I obediently reached for it. My hand trembled. There were sixty or seventy dollars upon the table, and my own contribution was my last cent. As I fumbled I felt the strain of bodies pressing against mine, and heard the hiss of feverish breaths, and a foolish laugh or two. Nevertheless the silence seemed overpowering. I turned the card--the card with the bent corner, of which I was as certain as of my own name; I faced it up, confidently, my capital already doubled; and amidst a burst of astonished cries I stared dumbfounded. It was the eight of clubs! My fingers left it as though it were a snake. It was the eight of clubs! Where I had seen, in fancy, the queen of hearts, there lay like a changeling the eight of clubs, with corner bent as only token of the transformation. The crowd elbowed about me. With rapid movement the gambler raked in the bets--a slender hand flashed by me--turned the next card. The queen that was, after all. The gambler darkened, gathering the pasteboards. "We can't both win, gentlemen," he said, tone passionless. "But I am willing to give you one more chance, from a new deck." What the response was I did not know, nor care. My ears drummed confusedly, and seeing nothing I pushed through into the open, painfully conscious that I was flat penniless and that instead of having played the knave I had played the fool, for the queen of hearts. The loss of some twenty dollars might have been a trivial matter to me once--I had at times cast that sum away as vainly as Washington had cast a dollar across the Potomac; but here I had lost my all, whether large or small; and not only had I been bilked out of it--I had bilked myself out of it by sinking, in pretended smartness, below the level of a more artful dodger. I heard My Lady speaking beside me. "I'm so sorry." She laid hand upon my sleeve. "You should have been content with small sums, or followed my lead. Next time----" "There'll be no next time," I blurted. "I am cleaned out." "You don't mean----?" "I was first robbed at the hotel. Now here." "No, no!" she opposed. Jim sidled to us. "That was a bungle, Jim." He ruefully scratched his head. "A wrong steer for once, I reckon. I warn't slick enough. Too much money on the table. But it looked like the card; I never took my eyes off'n it. We'll try ag'in, and switch to another layout. By thunder, I want revenge on this joint and I mean to get it. So do you, don't you, pardner?" he appealed to me. As with mute, sickly denial I turned away it seemed to me that I sensed a shifting of forms at the monte table--caught the words "You watch here a moment"; and close following, a slim white hand fell heavily upon My Lady's shoulder. It whirled her about, to face the gambler. His smooth olive countenance was dark with a venom of rage incarnate that poisoned the air; his syllables crackled.