‘Well,’ said Steinberg, with a pitiless uninterested suavity, ‘you know the rules.’
He drew a little book from his pocket, and tossed it over the table to his guest.
‘You’ll find it on page five. Rule fourteen. It’s ticked in red ink, if you’ll take the trouble to look at it.’
Barter opened the book and consulted its pages blindly for a while, and then the mist which seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing away, he read the pages indicated. It set forth the principle that all moneys lost at games of skill or chance, or upon bets made within the limits of the club, were payable within four-and-twenty hours. It set forth further that debts not paid within that time might be brought under the notice of the Committee, who were empowered to act under Rule nine. Rule nine ordained the public posting of the defaulter’s name, his suspension in default of payment, and, in case of continued obduracy or poverty, his expulsion.
‘First and last, Steinberg,’ said the wretched criminal, who began to find the way of the transgressor unreasonably hard and thorny, ‘first and last, you’ve had a pretty tidy handful of money out of me.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Steinberg tangibly. ‘Pretty fair.’
His very admission of this fact made Barter’s case seem hopeless to himself. If he had brow-beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger or impatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist some slenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he seemed immovable.
‘You’d better persuade her,’ he said, with a scarcely perceptible grin. Looking at Barter, and observing that he sat with his eyes still bent upon the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed the grin to broaden. Barter, suddenly looking up at him, saw him smiling like a gargoyle, with a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning.
‘You won’t find her hard to persuade, I’m sure,’ said Steinberg. ‘Come, now, I’ll talk business to you. I’ll take ten of ‘em for it, and cry quits, and I wouldn’t do that for anybody but a friend.’
The frank admission of the value of his own friendship was plainly legible in that gargoyle smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly.