Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/282

266 "I said, but I guessed you didn't hear me, that I wasn't betting nickels tonight."

The dealer removed the cash box, shrugging. Truitt came out from behind his bar, saw what was wanted and asked for a moment to straighten matters. Pushing his way through the ever growing knot of men, he went to the safe, which stood in plain sight at the end of the bar, coming back with a buckskin bag.

"Forty-five hundred more, friend," announced Pete, the dealer, when his lightning swift fingers had made the count and dropped the money in place. "Close to seven thousand in sight. Will that do you for a while?"

"For a beginning, yes. Truitt, you'd better telephone to some of Joe Embry's other gambling houses for some more money."

"Don't know what you mean, Embry's houses. ..."

Steele shrugged.

"Ask Embry, then. Also, you'd better give me a few more counters. Will you honour another check for a thousand?"

"Yes," retorted Truitt. "Write it."

Steele wrote, cashed it, and placed his first bet. The ivory ball was whizzing, the red and black and green sections of the table inviting him. Leaning forward, he put a stack of ten twenty-dollar pieces on the double-O.

Swift word went back and forth through the long room that Bill Steele, the man of Hell's Goblet, was bucking the bank; that he had placed his first bet of two hundred dollars; that he had bought two thousand