"O, hang dinner!" cried his brother. "Let us play until I'm cleaned out. I mean to stop at another hundred."
Crawford felt himself nod more than once between that and nine o'clock. He could no longer readily distinguish hearts from diamonds or spades from clubs. He heard noises in his ears, and every now and then he had to shake himself up sharply to make himself realise where he was.
"Crawford, you're falling asleep," said the eldest of the brothers, "and I've got beyond that hundred. Shall we stop? We've been at it twenty-four hours."
"I've been at it nearly thirty-six," said Crawford, rising. "I have had no sleep for forty-eight hours. I cannot see the cards."
"Shall we all dine together?" asked Staples. "This is an occasion which we ought to mark in some way or other."
"For my part," said Crawford, "I could eat nothing. I could not swallow a morsel until I sleep. I shall take a hansom and drive home."
As he stumbled stupidly into the cab that evening he carried away from the Counter Club two hundred pounds in gold, four hundred in notes, and sixteen hundred in cheques, making in all twenty-two hundred pounds, or seventeen hundred pounds more than he had brought into it the evening before. He directed the man to drive to Welford Bridge, and then settled himself comfortably in a corner to sleep on the way.
Before falling asleep he put his hand into his back pocket to ascertain if the revolver was there. "It's all right," he muttered. "After all, it's a great comfort to have it and to know I can defend myself and protect my money. But in reality, it isn't my money, but Hetty's. She brought me the luck. That's as plain as--" He started and stopped for a moment. A vivid flash of lightning had roused and stopped him for a second. "That's as plain as the lightning I have just seen." Before the long roll of the distant thunder died in the east he was asleep.
In little over an hour the cab reached the South London Canal. The driver raised the trap in the roof, and shouted down:
"Welford Bridge, sir."