There were five of us. Thaler sat down and lit a cigarette, a small dark young man with a face that was pretty in a chorusman way until you took another look at the thin hard mouth. An angular blond kid of no more than twenty in tweeds sprawled on his back on a couch and blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling. Another boy, as blond and as young, but not so angular, was busy straightening his scarlet tie, smoothing his yellow hair. A thin-faced man of thirty with little or no chin under a wide loose mouth wandered up and down the room looking bored and humming “ Rosy Cheeks .”

I sat in a chair two or three feet from Thaler’s.

“How long is Noonan going to keep this up?” he asked. There was no emotion in his hoarse whispering voice, only a shade of annoyance.

“He’s after you this trip,” I said. “I think he’s going through with it.”

The gambler smiled a thin, contemptuous smile.