"Oh, really; quite important, I assure you. More important than one
would have believed, watching their silly ways. You fancy a chap's
bluffing when he's doing nothing of the sort. I'd enormously have
liked to know it before we played. Things would have been so awfully
different for us"--he broke off curiously, paused, then added--"for
you."

"Different for me, sir?" His words seemed gruesome. They seemed open
to some vaguely sinister interpretation. But I kept myself steady.

"We live and learn, sir," I said, lightly enough.

"Some of us learn too late," he replied, increasingly ominous.

"I take it you failed to win the hundred pounds, sir?"

[Illustration: "I TAKE IT YOU FAILED TO WIN THE HUNDRED POUNDS, SIR?"]

"I have the hundred pounds; I won it--by losing."

Again he evaded my eye.

"Played, indeed, sir," said I.

"You jolly well won't believe that for long."

Now as he had the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and
all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me
on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get
me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark,