“Who said poker?” Eldredge called.
“Clear out these tables.... Bring cards and chips and card tables,” La Mothe directed.
“Two tables, six to a table,” Fred said.
Potter made his way to his host. “I’m off, Fred,” he said. “I’m a laboring-man. It’s close to midnight.... Somehow I don’t fit in as well as I used to.”
“Oh, stick to the finish. I’ll guarantee there’ll be a finish.”
“I’ve lost my taste for them,” Potter said. “I’m sober, and you fellows have a sheet to the wind. No.... I’m off.”
La Mothe shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said. “Good night.”
Potter went out quietly, leaving behind a party that would not break up until daylight, a party who would play for the joy of play, with the blue sky as their limit.... The dinner with entertainment and favors had cost La Mothe in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. As matters turned out, it was not such a bad venture in highflying, for when he cashed his chips at five o’clock in the morning he found he had paid for his celebration and had eight hundred dollars surplus to set down on the right side of the ledger.
CHAPTER XXIV
Potter went home, but not to bed. He had arrived at a moment where attention must be focused upon Cantor. Fact after fact had strayed into his storehouse, to be put on a shelf and to be allowed to collect the dust of disuse. Now he dusted them off and placed them on the counter. He had not fancied they would stretch out into such an arresting array. To his mind they were conclusive, yet among them all was not a scrap of the commodity known to courts of the law as evidence. All was suspicion, conjecture—and yet every item was a fact. Potter knew it to be a fact.