Poughkeepsie; and Levine wagered all of
his money, with other prosperous-looking guests in the car, under
the assumption that a bargain had been made between the "pugs" that
his man should win. But the supposed sports were all "boosters"
in his friend's pay and the other man won after a spirited exhibition,
which, although exciting, hardly consoled Levine for the loss of
his money.

It is a curious fact that those of my clients who made great sums
from time to time in ways similar to these rarely had any money;
most of them died in abject poverty. Sooner or later all ran foul
of the law and had to give up to the lawyers all they had managed
to lay by.

When at last John Holliday, a dealer in automatic musical instruments,
was "trimmed" out of sixty-five thousand dollars by various schemes
of this character, the tardy Legislature finally amended the penal
code in such a way as to do away with the farcical doctrine of the
McDuff case and drove all our erstwhile clients out of business.

CHAPTER VIII

"Shake hands with Mr. Dillingham, Quib," said Gottlieb as I one
day unexpectedly entered the latter's office. "We have a matter
on hand in which he is interested."

"Glad to know you, Mr. Quibble," quoth the client, extending a
rather soft hand. "Your name is well known to me, although I have
never personally had the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"The future will, I trust, remedy that," I replied, not particularly
impressed with the stranger's features or expression, but conscious
somehow of the smell of money about him. For he was short and fat
and wore a brown surtout and a black stovepipe hat, and his little
gray eyes peeped out of full, round, red cheeks. On his lower lip
we wore a tiny goatee.

"As I was saying," he continued, turning again to my partner, "we
all of us make mistakes and I made the biggest one when I annexed
the present Mrs. D. I was a young fool hardly out of my teens,
and the sight of a pretty face and a tearful story of woe were too
much for me. She was an actress. _Comprenez?_ A sort of Lydia
Languish, la-de-da kind of a girl. Oh, she caught me fast enough,
and it was only after I had swallowed the hook, sinker and all,
that I found out she was married."

"Ho-ho!" remarked Gottlieb. "The old story."

"The same little old story," assented Dillingham. "Take a cigar?"
He produced a well-filled case.

I dropped into a chair and hitched it toward them.

"Now, the fact of