Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/221

 "You didn't have your money with you?"

"Nope. Say, but the Irish are lucky. They can't beat us for luck. There's been a jinx hanging around me for months. It's like this. Two or three years ago I got mixed up in a Black Hand row. Sent 'em up the river. But some of them friends kept tab on me, and these wops laid for me in Naples, Florence, in Rome. Ye-ah. But here's William Grogan, large as life. They finally got to my letter of credit. Naples. They tried the game once in mid-Atlantic. And I never suspected it was a wop that jumped me that night. But they didn't get the pink book with my signature. In Rangoon a new one will be waiting for me at Cook's."

"And so you think you've laid the jinx?"

"Well, it begins to look like it."

"Didn't you tell me you knew the way back to the hotel?"

"And so I did. But I was invited to Madame Rene's soo-ary—the light fantastic, very light—and I went. And then somebody hit me on the bean with a gas-pipe."

"They rooked you, of course."

"Well, you might call it petty larceny. I had only four sovereigns and an old silver watch. So I guess the joke was on them. Caught a freight from Cairo to Suez. Bunged up a little, but nothing to speak of."

Camden folded his papers. "Grogan, I'll split a pint of wine."

"Wine? Nothing doing."