As Clay looked around it struck him that the personnel of this gambling-den's patrons was a singularly depressing one. All told there were not a dozen respectable-looking people in the room. Most of those present were derelicts of life, the failures of a great city washed up by the tide. Some were pallid, haggard wretches clinging to the vestiges of a prosperity that had once been theirs. Others were hard-faced ruffians from the underworld. Not a few bore the marks of the drug victim. All of those playing had a manner of furtive suspicion. They knew that if they risked their money the house would rob them. Yet they played.
Bromfield bought a small stack of chips at the roulette table.
"Won't you take a whirl at the wheel?" he asked Lindsay.
"Thanks, no, I believe not," his guest answered.
The Westerner was a bit disgusted at his host's lack of discrimination. "Does he think I'm a soft mark too?" he wondered. "If this is what he calls high life I've had more than enough already."
His disgust was shared by the clubman. Bromfield had never been in such a dive before. His gambling had been done in gilded luxury. While he touched shoulders with this motley crew his nostrils twitched with fastidious disdain. He played, but his interest was not in the wheel. Durand had promised that there would be women and that one of them should be bribed to make a claim upon Clay at the proper moment. He had an unhappy feeling that the gang politician had thrown him down in this. If so, what did that mean? Had Durand some card up his sleeve? Was he using him as a catspaw to rake in his own chestnuts?
Clarendon Bromfield began to weaken. He and Clay were the only two men in the room in evening clothes. His questing eye fell on tough, scarred faces that offered his fears no reassurance. Any one or all of them might be agents of Durand.
He shoved all of his chips out, putting half of them on number eight and the rest on seventeen. His object was to lose his stack immediately and be free to go. To his annoyance the whirling ball dropped into the pocket labeled eight.
"Let's get out of this hole," he said to Lindsay in a low voice. "I don't like it."
"Suits me," agreed the other.