He was a tall handsome man, with light air, and a long fair moustache and beard, perfectly well dressed, and with an air sufficiently distinguished to make him at once conspicuous amongst the Liége clerks and shopkeepers, of whom a large part of the company consisted.
"Ah! precisely, Monsieur, you have fixed upon the most remarkable personage here," cried his companion, with some excitement; "but is it possible you do not know him?"
"I never saw him before," answered Graham. "Is he a celebrity?
A prince, or an ambassador, or anything of that kind?"
"No, nothing of that kind," said the other laughing, "but a celebrity nevertheless in his way. That is M. Linders, the great gambler."
"I never even heard of him," said the young Englishman; "but then I don't know much about such people."
"It is true, I had forgotten that Monsieur is not of this country; but you would hear enough about him were you to stay any time at Wiesbaden, or Homburg, or Spa, or any of those places. He twice broke the bank at Homburg last year, won two hundred thousand francs at Spa this summer, and lost them again the next week. He is a most dangerous fellow, and positively dreaded by the proprietors of the tables."
"What! when he loses two hundred thousand francs?"
"Ah! that is a thing that rarely happens; as a rule he is perfectly cool, which is the principal thing at these tables, plays when the run is in his favour, and stops when it is against him; but occasionally he gets excited, and then of course the chances are that he loses everything like another."
"What can he be doing here?" said Graham.
"Who knows? Stopping a night or two on his way to Paris, or Brussels, perhaps, on the chance of finding some one here rich enough and imprudent enough to make it worth his while. You do not play, Monsieur?"