The Swindler and Other Stories | Page 2

her voice.
"Don't you want him to be caught?"
He pitched his cigarette overboard and turned to her with less of
churlishness in his bearing.
She met his eyes quite frankly.
"I should just love him to get away," she declared, with kindling eyes.
"Oh, I know he's a regular sharper, and he's swindled heaps of
people--I'm one of them, so I know a little about it. He swindled me out
of five hundred dollars, and I can tell you I was mad at first. But now
that he is flying from justice, I'm game enough to want him to get away.
I suppose my sympathies generally lie with the hare, Mr. West. I'm
sorry if it annoys you, but I was created that way."
West was frowning, but he smiled with some cynicism over her last
remarks.

"Besides," she continued, "I couldn't help admiring him. He has a
regular genius for swindling--that man. You'll agree with me there?"
A sudden heavy roll of the vessel pitched her forward before he could
reply. He caught her round the waist, saving her from a headlong fall,
and she clung to him, laughing like a child at the mishap.
"I think I'll have to go below," she decided regretfully. "But you've
been good to me, and I'm glad I spoke. I've always been somewhat
prejudiced against detectives till to-day. My cousin Archie--you saw
him in the cardroom last night--vowed you were nothing half so
interesting. Why is it, I wonder, that detectives always look like
journalists?" She looked at him with eyes of friendly criticism. "You
didn't deceive me, you see. But then"--ingenuously--"I'm clever in
some ways, much more clever than you'd think. Now you won't cut me
next time we meet, will you? Because--perhaps--I'm going to ask you
to do something for me."
"What do you want me to do?"
The man's voice was hard, his eyes cold as steel, but his question had in
it a shade--just a shade--of something warmer than mere curiosity.
She took him into her confidence without an instant's hesitation.
"My cousin Archie--you may have noticed--you were looking on last
night--he's a very careless player, and headstrong too. But he can't
afford to lose any, and I don't want him to come to grief. You see, I'm
rather fond of him."
"Well?"
The man's brows were drawn down over his eyes. His expression was
not encouraging.
"Well," she proceeded, undismayed, "I saw you looking on, and you
looked as if you knew a few things. So I thought you'd be a safe person
to ask. I can't look after him; and his mother--well, she's worse than

useless. But a man--a real strong man like you--is different. If I were to
introduce you, couldn't you look after him a bit--just till we get
across?"
With much simplicity she made her request, but there was a tinge of
anxiety in her eyes. Certainly West, staring steadily forth over the grey
waste of tumbling waters, looked sufficiently forbidding.
After several seconds of silence he flung an abrupt question:
"Why don't you ask some one else?"
"There is no one else," she answered.
"No one else?" He made a gesture of impatient incredulity.
"No one that I can trust," she explained.
"And you trust me?"
"Of course I do."
"Why?" Again he looked at her with a piercing scrutiny. His eyes held
a savage, almost a threatening expression.
But the girl only laughed, lightly and confidently.
"Why? Oh, just because you are trustworthy, I guess. I can't think of
any other reason."
West's look relaxed, became abstracted, and finally fell away from her.
"You appear to be a lady of some discernment," he observed drily.
She proffered her hand impulsively, her eyes dancing.
"My, that's the first pretty thing you've said to me!" she declared
flippantly. "I just like you, Mr. West!"

West was feeling for his cigarette case. He gave her his hand without
looking at her, as if her approbation did not greatly gratify him. When
she was gone he moved away along the wind-swept deck with his
collar up to his ears and his head bent to the gale. His conversation with
the American girl had not apparently made him feel any more sociably
inclined towards his fellow-passengers.
* * * * *
Certainly, as Cynthia had declared, young Archibald Bathurst was an
exceedingly reckless player. He lacked the judgment and the cool brain
essential to a good cardplayer, with the result that he lost much more
often than he won. But notwithstanding this fact he had a passion for
cards which no amount of defeat could abate--a passion which he never
failed to indulge whenever an opportunity presented itself.
At the very moment when his cousin was making her petition on his
behalf to the surly Englishman on deck,