“And he comes from Dakota?”
“There’s no doubt of it, Nate, not a shadow of doubt.” cried Belle. “I’ve seen the telegram he sent to his nephew, and that simple guy hasn’t art enough to deceive an old woman. Yes, Nate, it’s dead open and shut that the uncle comes from Dakota.”
Godard dropped back into his chair and fell to thinking.
He was thinking of Moses Flood’s brace deal box, then in his own possession.
He was thinking, too, of a deck of strippers, also in his possession, with which he could vary to his own advantage the turn of every card.
In the lives of those who pursue fickle fortune through the medium of games of chance there is no experience which so arouses a spirit of utter recklessness as that of protracted losing. Sooner or later it drives discretion from its seat and opens the door for hot-headed desperation.
Say why the moth flies madly into the flame that consumes him! Say why the screaming sea-gull dashes out his brains against the dazzling windows of the towering lighthouse! Say why the undetected murderer haunts the neighborhood of his bloody crime!
Give answer to these questions—and then you may say what frenzy of human nature led Nathan Godard to dare self-destruction in the passionate greed of an evil hour.
Presently he looked up, fixing his inflamed eyes upon Belle Braddon’s face.
“A sure thing?” said he hoarsely. “Yes, I can make it a sure thing, Belle, that we win his money!”