pride, touched a button near the door, and
the huge canvas and Bouguereau-looking group of bathing women painted
upon it disappeared from view, disclosing to Frank's startled eyes a
bulletin blackboard, such as is used in almost every poolroom, for the
chalking up of entries and the announcement of jockeys and weights and
odds.

MacNutt pressed a second button, and the twelve electric fans of
burnished brass hummed and sang and droned, and filled the room with a
stir of air.

"A little diff'rent, my dear, from the way they did business when you
and me were pikers, up in the West Forties, eh?"

Frank remained silent, as the bathing women, with a methodic click of
the mechanism, once more dropped down through the slit in the picture
frame, and hid the red-lined bulletin board from view.

"Gamblers, like us, always were weak on art," gibed MacNutt. "There's
Dick Penfield, spendin' a hundred thousand a year on pictures an' vases
an' rugs, and Sam Brucklin makin' his Saratoga joint more like a second
Salon than a first-class bucket-shop, and Larry Wintefield, who knows
more about a genuine Daghestan than you or me knows about a Morse
sounder, and Al MacAdam, who can't buy chinaware fast enough! As for
me, I must say I have a weakness for a first-class nood!" The woman
beside him shuddered. "That's all right--but I guess a heap o' these
painters would be quittin' the profession if it wasn't for folks of our
callin'!"

Frank's roving but unresponding eyes were taking in the huge mahogany
table, in the centre of the room, the empty, high-backed chairs
clustered around it, the countless small round tables, covered with
green cloth, which flanked the walls, and the familiar Penfield symbol,
of three interlaced crescents, which she saw stamped or embossed on
everything.

He went to one of the five cherry-wood desks which were strewn about
the room, and still again touched a button.

"Blondie," he said to the capped and aproned attendant who answered the
call from the hair-dressing parlors, "I want you to meet this lady
friend of mine! Miss Frances Candler, this is Miss Blondie Bonnell,
late of Wintefield's Saratoga Sanitarium for sick purses, and still
later of MacAdam's Mott Street branch! Now, Blondie, like a good girl,
run along and get the lady something to drink!"

This proffered refreshment the outraged lady in question silently
refused, staring tight-lipped at the walls about her. But MacNutt, on
this sco