Lebrun’s was going full blast.  It was not filled with the shrill mirth of Milligan’s.  Instead, all voices were subdued to a point here.  The pitch was never raised.  If a man laughed, he might show his teeth but he took good care that he did not break into the atmosphere of the room.  For there was a deadly undercurrent of silence which would not tolerate more than murmurs on the part of others.  Men sat grim-faced over the cards, the man who was winning, with his cold, eager eye; the chronic loser of the night with his iron smile; the professional, ever debonair, with the dull eye which comes from looking too often and too closely into the terrible face of chance.  A very keen observer might have observed a resemblance between those men and Donnegan.

Donnegan roved swiftly here and there.  The calm eye and the smooth play of an obvious professional in a linen suit kept him for a moment at one table, looking on; then he went to the games, and after changing the gold which Jack Landis had given as alms so silver dollars, he lost it with precision upon the wheel.

He went on, from table to table, from group to group.  In Lebrun’s his clothes were not noticed.  It was no matter whether he played or did not play, whether he won or lost; they were too busy to notice.  But he came back, at length, to the man who wore the linen coat and who won so easily.  Something in his method of dealing appeared to interest Donnegan greatly.

It was jackpot; the chips were piled high; and the man in the linen coat was dealing again.  How deftly he mixed the cards!

Indeed, all about him was elegant, from the turn of his black cravat to the cut of the coat.  An inebriate passed, shouldered and disturbed his chair, and rising to put it straight again, the gambler was seen to be about the height and build of Donnegan.

Donnegan studied him with the interest of an artist.  Here was a man, harking back to Nelly Lebrun and her love of brilliance, who would probably win her preference over Jack Landis for the simple reason that he was different.  That is, there was more in his cravat to attract astonished attention in The Corner than there was in all the silver lace of Landis.  And he was a man’s man, no doubt of that.  On the inebriate he had flashed one glance of fire, and his lean hand had stirred uneasily toward the breast of his coat.  Donnegan, who missed nothing, saw and understood.

Interested?  He was fascinated by this man because he recognized the kinship which existed between them.  They might almost have been blood brothers, except for differences in the face.  He knew, for instance, just what each glance of the man in the linen coat meant, and how he was weighing his antagonists.  As for the others, they were cool players themselves, but here they had met their master.  It was the difference between the amateur and the professional.  They played good chancey poker, but the man in the linen coat did more—­he stacked the cards!