an, I want
it very badly. If you'll let me have it to-night I shall be obliged to
you. I've been hit rather hard this last day or two. Shall we make that
a bargain? To-night?'

'I--I'm afraid,' Barter stammered, 'it's no use talking about to-night.'

'Well,' said Steinberg, with a pitiless uninterested suavity, 'you know
the rules.'

He drew a little book from his pocket, and tossed it over the table to
his guest.

'You'll find it on page five. Rule fourteen. It's ticked in red ink, if
you'll take the trouble to look at it.'

Barter opened the book and consulted its pages blindly for a while, and
then the mist which seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing away,
he read the pages indicated. It set forth the principle that all moneys
lost at games of skill or chance, or upon bets made within the limits
of the club, were payable within four-and-twenty hours. It set forth
further that debts not paid within that time might be brought under the
notice of the Committee, who were empowered to act under Rule nine. Rule
nine ordained the public posting of the defaulter's name, his suspension
in default of payment, and, in case of continued obduracy or poverty,
his expulsion.

'First and last, Steinberg,' said the wretched criminal, who began to
find the way of the transgressor unreasonably hard and thorny, 'first
and last, you've had a pretty tidy handful of money out of me.'

'Well, yes,' said Steinberg tangibly. 'Pretty fair.'

His very admission of this fact made Barter's case seem hopeless to
himself. If he had brow-beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger or
impatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist some
slenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he seemed
immovable.

'You'd better persuade her,' he said, with a scarcely perceptible grin.
Looking at Barter, and observing that he sat with his eyes still bent
upon the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed the grin to
broaden. Barter, suddenly looking up at him, saw him smiling like a
gargoyle, with a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning.

'You won't find her hard to persuade, I'm sure,' said Steinberg. 'Come,
now, I'll talk business to you. I'll take ten of 'em for it, and cry
quits, and I wouldn't do that for anybody but a friend.'

The frank admission of the value of his own friendship was plainly
legible in that gargoyle smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly.

'I'll--I'll see wha