The Steinberg spider was supposed to be waiting there, coldly patient and insatiable, and Barter dreaded him. Philip had never entered the rooms, but they had an attraction for him. He accepted his companion’s invitation, and they entered the chambers together. A fire lingered in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The honest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. What was he there for? The answer was pretty evident. There was nothing between this loud-babbling youth and himself which could have drawn them into even a momentary comradeship, if it had not been for the suspicion his father’s story had inspired in him. Frankly, he was there because he suspected the man, because he desired to watch him, because, if he found the chance, he was willing to set him in the dock. To smoke his tobacco and drink his liquor in those circumstances had undoubtedly an air of treachery. In a while he hardened himself, and closed his ears to all casuist pleadings, whether for or against the course he had adopted. He would clear his father if he could, and if there were any mere hope of doing it, he would watch this fellow as a cat watches a mouse, and would go on doing it until both of them were gray.
‘By the way,’ said Barter innocently, ‘do you never take a hand at——’
His supple fingers supplied the hiatus, dealing out an imaginary pack of cards with the flourishing dexterity native to them.
‘That’s what I’m here for, is it?’ thought Philip in his own mind. ‘We shall see.’ He said aloud, ‘Sometimes,’ in an indifferent tone.
‘There’s nothing worth seeing anywhere to-night,’ said young Barter. ‘Suppose we try a hand. What do you say to a game at Napoleon?’
Philip consented, and his host produced two packs of cards from the business safe.
They fixed upon the points and they began to play. The points were not those for which Mr. Barter really cared to play; for he was one of those people who find no joy in cards unless they risk more than they can afford to lose. But little fish are sweet, and he thought he had secured a greenhorn. As it happened, the greenhorn, though he was but eight-and-twenty, had travelled the world all over, and had found himself compelled to survey mankind from China to Peru. He was, moreover, one of those men who like to know things, and those quietly-observant eyes of his had taken note of the proceedings of a hundred scoundrels in whose hands the redoubtable Steinberg himself would have had but poor chances. The Greek had been Philip’s standing joy, the dish best spiced to suit his intellectual palate. He had delighted over him aboard ship, on the monstrous dreary railway journey between Atlantic and Pacific, in the little towns which form the centre of scores of Texan ranches, in hells at the Cape and in California, in the free ports of China, and on the borders of the Bosphorus. In point of fact he was by experience as little fitted to be played upon by a gentleman of young Mr. Barter’s limited accomplishments as almost any man alive.
Phil’s interest in the game had grown grimly observant in the first ten minutes. Young Mr. Barter had a knack, when he shuffled the cards, of slily inclining the painted sides upwards. He had another knack of leaving an honour at the bottom. He made a false cut with fair dexterity for an amateur. He could, when occasion seemed to make it profitable, discard with a fair air of unconsciousness. An ace dropped out of sight a hand or two earlier, was followed by a valueless card dropped openly. The ace was taken to supply its place with a perfect smiling effrontery. But Mr. Barter’s favourite trick came out when he had a weak hand. Then he smiled across at his opponent, breathed softly the words ‘six cards,’ and dropped the worthless hand on the top of the pack, calling for a new deal All this Philip Bommaney watched with a complete seeming innocence and good temper. He lost his sixpences handsomely, made no protest, and looked unruffled.
‘You play false for sixpences, do you?’ he said inwardly. ‘I suppose a scoundrel is a scoundrel all through, and that if you’ll sell your soul for so little, you could hardly object to driving a bargain for a larger sum.’
He was often tempted in the course of a quarter of an hour to try Mr. Barter with a sudden challenge, and see what would come of it. Surveying his companion with that placid inquiry which Barter felt to be so excessively uncomfortable, he came to have but a poor opinion of his courage. He was one of those men who, even without knowing it, take profound observations of their fellow-creatures. The true observer of human nature is by no means a personage who is always on the strain after insight into character. He is, on the contrary, pretty generally an inward-looking man, who seems to notice little, and takes in his surroundings as the immortal Joey Ladle did his wine. Philip judged Barter to be a nervous man, and supposed him, even when strung to his bent, to have no great tenacity or continuance of courage. He had learned more and more to believe his father’s story, though he had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter’s every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, ‘How about that eight thousand pounds?’ grew more and more upon him, and had to be more and more strenuously resisted. It seemed worth while to resist it To begin with, if young Barter should be innocent, the querist could evidently expect nothing else than to be taken for a madman. To continue, if his name and the likeness to his father had already set the thief upon his guard, and had prepared him for accusation, the question would only reveal his own suspicion, and thereby weaken the chances of discovery.