"They can't get that away from me—not so long as I'm able to kick," he reflected with huge satisfaction.
And the seven hundred and thirty-five in his pocket was possessed of a devil of restlessness. He could almost feel it quivering with impatience to get into action. After all, it was only seven hundred and thirty-five dollars: not a cent more than the wages of forty-nine weeks' servitude to the Genius of the Vault of the Smell!
"That," mused P. Sybarite scornfully, "won't take me far....
"What," he argued, "is the use of travelling if you can't go to the end of the line?...
"I might as well be broke," he asseverated, "as the way I am!"
Glancing cunningly down his nose, he saw the finish of a fool.
"Anyway," he insisted, "it was ever my fondest ambition to get rid of precisely seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in one hour by the clock."
So he sat down at the end of the table of his first winnings, and exchanged one of his seven big bills for one hundred white chips.
"What," he asked with an ingenious smile, "is the maximum?"
"Seein's it's you," said the croupier, grinning, "we'll make it twenty a throw."