“You mean bribe money, I suppose,” said Culver no less aggressively than before.  “Is that what you mean?”

“Don’t call it hard names,” begged the gambler.  “It’s just a retainer—­say twenty thousand dollars.”

Culver burned to the top of his ears.  He looked at McCoppet intently with an expression the gambler could not interpret.

“Just to change that line a thousand feet,” urged the man of gambling propensities.  “I’ll make it twenty-five.”

Still Culver made no response.  With all his other hateful attributes of character he was tempered steel on incorruptibility.  He was not even momentarily tempted to avenge himself thus on Van Buren.

McCoppet thought he had him wavering.  He attempted to push him over the brink.

“Say,” said he persuasively, lowering his voice to a tone of the confidential, “I can strain a little more out of one of my partners and make it thirty thousand dollars.”  He had no intention of employing a cent of his own.  Bostwick was to pay all these expenses.  “Thirty thousand dollars, cash,” he repeated, “the minute you finish your work—­and make it look like a Government correction of the line.”

Culver broke forth on him with accumulated wrath.

“You damnable puppy!” he said in a futile effort to be adequate to the situation.  “You sneak!  Of all the accursed intrigues—­insults—­robberies that ever were hatched——­ By God, sir, if you offered me a million of money you shouldn’t alter that Government line by a hair!  If you speak to me again—­I’ll knock you down!”

He flung the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man half over in his blind haste to be quit the place.

McCoppet was left there staring where he had gone—­staring and afraid of what the results would probably be to all the game.  He had no eyes to behold a man who had suddenly discerned him from the crowds.  A moment later he started violently as a huge form stood in the door.

“Trimmer!” he said, “I’m busy!”

“You’re goin’ to be busier in about a minute, if I don’t see you right now,” said the man addressed as Trimmer, a raw, bull-like lumberman from the mountains.  “Been waitin’ to see you some time.”

“Come in,” said the gambler instantly regaining his composure.  “Come in and shut the door.  How are you, anyway?” He held out his hand to shake.

Trimmer closed the door.  “Ain’t ready to shake, jest yet,” he said.  “I come here to see you on business.”

“That’s all right, Larry,” answered McCoppet.  “That’s all right.  Sit down.”

“I’m goin’ to,” announced his visitor.  He took a chair, pulled out a giant cigar, and lighting it up smoked like a pile of burning leaves.  “You seem to be pretty well fixed,” he added, taking a huge black pistol from his pocket and laying it before him on the table.  “Looks like money was easy.”

“I ain’t busted,” admitted the gambler.  “Have a drink?”