Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/172

160 calculation and appreciation of the ultimate disposition of forces, which, if you are cute enough to see it, must come. On the other hand, however, it requires deduction, the art of discovering the enemy's plans and movements in the future by utilizing the few, and often trivial, signs vouchsafed to you by the play in the early part of the hand.

The man with the exact, mathematical mind will win at chess. Whist wants more than that; it wants an argumentative and reasoning brain with the faculty of putting two and two together, and, at the same time, the cunning necessary to mislead the adversary in his deductive reasoning with regard to you.

I mention this, because in my duel with young Anderson, it was my superior power of reasoning from small things to big, which enabled me to follow his coffin to the grave, instead of vice versa.

This young man—he had only been qualified two years—came to me with the most flattering testimonials from his college and hospital, and he had that keen and alert look about his small, closely set, greenish eyes with their light eyelashes, and almost invisible eyebrows, which showed a brain quick to understand,