“Yes, and we’ll go. But look here, Don Arsenio, I should like to hear about your system. If you’re free, lunch with me here to-morrow, and afterwards we’ll drop in and try it—in a small way, just for fun, you know.”
“To-morrow? Yes, I shall be delighted. About half-past twelve? Shall I see you, too, Julius?”
“No; systems bore me to death,” I said gruffly. “Besides, those Forrester people are coming to lunch at the Villa to-morrow, Godfrey.”
“All the more reason for being out!” laughed Godfrey. “We’ll meet, then, Don Arsenio, whether this old chap comes or not. That’s agreed?”
Arsenio assented. We left him outside the café, waving his hand to us as the car started. At the last moment he darted one of his mischievous glances at me. At least, he was thoroughly enjoying the situation; at most—well, at most he might be up to almost anything. He had told us that he did not, after all, feel like playing that night, since we had to leave him; he would go straight home, he said. That probably meant that he was saving up his money for something!
Godfrey was silent on the way home, and did not refer to Arsenio till we found ourselves in the smoking room at the Villa: we had it to ourselves; the others had gone to bed.
“I was interested to meet that fellow,” he then remarked. “Where did you run into him?”
I told him of my visit. “For the sake of old times I just wanted to see how he was getting on,” I added apologetically. “But I doubt whether I did right, and I don’t mean to see any more of him at present.”
“Why do you doubt whether you did right?”