well aft, but from where they could keep an observant eye on the door of the cabin occupied by the complacent “Sure-thing men.”

“So that’s the way of it, eh?” Goliath rumbled.

“Looks like it.”

“Reckon we ought to wise him up. I’d not do that, if it wasn’t for—ummh!—the way he acted there in the hotel and—it’s better for him to give his money away where it’ll do some good, than pass it over to a couple of sharks.”

After a time, the door they had under observation opened, and two men sauntered out who were neither over nor underdressed, but had the appearance of being nothing more than possibly a pair of small-town merchants. The partners marked them well for future identification and patiently waited for Lucky Cochran to appear. He came after a further interval, and David, with characteristic bluntness, opened up on him.

“You played poker until three o’clock this mornin’ with some strangers,” he said, staring at the prosperous one. “And me and my pardner have found out that they’re nothin’ but a pair of sharps out to do you.”

“Out to do me? Out to do Lucky Cochran? It’s a joke! Why, boys, I won fifteen hundred dollars last night. Nobody can beat me. I’m Cochran. Lucky Cochran!”

And his “Haw, haw, haw!” was so loud it startled even the deck steward, who barely missed dropping a cup of hot coffee he was carrying to an invalid, and prompted an A. B. on the boat deck to peer over, to learn whether there was a menagerie aboard.

“Oh, you’re lucky, are you?” David answered with a badly concealed sneer. “And you’ve won at the first sitting, have you? Well, see here, Cochran, I’m goin’ to tell you something. The boob always wins at first—until the stakes get high. After that his luck changes. If we’re either locoed, or talkin’ through our hats, I’ll tell you what we overheard this mornin’.” And then, in confidential tones, he repeated all the conversation that had come through the cabin window shutters, and ended with, “If you’ll take a little pasear with me I’ll point the two crooks out to you, so that you can steer clear of another game with them, and quit fifteen hundred to the good.”

“Psho!” said Lucky Cochran. “You don’t mean it! Come on and show ’em to me.”

The three men promenaded the deck, casually looked into the smoke room, and finally discovered their quarry in the bows holding 

 Prev. P 8/16 next