"Well," said I, "what was wrong with that?" "Wait. The hundred-dollar bet started Joe to thinking. He had been bumping into topping hands all the evening, and Davidson knew it. "'If I were you,' says Davidson in a nice kind tone of voice, 'I wouldn't call that bet. Luck is against you to-night, and I'd advise you, as a friend, to lay that pat hand down and forget it.' "Joe looked at him for a long time and then he looked at his cards; you see he'd been beaten so often that he'd lost his sense of values. "'You think I hadn't better play these?' asks Joe. "'I've given you a tip,' says Davidson. 'I hate to see a man go up against a sure thing.' "'Well,' says Joe at last, 'I guess you've done me a favour. It wasn't much of a full anyway,' and he spread his hand on the table. Davidson didn't show his cards--he pitched 'em into the discard and raked in the pot--not more than fifteen dollars outside of his hundred." "And what of that?" I asked. "Oh, nothing," said Waddles; "nothing, only I was dealing the next hand, and I arranged to get a flash at the five cards that Davidson tried to bury in the middle of the deck." "What did he have?" Waddles snorted angrily. "Four diamonds and a spade! A four flush, that's what he had! The two sevens alone would have beaten him! And all that sympathetic talk, that bum steer, just to cheat the big loser out of one measly pot! What do you think of a fellow who'd do a trick like that?" I told him what I thought, and again there was silence and cheese. "Do you think Mary is going to marry that--that crook?" demanded Waddles. "That's what they say." More cheese. "I'd like to tell her," said Waddles thoughtfully, "but it's just one of the things that isn't being done this season. I'd like to give her a line on that handsome scalawag--before it's too late. I can't waltz up to her and tell her that he's bogus. There must be some other way. But how? How?" Waddles sighed and attacked the cheese again. You'd hardly think that a man could get an inspiration out of the kind of cheese that our House Committee buys to give away, but before Waddles left the club that evening he informed me that a mixed-foursome tournament wouldn't be half bad--for a change. "You won't get many entries," said I. "You know how the men fight shy of any golf with women in it." "Don't want many." "Then why a tournament?" I asked. "The entry fees won't pay for the cups." "I'm giving the cups," said Waddles, and investigated the cheese bowl once more. "Two of 'em. One male cup and one female cup. About sixteen dollars they'll set me back, but I've an idea--just a sneaking, lingering scrap of a notion--that I'll get my money's worth." And he went away mumbling to himself and blowing cracker crumbs out of his mouth. IV