend Sunday with her, my way being across country to one of the fords on the Schuylkill, or out from town by the Ridge or the Germantown highroad.
All through the talk Rainey was conscious of the gaze of Doctor Carlsen, whose dark eyes appeared to be mocking the whole proceedings, looking on with the air of a man watching card-play with a prevision of how the game will come out. "Mr. Lund is unstrung," said the captain. "He is under the delusion that we deliberately deserted him and, later, found the gold he speaks of.
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