"Just how much are you counting on this marriage between yourself and the colonel?" he asked bluntly.

The actress laughed and poured cream into her coffee. A line came and went on her forehead between her eyes. Sam thought she looked capable.

"I have been thinking of what you told me at the stage door," she said, and a childlike smile played about her lips. "Do you know, Mr.

McPherson, I can't just figure you. I can't just see how you get into this. Where are your credentials, anyway?"

Sam, keeping his eyes upon her face, took a jump into the dark.

"It's this way," he said, "I'm something of an adventurer myself. I fly the black flag. I come from where you do. I had to reach out my hand and take what I wanted. I do not blame you in the least, but it just happens that I saw Colonel Tom Rainey first. He is my game and I do not propose to have you fooling around. I am not bluffing. You have got to get off him."

Leaning forward, he stared at her intently, and then lowered his voice.

"I've got your record. I know the man you used to live with. He's going to help me get you if you do not drop it."

Sitting back in his chair Sam watched her gravely. He had taken the odd chance to win quickly by a bluff and had won. But Luella London was not to be defeated without a struggle.

"You lie," she cried, half springing from her chair. "Frank has never--"

"Oh yes, Frank has," answered Sam, turning as though to call a waiter; "I will have him here in ten minutes if you wish to be shown."

Picking up a fork the woman began nervously picking holes in the table cloth and a tear appeared upon her cheek. She took a handkerchief from a bag that hung hooked over the back of a chair at the side of the table and wiped her eyes.

"All right! All right!" she said, bracing herself, "I'll drop it. If you've dug up Frank Robson you've got me. He'll do anything you say for a piece of money."

For some minutes the two sat in silence. A tired look had come into the woman's eyes.

"I wish I was a man," she said. "I get whipped at everything I tackle because I'm a woman. I'm getting past my money-making days in the theatre and I thought the colonel was fair game."

"He is," answered Sam dispa.s.sionately, "but you see I beat you to it.

He's mine."

Glancing cautiously about the room, he took a roll of bills from his pocket and began laying them one at a time upon the table.

"Look here," he said, "you've done a good piece of work. You should have won. For ten years half the society women of Chicago have been trying to marry their daughters or their sons to the Rainey fortune. They had everything to help them, wealth, good looks, and a standing in the world. You have none of these things. How did you do it?

"Anyway," he went on, "I'm not going to see you trimmed. I've got ten thousand dollars here, as good Rainey money as ever was printed. You sign this paper and then put the roll in your purse."

"That's square," said Luella London, signing, and with the light coming back into her eyes.

Sam beckoned to the proprietor of the restaurant whom he knew and had him and a waiter sign as witnesses.

Luella London put the roll of bills into her purse.

"What did you give me that money for when you had me beat anyway?" she asked.

Sam lighted a fresh cigar and folding the paper put it in his pocket.

"Because I like you and I admire your skill," he said, "and anyway I did not have you beaten until right now."

They sat studying the people getting up from the tables and going through the door to waiting carriages and automobiles, the well-dressed women with a.s.sured airs serving Sam's mind to make a contrast for the woman who sat with him.

"I presume you are right about women," he said musingly, "it must be a stiff game for you if you like winning on your own hook."

"Winning! We don't win." The lips of the actress drew back showing her white teeth. "No woman ever won who tried to play a straight fighting game for herself."

Her voice grew tense and the lines upon her forehead reappeared.

"Woman can't stand alone," she went on, "she is a sentimental fool. She reaches out her hand to some man and that in the end beats her. Why, even when she plays the game as I played it against the colonel some rat of a man like Frank Robson, for whom she has given up everything worth while to a woman, sells her out."

Sam looked at her hand, covered with rings, lying on the table.

"Let's not misunderstand each other," he said quietly, "do not blame Frank for this. I never knew him. I just imagined him."

A puzzled look came into the woman's eyes and a flush rose in her cheeks.

"You grafter!" she sneered.

Sam called to a pa.s.sing waiter and ordered a fresh bottle of wine.

"What's the use being sore?" he asked. "It's simple enough. You staked against a better mind. Anyway you have the ten thousand, haven't you?"

Luella reached for her purse.

"I don't know," she said, "I'll look. Haven't you decided to steal it back yet?"

Sam laughed.

"I'm coming to that," he said, "don't hurry me."

For several minutes they sat eyeing each other, and then, with an earnest ring in his voice and a smile on his lips, Sam began talking again.

"Look here!" he said, "I'm no Frank Robson and I do not like giving a woman the worst of it. I have been studying you and I can't see you running around loose with ten thousand dollars of real money on you. You do not fit into the picture and the money will not last a year in your hands.

"Give it to me," he urged; "let me invest it for you. I'm a winner. I'll double it for you in a year."

The actress stared past Sam's shoulder to where a group of young men sat about a table drinking and talking loudly. Sam began telling an anecdote of an Irish baggage man in Caxton. When he had finished he looked at her and laughed.

"As that shoemaker looked to Jerry Donlin so you, as the colonel's wife, looked to me," he said. "I had to make you get out of my flower bed."

A gleam of resolution came into the wandering eyes of Luella London and she took the purse from the back of the chair and brought out the roll of bills.

"I'm a sport," she said, "and I'm going to lay a bet on the best horse I ever saw. You may trim me, but I always would take a chance."

Turning, she called a waiter and, handing him a bill from her purse, threw the roll on the table.

"Take the pay for the spread and the wine we have had out of that," she said, handing him the loose bill and then turning to Sam. "You ought to beat the world. Anyway your genius gets recognition from me. I pay for this party and when you see the colonel say good-bye to him for me."

The next day, at his request, Sue Rainey called at the offices of the Arms Company and Sam handed her the paper signed by Luella London. It was an agreement on her part to divide with Sam, half and half, any money she might be able to blackmail out of Colonel Rainey.