“No; I guess you haven’t. But what makes you think I might set him a better one?”
“I don’t. Just the same, he’d take a jacking-up from you as coming from a—er—a sort of case-hardened rounder, you know. That’s what you’ve got the name of being, now, Philly—if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“No, I don’t mind. If I come across your brother, I’ll try to choke him off.”
This conditional promise was made in the afternoon of the second day after he had agreed to the costly compromise with the Jew furniture man; and late in the evening of that day he caught a glimpse of young Jack Middleton, hands buried in pockets and head down, turning a corner and hurrying toward the Corinthian. As Philip chanced to know, it was the railroad pay-day, and it was a fair assumption that the boy had his month’s salary in his pocket.
Entering the game room of the Corinthian a few steps behind young Middleton, Philip waited only long enough to see the boy plunge into play with all the crass ignorance and recklessness of a beginner, before he intervened. Standing at the youth’s elbow while he was staking and losing five-dollar gold pieces in swift succession at one of the roulette wheels, he said, in a tone audible only to the ear it was intended for: “Whose money is that you’re losing, Jackie?”
The boy jumped as if he had been shot. Then he saw who it was who had spoken to him and began to beg:
“You—you mustn’t stop me, Mr. Trask! I’ve got to win—I tell you, I’ve just got to!”
Philip drew him aside.
“Just how bad is it, Jack?” he asked. “I mean, how much are you short in the office?”
“Oh, my God!—how did you know?” gasped the boy.