“I am not threatening.”
“You hadn’t better! Perhaps you mean that you intend to lay for me and beat me up. Well, sir, I go armed, and I’ll shoot if any one tries to jump me. If you want a whole skin——”
“What’s this talk about beating and shooting?” interrupted one of the members. “It’s fine talk to hear in these rooms! Drop it! If we have any one in the club who can’t take an honorable defeat in a square contest of any sort, it’s time that person took himself out of our ranks. I reckon that is straight enough.”
“Quite straight enough, Mr. Robbins,” bowed Darleton; “but it doesn’t touch me. I can stand defeat; but I am seldom satisfied with one trial. The first trial may be for sport, but with me the second is for blood.”
Having said this, he wheeled and stalked out of the room.
“We’ll never have peace in this club while he continues to be a member,” asserted Hugh Morton earnestly.
“I beg your pardon!” exclaimed one of the card players. “Don’t forget that Mr. Darleton is my friend, sir!”
“I’ve not said anything behind his back that I am not ready to repeat to his face,” flung back Morton.
“Well, you’d better be careful. He can fight.”
“I think this is quite enough of this fighting talk!” said the man called Robbins sternly.