As Mr. Teller and Mr. Wallingford, on the following evening at a few minutes before nine, turned into the house on Forty-second Street, they observed a sturdy figure helping a very much inebriated man up the stone steps just before them, but as the sturdy figure inserted a latch-key in the door and opened it with one hand while supporting his companion with the other arm, the incident was not one to excite comment. Just inside the door the inebriated man tried to raise a disturbance, which was promptly squelched by the sturdy gentleman, who held his charge firmly in a bearlike grip while Mr. Teller and Mr. Wallingford passed around them at the foot of the stairs, casting smiling glances down at the face of the perpetually-worried landlady, who had come to the parlor door to wonder what she ought to do about it.
In the second floor back room Mr. Phelps and Mr. Badger already awaited them. Mr. Badger’s greeting to Larry was the ordinary greeting of one man who had seen the other within the hour; his greeting to Mr. Wallingford was most cordial and accompanied by the merest shade of a wink. Mr. Phelps, on the other hand, was most grim. While not denying the semblance of courtesy one gentleman should bestow upon another, he nevertheless gave Mr. Wallingford distinctly to understand by his bearing that he was out for Mr. Wallingford’s financial blood, and after the coldest of greetings he asked gruffly:
“Did you bring cards?”
“One dollar’s worth,” said Wallingford, tossing four packs upon the table. “Ordinary drug-store cards, bought at the corner.”
“You see them bought, Larry?” inquired Phelps.
“They’re all right, Phelps,” Mr. Teller assured him.
“Good,” said Mr. Phelps. “Then we might just as well get to work right away,” and from his pocket he drew a fat wallet out of which he counted five thousand dollars, mostly in bills of large denomination.
In the chair at the opposite side of the little table Wallingford sat down with equal grimness, and produced an equal amount of money in similar denominations.
“I don’t suppose we need chips,” said Phelps. “The game may not last over a couple of deals. Make it table stakes, loser of each hand to deal the next one.”
They opened a pack of cards and cut for the deal, which fell to Wallingford, and they began with a mutual five-dollar ante. Upon the turn card of the first deal each placed another five. Upon the third card, Phelps, being high, shoved forward a five-dollar bill, which Wallingford promptly raised with fifty. Scarcely glancing at his hole-card, Phelps let him take the pot, and it became Phelps’ deal.