Green and the local inspector saw him reel past the public-house in which they still remained, as affording an excuse to be near the spot, and reel up Smike Street. Towards the end he appeared confused and gravely inspected several houses before approaching the gambling-joint. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, ignoring both the knocker and the bell. It opened a few inches wide, enough for the scowling face of Jim the door-keeper to appear in the aperture.
Supporting himself with one hand on the door-post, Foyle leered amiably at the Cerberus. "Hello, old sport, I want t'come in. Open the door, can't you?"
"Git out of it, you drunken swab. You don't live here," said Jim, taking stock of the drunken intruder and coming to a quick decision.
The door slammed. Foyle beat a tattoo on the panels with his hands, swaying perilously to and fro the while. Again the door opened the cautious six inches, and Jim's face was not pleasant to look on as he swore at the disturber.
"Tha'ss allri', ol' sport," hiccoughed Foyle. "I want to come in. A Bill Reid tol' me if I wanted—hic—game I was to come here. You know ol' Bill Reid"—this almost pleadingly—"he'll tell you I'm allri', eh?"
The door-keeper of the gaming-house holds an onerous responsibility. On him depends the safety of the gamblers from interference by the representatives of law and order. Jim's suspicions were lulled by Foyle's quite obvious drunkenness. Nevertheless, a drunken man who had apparently been told of the place was a danger so long as he remained clamouring for admittance on the step. Jim tried tact.
"There's nothing doing now," he explained. "You go away and come back to-night. It'll be a good game then."
"Tha'ss a lie," said Foyle, with an assumption of drunken gravity. "Old Bill Reid he says to me, he says——"
But Jim had lost the remainder of his small stock of patience. He jerked the door again in Foyle's face, pulled off the chain and leapt out, his intention of throwing the other into the street and so ending the argument once for all written on every line of his stalwart figure.