Page:The Voice of the City (1908).djvu/56

 useless to him while in the excited clutch of a 200-pound sporting gentleman who was about to lose $20,000 worth of paraphernalia.

After vanquishing his adversary the Kid hurried upstairs and through the gambling-room into a smaller apartment connecting by an arched doorway.

Here was a long table set with choicest chinaware and silver, and lavishly furnished with food of that expensive and spectacular sort of which the devotees of sport are supposed to be fond. Here again was to be perceived the liberal and florid taste of the gentleman with the urban cognomenal prefix.

A No. 10 patent leather shoe protruded a few of its inches outside the tablecloth along the floor. The Kid seized this and plucked forth a black man in a white tie and the garb of a servitor.

“Get up!” commanded the Kid. “Are you in charge of this free lunch?”

“Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag’in, boss?”

“Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any peaches in this layout? If there ain’t I’ll have to throw up the sponge.”

“There was three dozen, sah, when the game opened this evenin’; but I reckon the gentlemen done eat ’em all up. If you’d like to eat a fust-rate orange, sah, I kin find you some.”

“Get busy,” ordered the Kid, sternly, “and move