“I bet Bunk was astonished. He didn’t think you’d do anything like that—didn’t think you could. I don’t understand why you’ve taken so much sass off Rollins and Barker. I’ll guarantee you could wallop either one of them in a minute and a half. No, sir, I don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps you don’t, but I do, Spotty, and that’s plenty sufficient.”
“Lander was a chump to get mad the way he did.”
“But he caught you slipping a card off the pack. Really, you were to blame, Davis—and I was to blame, too.”
“You? Why, you didn’t play.”
“No; but I sat there and looked on, knowing all the time that card playing for money is bad business, just as I think I told you once before.”
“Bunk didn’t really have no kick comin’, for he’s slippery with the pasteboards himself. I was just tryin’ to hold up my end with him.”
“The chap who plays cards with any one he knows to be crooked is doubly foolish, as there’s only one way for him to escape being trimmed: he must cheat also. Where did you get the money to play with, Spotty?”
“I—oh, I got it by—by sellin’ something. What makes you ask?”
“I knew you were broke a few days ago,” said Grant, his steady eyes fixed on Spotty’s flushed and confused face.