“I should hardly rank you as a Harley Street consultant, sir,” I swiftly retorted, which was slanging him enormously because he had turned forty. I mean to say, there was but one thing he could take me as meaning him to be, since at forty I considered him no physician. But at least I had not been too blunt, the touch about the Harley Street consultant being rather neat, I thought, yet not too subtle for him. He now demanded a pipe of tobacco, and for a time smoked in silence. I could see that his mind worked painfully. “Stiffish lot, those Americans,” he said at last. “They do so many things one doesn’t do,” I answered. “And their brogue is not what one could call top-hole, is it now? How often they say ‘I guess!’ I fancy they must say it a score of times in a half-hour.” “I fancy they do, sir,” I agreed. “I fancy that Johnny with the eyebrows will say it even oftener.” “I fancy so, sir. I fancy I’ve counted it well up to that.” “I fancy you’re quite right. And the chap ‘guesses’ when he awfully well knows, too. That’s the essential rabbit. To-night he said ‘I guess I’ve got you beaten to a pulp,’ when I fancy he wasn’t guessing at all. I mean to say, I swear he knew it perfectly.” “You lost the game of drawing poker?” I asked coldly, though I knew he had carried little to lose. “I lost----” he began. I observed he was strangely embarrassed. He strangled over his pipe and began anew: “I said that to play the game soundly you’ve only to know when to bluff. Studied it out myself, and jolly well right I was, too, as far as I went. But there’s further to go in the silly game. I hadn’t observed that to play it greatly one must also know when one’s opponent is bluffing.” “Really, sir?” “Oh, really; quite important, I assure you. More important than one would have believed, watching their silly ways. You fancy a chap’s bluffing when he’s doing nothing of the sort. I’d enormously have liked to know it before we played. Things would have been so awfully different for us”--he broke off curiously, paused, then added--“for you.” “Different for me, sir?” His words seemed gruesome. They seemed open to some vaguely sinister interpretation. But I kept myself steady. “We live and learn, sir,” I said, lightly enough. “Some of us learn too late,” he replied, increasingly ominous. “I take it you failed to win the hundred pounds, sir?” {Illustration: “I TAKE IT YOU FAILED TO WIN THE HUNDRED POUNDS, SIR?”} “I have the hundred pounds; I won it--by losing.” Again he evaded my eye. “Played, indeed, sir,” said I. “You jolly well won’t believe that for long.” Now as he had the hundred pounds, I couldn’t fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy as he studied my future.