Dean's face was alight with the excitement of dramatizing the long-past scene. He laid his stick on the bar and bent over, with his white fingers held as if they poised cards. He was a good mimic. One could easily imagine the scene on the trampled grass, with the white canvas tents of the circus for a background.
"Dick Nolan and Joe Hipp were capping, and Dick would come up--he had the best gilly make-up in the world, you understand, a paper collar, a long linen duster and big green mush--he'd look over the cards--see?"--Dean leaned over awkwardly like a country-man, pointing with a crooked forefinger--"and then he'd say, 'I think it's that one.'"
His voice had changed; he spoke in the cracked tone of the farmer, and his little audience laughed.
"Well, the guy hollers, you understand, but at the come-back they're all swipes--working in the horse tents; you'd never know 'em. And then,"
Dean went on, with the exquisite pleasure of remembering, "old Ben Mellott was there working the send--you remember Ben, Dan?"
Gibbs nodded.
"Jake Rend was running the side-show, and old Jew Cohen had a dollar store--a drop-case, you know."
Gibbs nodded again. Dean grew meditative, and a silence fell on the group.
"We had a great crowd of knucks, too; the guns to-day are nothing to them. Those were the days, Dan. Course, there wasn't much in it at that."
Dean meditated over the lost days a moment, and then he grew cheerful again.
"I met Luke Evans last fall, Dan," he began again. "In England. The major and I were running between London and Liverpool, working the steamer trains, and him and me--"
And he was off into another story. Having taken up his English experience, Dean now told a number of vulgar stories, using the English accent, which he could imitate perfectly. While in the midst of one of them, he suddenly started at a footfall, and looked hastily over his shoulder. A man came in, glanced about, and came confidently forward.
"Good morning, Danny," he said, in a tone of the greatest familiarity.
Gibbs answered the greeting soberly, and then, at a sign from the man, stepped aside rather reluctantly and whispered with him. Dean eyed them narrowly, took in the fellow's attire from his straw hat to his damp shoes, and, when he could catch Gibbs's eye, he crooked his left arm, touched it significantly, and lifted his eyebrows in sign of question.
Gibbs shook his head in a negative that had a touch of contempt for the implication, and then drew the man toward the bar. Without the man's seeing him or hearing him, Dean touched his arm again and said to Gibbs softly:
"Elbow?"
"No," said Gibbs, "reporter."
Then he turned and, speaking to the new-comer, he presented him to Dean, saying:
"Mr. Jordon, make you acquainted with Mr. Wales, of the _Courier_."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jordon," said the newspaper man.
"Ah, chawmed, I'm suah," said Dean, keeping to the English accent he had just been using. "I say, won't you join us?"
The bartender, at a glance from Dean, produced another bottle of champagne; the newspaper man's eyes glistened with pleasure, Dean was taking out his cigarette case. Wales glanced at the cigarettes, and Dean hastened to proffer them. In conversation with the reporter Dean impersonated an English follower of the turf who had brought some horses to America. As he did this, actor that he was, he became more and more interested in his impromptu monologue, assumed the character perfectly and lived into it, and the others there who knew of the deceit he was practising on the reporter--he was nearly always practising some sort of deceit, but seldom so innocently as now--were utterly delighted; they listened to his guying until nearly midnight, when Dean, having sustained the character of the Englishman for more than two hours, grew weary and said he must go. As he was leaving he said to the reporter:
"You've been across, of course? No? Well, really now, that's quite too bad, don't you know! But I say, whenever you come, you must look me up, if you don't mind, at Tarlingham Towers. I've a bit of a place down in the Surrey country; I've a beast there that's just about up to your weight. Have you ever ridden to the hounds?"
The reporter was delighted; he felt that a distinction had been conferred upon him. Wishing to show his appreciation, he asked Dean, or Jordan, as he was to him, if he might print an interview. Dean graciously consented, and the reporter left for his office, glad of a story with which to justify to his city editor, at least partly, his wasted evening.
When Dean had gone, taking his three companions with him, Gibbs and Mason sat for a long while in the back room.
"So that's Eddie Dean!" said Mason.
"Yes," said Gibbs, "that's him."
"And what's his graft?"
"Oh," said Gibbs, "the send, the bull con, the big mitt, the cross lift--anything in that line."
"And those two other guys with him?" asked Mason.
"That little one is Willie the Rat, the other is Gaffney."
"Sure-thing men, too?"
"Yes, they're in Ed's mob."
Mason was still for a while, then he observed:
"Je's! He did make a monkey of that cove!"
Gibbs laughed. "Oh, he's a great cod! Why, do you know what he did once? Well, he went to Lord Paisley's ball in Quebec, impersonating Sir Charles Jordon--that's why I introduced him as Mr. Jordon to-night."
Gibbs's eyes twinkled. "He went in to look for a rummy, but the flatties got on and tipped him off."
"He's smart."
"Yes, the smartest in the business. He's made several ten-century touches."
Gibbs thought seriously a moment and then said:
"No, he isn't smart; he's a damn fool, like all of them."
"Fall?"
"Yes, settled twice; done a two-spot at Joliet and a finiff at Ionia."
Mason knit his brows and thought a long time, while Gibbs smoked.
Finally Mason shook his head.
"No," he said, "no, Dan, I don't get it. I can understand knocking off a peter--the stuff's right there. All you do is to go take it. I can understand a hold-up, or a heel, or a prowl; I can see how a gun reefs a britch kick and gets a poke--though I couldn't put my hand in a barrel myself and get it out again--without breaking the barrel. I haven't any use for that kind, which you know--but these sure-thing games, the big mitt and the bull con--no, Dan, I can't get hip."
Gibbs laughed.
"Well, I can't explain it, Joe. You heard him string that chump to-night."
Mason dropped that phase of the question and promptly said:
"Dan, I suppose there's games higher up, ain't they?"
Gibbs laughed a superior laugh.
"Higher up? Joe, there's games that beat his just as much as his beats yours. I could name you men--" Then he paused.