"Care to play any more?" asked Benham.
"Not I, my friend, I have robbed you enough."
"And about time for the luck to turn, isn't it? Well, I don't care! What shall we do?"
"What you will," answered the Frenchman absently.
Benham pulled his beard, then leant forward and put a question with an intoxicated leer. A laugh of feigned reproof burst from Gaspard. Benham seemed to urge him, and at last he said,
"Oh, if you're bent on it, I can be your guide."
The two men left the house arm-in-arm, went down the street, and crossed Digby Square. It
was late, and few people were about, but Gaspard saw one acquaintance. The doorkeeper was strolling along on his way home, and Gaspard bade him good-night in a cheery voice as they passed him. The doorkeeper stood and watched the pair for a minute as they left the Square and turned down a narrow street which led to the poorer part of the town, and thence to the quays. He heard Gaspard's high-pitched voice and shrill laughter, and, in answer, Benham's thick tones and heavy shout of drunken mirth. Once or twice these sounds repeated themselves, then they ceased; the footsteps of the Frenchman and his companion died away in the distance. The doorkeeper went on his way, thinking with relief that Mr. Gaspard, for all his tall talk, was more at home with a bottle than with a knife or a bomb.
Notwithstanding his dissipation, Gaspard was afoot very early in the morning. It was hardly light, and the deep scratch of finger-nails on his face—it is so awkward when drunken fools wake at the wrong minute—attracted no attention from the few people he encountered. He did not give them long to look at him, for he hurried swiftly through the streets, towards the quays where the ships lay loading their cargoes. He seemed to have urgent business to transact down there, business that would brook no delay, and that was, if one might guess from his uneasy glances over his shoulder, of a private nature. With one hand he held tight hold of something in his trousers
pocket, the other rested on his belt, hard by a little revolver. In his business it is necessary to be ready for everything.