y he had
thrust these two things there when he saw me pursuing him, and had
forgotten or neglected them in the heat of the melee.

I looked at it close. It was the very ring I had noticed on his
finger while he was playing Swedish poker. It had a large compound
gem in the centre, set with many facets, and rising like a pyramid
to a point in the middle. There were eight faces in all, some of
them composed of emerald, amethyst, or turquoise. But _one_ face--the
one that turned at a direct angle towards the wearer's eye--was _not_
a gem at all, but an extremely tiny convex mirror. In a moment I
spotted the trick. He held this hand carelessly on the table while
my brother-in-law dealt; and when he saw that the suit and number of
his own card mirrored in it by means of the squeezers were better
than Charles's, he had "an inspiration," and backed his luck--or
rather his knowledge--with perfect confidence. I did not doubt,
either, that his odd-looking eyeglass was a powerful magnifier which
helped him in the trick. Still, we tried another deal, by way of
experiment--I wearing the ring; and even with the naked eye I was
able to distinguish in every case the suit and pips of the card that
was dealt me.

"Why, that was almost dishonest," the Senator said, drawing back.
He wished to show us that even far-Western speculators drew a line
somewhere.

"Yes," the magazine editor echoed. "To back your skill is legal;
to back your luck is foolish; to back your knowledge is--"

"Immoral," I suggested.

"Very good business," said the magazine editor.

"It's a simple trick," Charles interposed. "I should have spotted
it if it had been done by any other fellow. But his patter about
inspiration put me clean off the track. That's the rascal's dodge.
He plays the regular conjurer's game of distracting your attention
from the real point at issue--so well that you never find out what
he's really about till he's sold you irretrievably."

We set the New York police upon the trail of the Colonel; but of
course he had vanished at once, as usual, into the thin smoke of
Manhattan. Not a sign could we find of him. "Mary's," we found an
insufficient address.

We waited on in New York for a whole fortnight. Nothing came of it.
We never found "Mary's." The only token of Colonel Clay's presence
vouchsafed us in the city was one of his customary insulting notes.
It was conceived as follows:--

"O ETERNAL GULLIBLE!--Since I saw you on Lake Geor