Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/207

Rh think he had overcome the scruples of the other.

Smithers led the cowboy down one street and up another, and at last they came to a dark passage, and went up three flights of stairs, where he pushed open the door of a shabby room and they found a man sitingsitting [sic] beside an ordinary wooden table of the roughest sort.

"I say!" cried Smithers, "have you got that piece of gold of mine?"

"Yes," said the other, grumblingly, "if you've got the money to pay me what you owe."

"I got the money," replied Smithers bitterly; "at least I've got a friend here who'll put up the money, and I guess that's the same thing."

"Yes," cried Tom, "and you may be plagued glad that you're not out in Texas, where you'd get your cursed head blown off."

The man in the room looked in alarm at the huge figure of Tom, and as he did so, Tom seemed to recognize him, but could not think where he had met him. The man rose hastily and went to a cupboard, and brought out a huge lump of yellow metal.

"There it is," he said, placing the metal on the table.

Tom pulled out his long leather pocketbook from his inside pocket, and counted out the three thousand dollars. The other, rolling it up in a bundle, thrust it in his trousers pocket, and pushed the lump of gold towards the cowboy.

"There," said Smithers, "you take that as security."

"Security be hanged," cried Tom with indignation. "You drop round at my hotel to-morrow. Come about four o'clock, and I'll stay in for you."

"Very well," said Smithers, shaking him warmly by the hand. "I'll take this now and get my money for it."

Tom went down the stairs alone, and the two men looked at each other with a grin.

"I'll be hanged," said Smithers, "if it isn't too disgustingly easy."

"Oh," said the other man, "he'll soon meet some one who will put him on to the game, so we'd better close up this establishment as quickly as possible, and get away." Which they accordingly did.

Only once did suspicion cross the mind of Tom Stover. As he was walking up Broadway it suddenly came to him that the man in the room was the same who had accosted him and asked if he were not John Bloomingdale. He wondered at the coincidence, because he had been much struck within the past day or two with the size of New York and the impossibility of meeting any one a person knew.

Four o'clock next day arrived, but no Smithers came with it. It was late that evening when Tom confided the situation to the hotel clerk. After waiting till six o'clock, he had roamed about the city trying to find the room to which Smithers had taken him, but he could not even find the saloon where they had first drank together. It was late at night when he returned, and, ashamed of himself for harboring unworthy suspicions, he hesitatingly told the clerk what had happened to him. The clerk looked at him with unfeigned amazement.

"Well," he said, "if I had had any idea that you were so green as that I would have put you on your guard. It never struck me that you would be taken in by the first gold-brick man you met on the streets. You've been buncoed. How much money did they get out of you?"