“If I did I wouldn’t tell. Don’t you know that I can get from fifteen to twenty at the track? Why do you suppose I want to make such a sucker bet as this? It’s because I’d rather have your money than anybody else’s; because I want to break you!”
He was fairly trembling with simulated anger now.
“If that’s the case you’ll be accommodated,” said Teller with an oath. “Come on, boys; we’ll bring up a chunk of money that’ll stop all this four-flush conversation.”
Mr. Phelps, having already “produced to his limit,” stayed with Wallingford while the others went out. First of all, they dropped in at a quiet pool-room where they were known, and made inquiries about Whipsaw. They were answered by a laugh, and an offer to “take them on for all they wanted at their own odds,” and, reassured, they scattered, to raise all the money they could. They returned in the course of an hour and counted down a sum larger than Wallingford had thought the four of them could control. He was to find out later that they had not only converted their bank accounts and all their other holdings into currency, but had borrowed all their credit would stand wherever they were known. Wallingford, covering their first five thousand with one, calmly counted out an amount equal to one-half of all the rest they had put down, passed it over to Blackie to hold, then flaunted more money in their faces.
“This is at evens if you can scrape up any more,” he offered sneeringly. “Go soak your jewelry.”
Before making that suggestion he had noted the absence of Larry’s ring and of Billy’s studded watch-charm. Phelps was the only one who still wore anything convertible, a loud cravat-pin, an emerald, set with diamonds.
“Give you two hundred against your pin,” said he to Phelps, and the latter promptly took the bet.
“Are you all in?” asked Wallingford.
They promptly acknowledged that they were “all in.”