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276 the breakfast rolls. Then he laughed as he followed my example and took one of them. "You know, it's years since I've done this sort of thing!"

"You mean—er—paid for things?" I calmly inquired, with a head-movement toward the roll plate.

He nodded his own head, almost gleefully, like a street-urchin who'd raided a fruit-cart.

"I find I fail quite often, in the little things," he acknowledged. "It's only the big coups that I care to count on."

"Such as half a million in a club-bag!" I suggested.

Still again he nodded his head.

"Well I want to talk about this club-bag, and certain things that happened last night," I told him.

He at once became serious.

"I was hoping you wouldn't go back to that." "Why?" I asked him.

"Because I thought perhaps you'd had all you wanted of that sort of thing, and would prefer talking about the future."

"I don't think I've got any future," I told him, with a gulp of self-pity that I couldn't altogether succeed in laughing down.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," he calmly retorted.