-what?"

"Five thousand dollars--that is fair enough," Benito answered. He was
trembling with excitement. McTurpin watched him hawk-like, seeming to
consider. "Bring us ink and paper, Jack," he called to Cooper, and when
the latter had complied, he wrote some half a dozen lines upon a sheet.

"Sign that. Get two witnesses ... you, Jack, and this fellow here," he
indicated Potts imperiously. He laid his cards face down upon the table
and extracted deftly from some inner pocket a thick roll of greenbacks.
Slowly, almost meticulously, he counted them before the gaping tableful
of players. Fifty hundred-dollar bills.

"American greenbacks," he spoke crisply. "A side bet with our friend,
the Senor Windham." He shoved the money toward the center of the table,
slightly apart from the rest.

Benito waveringly picked up the pen. It shook in his unsteady fingers.
"Wait," Potts pleaded. But the young man brooked no intervention. With a
flourish he affixed his signature. McTurpin picked up the pen as Benito
dropped it. "Put your name on as a witness," he demanded of the host.
"Jack the Sailor" shook his head. "I've no part in this," he said, and
turned his back upon them. "Nor I," Potts answered to a similar
invitation.

McTurpin took the paper. "Well, it doesn't matter. You've all seen him
sign it: You ... and you ... and you." His finger pointed to a trio of
the nearest players, and their nods sufficed him, evidently. He weighted
the contract with a gold-piece from his own plethoric pile.

"Show down! Show down!" cried the others. Triumphantly Benito laid five
cards upon the table. Four of them were kings. A little cry of
satisfaction arose, for sympathy was with the younger player. McTurpin
sat unmoved. Then he threw an ace upon the table. Followed it with a
second. Then a third. And, amid wondering murmurs, a fourth.

He reached out his hand for the stakes. Benito sat quite still. The
victorious light had gone out of his eyes, but not a muscle moved. One
might have thought him paralyzed or turned to stone by his misfortune.
McTurpin's hand closed almost stealthily upon the paper. There was a
smile of cool and calculating satisfaction on his thin lips as he drew
the stake toward him.

Then with an electrifying suddenness, Benito sprang upon him. "Cheat!"
he screamed. "You fleeced me like a robber. I knew. I understood it when
you looked at me like that."

Quick as McTurpin was in parrying attack--for he had frequent ne