Skippy Bedelle Part 36

"We must make 'em think we're high rollers;--yachts, race horses, and all that."

"Well, how?"

Snorky thought a third time.

"How much money have you got?" said Skippy suddenly.

"In cash?"

"Sure. On you."

"About forty-three dollars," said Snorky, who from time to time had been feeling with his fingers to a.s.sure himself that no pickpocket had outwitted him.

"Fork it out. I've got an idea."

"Is it all right?" said Snorky, who had reason to dread the Skippy imagination.

"Fine and dandy. Don't worry. Trust me. Show 'em up."

Snorky produced a twenty, two tens and three common-a-garden ones.

"You keep a twenty and you stick it on top. Then you change the two tens into ones and that makes some whopping wad, doesn't it?"

"Say, I don't get--"

"Leave it to me," said Skippy, who led the way to the cigar counter.

Ten minutes later Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Mr. Snorky Green, with large banded cigars, entered the ladies' saloon and carelessly installed themselves at a table next but one to that occupied by the young girls.

"Well, old sport," said Snorky, twirling the mercifully unsmoked cigar in his fingers. "Suppose we go over our accounts?"

"Always be businesslike," said Skippy, poising a pencil over a sheet of paper with plutocratic nonchalance.

"Owe you thirty-five plunks for last night's poker game," said Snorky, raising his voice sufficiently.

"That's right, and I owe--"

"Hold on, me first."

Snorky dug into his trousers and came up with a roll of greenbacks that made the colored porter who happened to be pa.s.sing stumble in his step.

"Twenty and ten and five, makes thirty-five," he said, peeling them off with a nimble exhibition of legerdemain which kept the lower bills well concealed.

"Keerect," said Skippy, sweeping them towards him with a languidly indifferent air.

"Then I borrowed a ten spot to tip the head waiter. Remember?"

"I do remember."

"Five and five. Correct?"

"Keerect."

"How do we stand on the ponies?"

"Only fair," said Skippy. "We lost two and won one. I couldn't get our money up on the others."

"Let's see. It was twenty-five bones each, wasn't it?" said Snorky, jogging his elbow, to notify him that the impression they were making was simply stupendous.

"Right again."

"That sets me back fifty plunks. That's easy. Here you are, one, two, three, four, five tens. Correct?"

"Keerect," said Skippy, brus.h.i.+ng in the greenbacks, with the same casual motion of his hand.

"That squares me."

"It does."

"Now what's coming back?"

Skippy in turn, after certain struggles with his trousers pocket, brought forth a bundle which could have done credit to a cattle king and said, as he slipped the elastic,

"Twenty-five at five to one is just about one hundred and twenty-five."

"That's all right, but how about the tip to Spike Murphy?"

"Spike Murphy?" said Skippy, looking at him hard.

"The fellow who put us wise."

"Oh, that's all right," said Skippy, recovering a proper sporting manner. "Forget that. I cleaned up enough to handle a little thing like that."

"Lucky dog!"

"One hundred and twenty-five," said Skippy, going through the proper motions. "Twenty once, twice, three times, four and five. One hundred, and ten and twenty and twenty--"

But at this moment, whether by chance, by intent or by the emotion caused by the display of such wealth, there was a crash from the nearby table and two magazines fell to the floor. Snorky, ever alert, sprang to his feet, retrieved the magazines and offered them to the blondest of the two with punctilious courtesy.

"Allow me. I believe these belong to you?"

"Oh thank you," said the young lady, looking quite distressed.

"Awfully warm night, isn't it?" said Snorky, whose heart was pumping at his own unexampled audacity.

"Sir, I do not think I have been introduced to you," said the young lady, stiffening and looking what to Snorky, at least, were daggers.

He uttered several unintelligible sounds, flushed a fiery red and backed away.