Three minutes later the goggle-eyed swing doors opened and engulfed him. At the top of the carpeted stair he met a hard-faced man who was doubling a thick sheaf of bank-notes into portable shape. The outgoer nodded, and tapped the roll significantly. "Go in and break 'em," he rasped. "The bank's out o' luck to-night, and it's our rake-off. I win all I can stand."
Jeffard pushed through another swing door and went to the faro-table. Counting his money he dropped the odd change back into his pocket and handed the bills to the banker.
"Ninety-five?" queried the man; and when Jeffard nodded, he pushed the requisite number of blue, red, and white counters across the table. Jeffard arranged them in a symmetrical row in front of him, and began to play with the singleness of purpose which is the characteristic of that particular form of dementia.
It was the old story with the usual variations. He lost, won, and then lost again until he could reckon his counters by units. After which the tide turned once more, and the roar of its flood dinned in his ears like the drumming of a tornado in a forest. His capital grew by leaps and bounds, doubling, trebling, and finally quadrupling the sum he had handed the banker. Then his hands began to shake, and the man on his right paused in his own play long enough to say, "Now's yer time to cash in, pardner. Yer nerve's a-flickerin'."
The prudent advice fell upon deaf ears. Jeffard's soul was Berserk in the fierce battle with chance, and he began placing the counters upon certain of the inlaid cards before him, stopping only when he had staked his last dollar. Five minutes afterward he was standing on the sidewalk again, drawing in deep breaths of the keen morning air, and wondering if it were only the possession of the thing called money that kept one's head from buzzing ordinarily. In the midst of the unspoken query the shuffling figure of a night tramp sidled up to him, and he heard imperfectly the stereotyped appeal.
"Hungry, you say? Perhaps I'll be that, myself, before long. Here you are."
The odd change jingled into the outstretched palm of the vagrant, and for the first time in a fairly industrious life Jeffard knew what it felt like to be quite without money.
"That is, I think I do, but I don't," he mused, walking slowly in the direction of his room. "It isn't breakfast-time yet; and by the same token, it isn't going to be for a good while. I believe I can sleep the clock around, now that I've reached the bottom."