"Julian, Julian," he shouted to his friend before opening the door into Calderón's office. "I have come to do you a service. You are in luck, you wretch! Send me home those Londrès."
"Ha, ha!" exclaimed Julian with a triumphant smile. "So you want them?"
"Yes, my dear fellow, yes. I always want the thing you want to get rid of. Good-bye."
And without going into the little office, he let go of the spring door he had held open, and left. He desired the coachman to drive to a house in one of the northern quarters of the city, and reclined in a corner, munching his cigar and smoking with evident gratification. For our banker felt as much satisfaction after committing this piece of rascality, after cheating his friend of so many pesetas, as the righteous man knows after doing an act of justice or charity. His imagination, always on the alert when money might be made, wandered over the various concerns in which he was engaged, and the vehicle meanwhile carried him on towards the Hippodrome. More especially he dwelt on the mines of Riosa; the longer he thought of Llera's scheme, the better it pleased him. Still, it had its weak points, and he meditated on the means of fortifying them.
It was not yet late. Salabert had time still to pay one of those unavowed visits which form an item in the social round of many a man whose virtues are more conspicuous, and whose vices less blatant than his. He dismissed the coach he had hired, and, his call paid, he walked home.
As soon as he found himself in his private room, he put his hand in his pocket to take out his note-book. His face, which had shone with satisfaction at the consciousness of carrying about with him the golden key to every pleasure on earth, suddenly fell. A cloud of anxiety came over it. He felt more thoroughly. The pocket-book was not there. He tried all his other pockets. The same result.
"Damnation," he muttered, "I have been robbed. Robbed of ten thousand odd dollars. Curse my ill luck! If a day begins badly—three thousand dollars gone in a bad debt, and now nearly eleven thousand in a lump! A pretty morning's work I must say!"
He started to his feet and rang the bell vehemently for Llera. When the factotum appeared, he was walking up and down the room, strangely excited for a man who owned so many millions. He explained the case to the clerk. A torrent of words, growls, foul expletives, poured from his lips, and he flung away his half-chewed cigar, a sign of excessive disturbance.
"Possibly, Señor, you have not been robbed," Llera suggested, "you may have lost it. Where have you been?"
But this was a question the Duke was not prepared to answer.