“Now and again, yes. What about it?”
“Two things. While pretty nearly everything goes in this wild and woolly neck of woods, it is still barely possible that the Old Man might object to having the car-record, or any other of his offices, turned into a gambling shop. I have a horrible suspicion that he’ll make it hot for somebody, when he finds out. That is one thing, and the other is this: you oughtn’t to gamble with those boys, Phil. They’re not in your class. You carry too long a purse; you know you do. They have nothing but their salaries.”
Philip’s smile was grim.
“I didn’t ask to be let in. I guess some of them thought, because I happen to own a share in a gold mine, I might be good picking. But you are right. I shan’t rob them any more. Anything else on your mind?”
“No. You are a pretty reasonable sort of devil, after all, Phil. Are you going? Well, so long.”
Gaining the street level, the reasonable devil refilled his pipe, lighted it, and set off briskly townward. A square short of Larimer Street he turned to the left past the house where he had once spent a drunkenly unconscious night and went on to another of the same character in the square beyond. The woman who admitted him in answer to his double knock was of the type of her class: large, shapeless, hard-eyed, painted and garishly bejeweled. “Mother Goguette” was the name she went by, but there was little that was motherly about her.
Philip slipped out of his light overcoat and hung it and his hat upon the hall rack as one who knew what was expected of him.
“Reddick, the railroad man, tells me you took in a new girl this evening,” he announced brusquely. “She is the one I want to see.”
“And a lotta good it’ll do you!” was the snapped out reply. “The little fool’s up in her room, cryin’ her eyes out and tryin’ to make me believe she didn’t know where she was comin’ to! She’s no fit comp’ny for a gentleman like you. What she needs is somebody that’ll knock a little sense into her.”
Philip felt in his pocket and put a gold coin into the bejeweled hands.