before you. You can become a sport as I am and spend your life in
gambling rooms. Or you can become what is called a respectable business
man. But you can't be both. In a very short time you will not have the
choice. You will be found out and then you can only be what I am--
probably not as successful as I have been. If you add bank robbery to
your other accomplishments then you will go to prison or, what is
perhaps worse, to Canada. Which career are you going to choose?"

"Come down to plain facts. What do you mean by all this talk? If I say
I'll quit gambling do you mean that you will return to me the thousand
dollars and call the other thousand square?"

"If you give me your word of honor that you will quit."

"And if I don't, what then?"

"Then on Monday I will hand over this money to the bank and advise them
to look into your accounts."

"And suppose my accounts prove to be all right, what then?"

Rowell shrugged his shoulders. "In that remote possibility I will give
the thousand dollars to you and play you another game for it."

"I see. Which means that you cheated to-night."

"If you like to put it that way."

"And what if I denounced you as a self-confessed cheat?"