And I repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls them.
They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise.
You have no idea of the trouble they cause men like us—sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even overturning the stablest institutions."
Dowsett and young Guggenhammer went away in one motor-car, and Letton by himself in another.
Daylight, with still in the forefront of his consciousness all that had occurred in the preceding hour, was deeply impressed by the scene at the moment of departure.
The three machines stood like weird night monsters at the gravelled foot of the wide stairway under the unlighted porte-cochere.
It was a dark night, and the lights of the motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness as knives would cut through solid substance.
The obsequious lackey—the automatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the three men,—stood like a graven statue after having helped them in.
The fur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats.
One after the other, like spurred steeds, the cars leaped into the blackness, took the curve of the driveway, and were gone.
Daylight's car was the last, and, peering out, he caught a glimpse of the unlighted house that loomed hugely through the darkness like a mountain.
Whose was it? he wondered.
How came they to use it for their secret conference?
Would the lackey talk?
How about the chauffeurs?
Were they trusted men like "our" Mr. Howison?
Mystery?
The affair was alive with it.
And hand in hand with mystery walked Power.
He leaned back and inhaled his cigarette.
Big things were afoot.
The cards were shuffled even the for a mighty deal, and he was in on it.
He remembered back to his poker games with Jack Kearns, and laughed aloud.
He had played for thousands in those days on the turn of a card; but now he was playing for millions.
And on the eighteenth, when that dividend was declared, he chuckled at the confusion that would inevitably descend upon the men with the sharpened shears waiting to trim him—him, Burning Daylight.
CHAPTER III
Back at his hotel, though nearly two in the morning, he found the reporters waiting to interview him.
Next morning there were more.
And thus, with blare of paper trumpet, was he received by New York.
Once more, with beating of toms-toms and wild hullaballoo, his picturesque figure strode across the printed sheet.
The King of the Klondike, the hero of the Arctic, the thirty-million-dollar millionaire of the North, had come to New York.
What had he come for?
To trim the New Yorkers as he had trimmed the Tonopah crowd in Nevada?
Wall Street had best watch out, for the wild man of Klondike had just come to town.
Or, perchance, would Wall Street trim him?
Wall Street had trimmed many wild men; would this be Burning Daylight's fate?
Daylight grinned to himself, and gave out ambiguous interviews. It helped the game, and he grinned again, as he meditated that Wall Street would sure have to go some before it trimmed him.
They were prepared for him to play, and, when heavy buying of Ward Valley began, it was quickly decided that he was the operator.
Financial gossip buzzed and hummed.
He was after the Guggenhammers once more.
The story of Ophir was told over again and sensationalized until even Daylight scarcely recognized it.
Still, it was all grist to his mill.
The stock gamblers were clearly befooled.
Each day he increased his buying, and so eager were the sellers that Ward Valley rose but slowly.
"It sure beats poker," Daylight whispered gleefully to himself, as he noted the perturbation he was causing.
The newspapers hazarded countless guesses and surmises, and Daylight was constantly dogged by a small battalion of reporters.
His own interviews were gems.
Discovering the delight the newspapers took in his vernacular, in his "you-alls," and "sures," and "surge-ups," he even exaggerated these particularities of speech, exploiting the phrases he had heard other frontiersmen use, and inventing occasionally a new one of his own.
A wildly exciting time was his during the week preceding Thursday the eighteenth.
Not only was he gambling as he had never gambled before, but he was gambling at the biggest table in the world and for stakes so large that even the case-hardened habitues of that table were compelled to sit up.