Confidently Mr. Gilman picked up the left-hand shell, and a ludicrously bewildered look came over his face as he saw that the pellet was not under it. There was a laugh from the crowd. They had been waiting for another victim. Gilman looked hastily down at the trampled mass of straw and grass and muddy, black earth.
“The elusive little pea is not on the ground,” explained the brisk young man. “The elusive little pea is right here on the board in plain sight.”
To prove it he lifted up the center shell and displayed the pellet! There was another laugh. Not one person in that crowd had seen the dexterous movement of his little finger, so quick and certain that it was scarcely more than a quiver; but, to make sure that his “quickness of hand” had not been detected, he scanned every face about him swiftly and piercingly. In this inspection his eye happened to light on that of Jonathan Reuben Wix, and met a wink so knowing, and withal so bubbling with gleeful appreciation, that he was himself forced to grin.
“How you’ve wasted your young life,” commented Wix as he led away his still dazed companion. “I thought everybody knew that trick by this time, but I guess postmasters and bank clerks are always exempt.”
“But how did he do it?” protested Gilman. “I saw that little ball under the left-hand shell as plain as day.”
“That’s what he meant you to see,” returned Wix with a grin. “He let that one stop under the edge as if he were awkward, then he flipped it into the crook of his little finger. When he lifted the middle shell he shoved the ball under it. At the time you picked yours up there wasn’t a ball under any of the three shells. There never is.”
“I guess it’s too late for me to get an education,” sighed the other plaintively. “Smalley won’t give me a chance. I don’t even dare buy a new suit of clothes too often. I’d never see a bit of life if it wasn’t for this wheat speculation.”
Wix turned to him slowly.
“You want to let that game alone,” he cautioned.
“Oh, I’m cautious enough,” returned Gilman.
“You’re almost in full charge at the bank now, aren’t you?” observed Wix carelessly. “Smalley’s over at his new bank in Milton a good deal.”
“About half the time,” admitted Gilman uneasily.
“He keeps a big cash reserve, doesn’t he? Done up in bales, I suppose, and never looks at it except to count the mere bundles.”
“Of course.” Gilman was extremely nonchalant about it.
The other let him change the subject, but he found himself studying Clifford speculatively every now and then. This day was another deciding step in the future of Wix.
CHAPTER II
It was to Jonathan Reuben that the waiters in the dining-car paid profound attention, although Gilman had the money. There was something about young Wix’s breadth of chest and pinkness of countenance and clearness of smiling eye which marked him as one with whom good food agreed, whom good liquor cheered, and whom good service thawed to the point of gratitude and gratuities: whereas Clifford Gilman, take him any place, was only background, and not much of that.
“Say, General Jackson,” observed Wix pleasantly to the waiter, “put a quart of bubbles in the freezer while we study over this form sheet. Then bring us a dry Martini, not out of a bottle.”
“I reckon you’re going to have about what you want, boss,” said the negro with a grin, and darted away.
He talked with the steward, who first frowned, then smiled, as he looked back and saw the particular guest. A moment later he was mixing, and Clifford Gilman gazed upon his friend with most worshipful eyes. Here, indeed, was a comrade of whom to be proud, and by whom to pattern!
They had swallowed their oysters and had finished their soup, with a quart of champagne in a frosty silver bucket beside them and the entrée on the way, when the “captain” was compelled to seat a third passenger at their table. It was the black-eyed young man of the walnut shells.
At first, as with his quick sweep he recognized in Mr. Gilman one of his victims, he hesitated, but a glance at the jovial Mr. Wix reassured him.
“We’re just going to open a bottle of joy,” invited Wix. “Shall I send for another glass?”
“Surest thing, you know,” replied the other. “I’m some partial to headache water.”
“This is on the victim,” observed Wix with a laugh, as the cork was pulled. “You see he has coin left, even after attending your little party.”
“Pity I didn’t know he was so well padded,” grinned the black-eyed one, whereat all three laughed, Gilman more loudly than any of them. Gilman ceased laughing, however, to struggle with his increasing tendency toward cross-eyes.
Wix turned to him with something of contempt.
“He don’t mind the loss of twenty or so,” he dryly observed. “He’s in a business where he sees nothing but money all day long. He’s a highly trusted bank clerk.”
Instead of glancing with interest at Mr. Gilman, the black-eyed young man sharply scrutinized Mr. Wix. Then he smiled.
“And what line are you in?” he finally asked of Wix.
“I’ve been in everything,” confessed that joyous young gentleman with a chuckle, “and stayed in nothing. Just now, I’m studying law.”
“Doing nothing on the side?”
“Not a thing.”
“He can’t save any money to go into anything else,” laughed Gilman, momentarily awakened into a surprising semblance of life. “Every time he gets fifty dollars he goes out of town to buy a fancy meal.”
“You were born for easy money,” the black-eyed one advised Wix. “It’s that sort of a lip that drives us all into the shearing business.”
Wix shook his head.
“Not me,” said he. “The law books prove that easy money costs too much.”
The black-eyed one shrugged his shoulders.
“In certain lines it does,” he admitted. “I’m going to get out of my line right away, for that very reason. Besides,” he added with a sigh, “these educated town constables are putting the business on the bump-the-bumps. They’ve got so they want from half to two-thirds, and put a bookkeeper on the job.”
Mr. Gilman presently created a diversion by emitting a faint whoop, and immediately afterward went to sleep in the bread-platter. Wix sent for the porter of their sleeping-car, and between the two they put Mr. Gilman to bed. Before Wix returned to the shell expert he carefully extracted the money from his friend Clifford’s pocket.
“He won’t need it, anyhow,” he lightly explained, “and we will. I’ll tell him about it in the morning.”
“I guess you can do that and make him like it all right,” agreed the other. “He’s a born sucker. He can get to the fat money, can’t he?”
Wix shook his head.
“No,” he declared; “parents poor, and I don’t think he has enough ginger in him ever to make a pile of his own.”
The other was thoughtful and smiling for a time.
“He’ll get hold of it some way or other, mark what I tell you, and you might just as well have it as anybody. Somebody’s going to cop it. I think you said you lived in Filmore? Suppose I drop through there with a