“No, by God, it’s not all right! It’s all wrong, and this is the last game I sit in where they deal a hand to you.”
Spurrier’s smiling lips tightened instantly out of their infectious amiability into a forbidding straightness. He pushed aside the chips he had been stacking and rose stiffly.
“That’s a statement, Captain Comyn,” he said with a warning note in his level voice, “which requires some explaining.”
The abrupt bursting of the tempest had left the others in a tableau of amazement, but now the authoritative voice of Major Withers broke in upon the dialogue.
“Gentlemen, this is an army post, and I am in command here. I will tolerate no quarrels.”
Without shifting the gaze of eyes that held those of the captain, Spurrier answered insistently:
“I have every respect, major, for the requirements 6 of discipline—but Captain Comyn must finish telling why he will no longer play cards with me.”
“And I’ll tell you pronto,” came the truculent response. “I won’t play with you because you are too damned lucky.”
“Oh!” Spurrier’s tensity of expression relaxed into something like amusement for the anticlimax. “That accusation can be stomached, I suppose.”
“Too damned lucky,” went on the other with a gathering momentum of rancor, “and too continuously lucky for a game that’s not professional. When a man is so proficient—or lucky if you prefer—that the card table pays him more than the government thinks he’s worth, it’s time——”