It was now and then well for Joe that I went thus provided. That badly garbed squire of good dame Fortune, who failed not of a profit at casino, had withal an overpowering taste to play faro; and as if by some law of compensation and to preserve an equilibrium, he would seem to sit down to a faro layout only to lose.
Time and again he came to his rooms stripped of the last dollar. On these harrowing occasions Joe would borrow a round-number stake from me and so return to the legitimate sure harvests of casino, vowing never to lose himself and his money in any quicksands of farobank again.
It must be admitted that these anti-faro vows were never kept; once firm on his feet by virtue of casino renewed, it was not over long ere he “tried it just once more,” to lose again. These faro bankruptcies would overtake Joe about once a month.
One day I made a mild plot; I had foregone all hope of coaxing Joe’s secret from him; now I resolved to bring against him the pressure of a small intrigue. I lay in ambush for Joe, waylaid him as it were in the weak hour of his destitution and ravished from him at the point of his necessities that which I could come by in no other way.
It was following a disastrous night at faro when Joe appeared without so much silver in his pockets as might serve to keep the fiends from dancing there. Having related his losses he asked for the usual five hundred wherewith to re-enter the sure lists of casino and begin the combat anew.
To his sore amazement and chagrin—and somewhat to his alarm, for at first he thought me as poor as himself from my refusal—I shook my sage young head.
“Haven’t you got it?” asked Joe anxiously.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “I’ve got it; and it’s yours on one condition. Teach me how to ‘Tell the last four,’ and you may have five hundred and five hundred with it.”
Then I pointed out to Joe his mean unfairness in not equipping me with this resistless knowledge. Save for that one pregnant secret I was as perfect at casino as any sharper on the Bowery. Likewise, were the situation reversed, I’d be quick to instruct him. I’d lend no more; there would come no further five hundred save as the price of that touchstone—the golden secret of how to “Tell the last four.” This I set forth jealously.
“Why, then,” said Joe, “I’ll do my best to teach you. But it will cost a deal of work. You’ll have to put in hours of practice and curry and groom and train your memory as if it were a horse for a great race. I tell you the more readily—for I could elsewhere easily get the five hundred and for that matter five thousand other dollars to keep it company—since I believe I’ve not many months to live at best”—here, as if in confirmation, a gust of coughing shook him—“and this secret shall be your legacy.”