Goyle put his hand on Bodney's shoulder. "I see you are in a hurry to get back to the game. All right, but keep your mind on my proposition."
"A proposition that hasn't been made," replied Bodney, getting up from the table. The game was re-forming, for the poker player does not dawdle over a meal; he eats just as a pig does—as fast as he can.
It seemed that Bodney's luck had come to stay. "You make your third man every time," said a losing wretch whose rent was past due. A kindlier eye might have seen through him his ragged children, but the eye of the winner looks at his stack—no poverty and no wretchedness softens its glitter.
The offensive fellow was there, sitting to the left of Bodney, but he was not offensive now; defeat had subdued him; and the Professor was present, in the darkness of hard luck, and with his air of mystery. "You either made your hand or you didn't," he said to a man who had drawn one card.
"You ought to know," the man replied, looking at him with a steady eye. "You are a mind-reader."
"Yes, when there is a mind to read. I will call you." He did so and lost his money.
"You knew what I had in my note," said Bodney. "Don't you remember, when I met you on the corner? You said it was written with a pencil. Why couldn't you tell what that man held—whether or not he had made his flush?"
"Both science and psychology stop and grow dizzy when they come to cards," the Professor replied.
Goyle came in and put his hand on Bodney's shoulder. "Slaughter 'em," he said. "You've got everything coming your way."
"But I don't know how long it will last," Bodney replied.