Page:An African Millionaire.djvu/277

264 I wearing the ring; and even with the naked eye I was able to distinguish in every case the suit and pips of the card that was dealt me.

'Why, that was almost dishonest,' the Senator said, drawing back. He wished to show us that even far-Western speculators drew a line somewhere.

'Yes,' the magazine editor echoed. 'To back your skill is legal; to back your luck is foolish; to back your knowledge is'

'Immoral,' I suggested.

'Very good business,' said the magazine editor.

'It's a simple trick,' Charles interposed. 'I should have spotted it if it had been done by any other fellow. But his patter about inspiration put me clean off the track. That's the rascal's dodge. He plays the regular conjurer's game of distracting your attention from the real point at issue—so well that you never find out what he’s really about till he's sold you irretrievably.'

We set the New York police upon the trail of the Colonel; but of course he had vanished at once, as usual, into the thin smoke of Manhattan. Not a sign could we find of him. 'Mary's,' we found an insufficient address.

We waited on in New York for a whole fortnight. Nothing came of it. We never found 'Mary's.' The only token of Colonel Clay's presence vouchsafed us in the city was one of his customary insulting notes. It was conceived as follows:—