“This looks good for a pound,” put in the major.
“I’ll see that and raise you five,” said the doctor.
“I’ll see that five and go you five better,” said Kildare.
“I’ll see that and raise you ten,” returned the doctor.
“Call you, Doctor. You can’t scare me with a bob-tail flush.” The doctor threw his cards in the pack. The major smiled as he raked in the stakes, and asked the doctor to continue on his theory.
“Many men,” he observed, “of supposed integrity on the Fields, are illicit diamond buyers. They are constantly haunted by the fear of detection, and they will try to deceive themselves into the belief that the dread that is eating them up is some liver or stomach trouble, and they come to the doctor for relief. That they are tracked by this invisible foe no further proof is needed than the fact that last year six of our leading business men committed suicide. Fear is a ghost which stalks to and fro over the earth, forever haunting the imaginations of men.”
“Raise you a fiver,” called the major.
“See that, and ten better,” replied the doctor.
“Call you, doctor.”
“Queens.”