“Oh, yes; hypnotism too,” said Ely Ives briskly, after twenty minutes of legerdemain.  “Child’s play.”

“Now, who suggested hypnotism?” murmured Stecklin in his limpid and confidential undertone, close to Banneker’s ear.  “You?  I?  No!  No one, I think.”

So Banneker thought, and was the more interested in Ives’s procedure.  Though the drinking had been heavy at his end of the table, he seemed quite unaffected, was now tripping from man to man, peering into the eyes of each, “to find an appropriate subject,” as he said.  Delavan Eyre roused himself out of a semi-torpor as the wiry little prowler stared down at him.

“What’s the special idea?” he demanded.

“Just a bit of mesmerism,” explained the other.  “I’ll try you for a subject.  If you’ll stand up, feet apart, eyes closed, I’ll hypnotize you so that you’ll fall over at a movement.”

“You can’t do it,” retorted Eyre.

“For a bet,” Ives came back.

“A hundred?”

“Double it if you like.”

“You’re on.”  Eyre, slowly swallowing the last of a brandy-and-soda, rose, reaching into his pocket.

“Not necessary, between gentlemen,” said Ely Ives with a gesture just a little too suave.

“Ah, yes,” muttered the lawyer at Banneker’s side.  “Between gentlemen.  Eck-xactly.”

Pursuant to instructions, Eyre stood with his feet a few inches apart and his eyes closed.  “At the word, you bring your heels together.  Click!  And you keep your balance.  If you can.  For the two hundred.  Any one else want in?...  No?...  Ready, Mr. Eyre.  Now! Hep!”

The heels clicked, but with a stuttering, weak impact.  Eyre, bulky and powerful, staggered, toppled to the left.

“Hold up there!” His neighbor propped him, and was clutched in his grasp.

“Hands off!” said Eyre thickly.  “Sorry, Banks!  Let me try that again.  Oh, the bet’s yours, Mr. Ives,” he added, as that keen gambler began to enter a protest.  “Send you a check in the morning—­if that’ll be all right.”

Herbert Cressey, hand in pocket, was at his side instantly.  “Pay him now, Del,” he said in a tone which did not conceal his contemptuous estimate of Ives.  “Here’s money, if you haven’t it.”

“No; no!  A check will be quite all right,” protested Ives.  “At your convenience.”

Others gathered about, curious and interested.  Banneker, puzzled by a vague suspicion which he sought to formulate, was aware of a low runnel of commentary at his ear.

“Very curious.  Shrewd; yes.  A clever fellow....  Sad, too.”

“Sad?” He turned sharply on the lawyer of unsavory suits.  “What is sad about it?  A fool and his money!  Is that tragedy?”

“Comedy, my friend.  Always comedy.  This also, perhaps.  But grim....  Our friend there who is so clever of hand and eye; he is not perhaps a medical man?”

“Yes; he is.  What connection—­Good God!” he cried, as a flood of memory suddenly poured light upon a dark spot in some of his forgotten reading.