There was no answer for a moment. Well as Harris thought he knew Willett, this was a surprise.
"What for?" were the exact words of the response, and neither in tone nor manner were there encouragement.
"I've got to pull out at dawn, I suppose you've heard, and I shouldn't like to leave I.O.U.'s—here!" And now the cheery confidence seemed evaporating. Willett's face was shading.
"Won't you sit down?" asked Harris reflectively. "I'd like to know something about—this."
"There isn't time, Harris. I'm in a hole, so to speak. I hate to bother you, but I'd rather come to a classmate and old friend, who is in position, as I know, to help out, than give these fellows a chance to talk. Probably they've been talking already, and you've heard," and now, with something like a resumption of the old familiar manner of their boy days at the Point, Willett settled on the broad, flat arm of the reclining chair and threw his own arm, long and muscular, over the back. There had come to be a saying in the gray battalion, when Willett was seen strolling with a comrade, his arm caressingly encircling him, "Well, Willett's doing the bunco act again." Possibly it was the instinctive shrinking of the wounded shoulder; certain it was that Harris drew perceptibly away, and Willett noticed it. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" said he.
"It's rather touchy yet," was the answer.
"Well, say, Hefty, here's the situation. You don't play, so you won't appreciate, maybe, and I only play once in a good while, but they rung in a brace game on me. That fellow Case is no better'n a professional, and you saw for yourself here what a cad he could be. He got my money that Saturday night and Sunday, and since then, like the cad he is, has refused to play it out—give me a chance to get it back——"
"Do you play with cads?" interrupted Harris.
"Not when I know it—to start with," answered Willett, flushing and beginning to draw away. Obviously the affectionate and confidential method was a failure. "But when a man's got your money, cad or no cad, you want it back."
"And Case has your three hundred dollars?"