“I’m coming, too,” declared Belle, as he led the way. “I want to see how you Westerners go at the game, Mr. Hedge.”
“We go at it, gal, like a bull at a gate,” Nick loudly laughed, slipping his arm around her as they mounted the stairs.
Green already had the room brightly lighted, yet he gave no sign of ever having seen the visitors.
The faro-room was, barring the elaborate furnishings at Flood’s, not unlike that previously described, and a sonorous laugh broke from Nick Carter when he beheld the layout on the table and saw the preparations which had been made for the game.
“Waal, she does have a durned natural look, Godard,” he cried, in stentorian tones. “How much can I sit to win?”
“Your expenses, at least,” Godard significantly replied, joining in the other’s laugh.
Nick’s expressive eyes evinced just the least bit of disappointment when he perceived the pack of cards laid carelessly on a chair at one side of the table, but when Nathan Godard took his seat back of the layout, and then produced a pack from behind the check-rack, a momentary blaze fired their somber depths, only to wane again to a steady glow like that of burning coals through the darkness.
Nick recognized the deck of cards at a glance.
It was the same deck of strippers with which Moses Flood had dealt himself a loser and afterward strapped in the satchel with the money he had paid to Cecil Kendall, less than one hour before the latter was murdered in the rectory grounds.
They were very positive evidence of Nathan Godard’s guilt, yet Nick knew that there were other cards like them, and foresaw that even further proof was desirable. A profound reader of human nature, as well as a man of tremendous mental force, Nick was planning to drive the wretch opposite to a frenzy of excitement when, at the proper time, he could evoke from him an involuntary yet absolute self-betrayal.