Hotel de Paris,
Monte Carlo.
My dear father,
I have come here from Marseilles for a few days, perhaps longer—it depends upon the luck. Meanwhile you will receive from Tilbury, soon after the ship docks, the Image we got away with. You won’t like it. If I were to tell you how I loathed it you would think I was mad, but from the practical point of view everything that I heard in China confirms your story. In either this Image or the other one, which, alas, fell into the hands of a firm called Johnson and Company who have branches nearly everywhere in the East, are packed the whole of the treasures of the Yun-Tse Temple. Have an expert examine it, but don’t do anything about breaking it up until I return. There are reasons against this.
I suppose everything is as usual—no money, heavier taxation, plenty of debts, and Uncle Henry denying himself even a new suit of clothes. I hope Madame progresses, and that her new doctor will be able to work the great miracle. Here is an amazing coincidence, of which you will hear more before you see me. In the last letter I wrote you I told you about my adventure on the Yun-Tse River and Wu Ling, the Chinese trader who rescued me. Well, Wu Ling is a member of the firm of Johnson and Company, the great Eastern merchants, and one of his partners is Ralph Endacott, who used to have a Chair at Oxford, a great Oriental scholar, and—as you perhaps know—Madame’s brother. He has a very delightful niece whom I saw something of on the voyage home. He himself is winding up his affairs and coming to England shortly. They have some idea, I believe, of taking a house in Norfolk. Endacott himself is a somewhat austere person who looked upon my enterprise with a good deal of disfavour, and myself, I am afraid, with more. The niece, however, is perfectly charming.
Well, I shall be home for the summer. I got through all right without a scratch, as you know, but for the first time in my life I think I have a touch of nerves. The shadow of our elms ought to help. I’ll write again as soon as I have decided when to come home.
Thanks for your last letter. I don’t think you need send any money. If I want it I’ll wire.
Ever yours,
Gregory.
Gregory dined alone, receiving the warm welcome of the maîtres d'hôtel with whom he was acquainted, and the other supernumeraries of the great hotel. Afterwards he went across and took out his cards of admission to the Casino, flung a few counters on one of the outside tables in the “Kitchen” and, losing them, came out, called in at the office of the Sporting Club for his ticket and presently mounted the front stairs, prepared for such serious gambling as he could afford. There was something almost allegorical in the wide opening of the doors as he entered. He seemed engulfed once more into the world of pleasurable adventure. Only for the first time the whole thrill of it was wanting. The tables themselves he eyed with all his old appetite, as he counted his money and planned his campaign. His inherited love of gambling was undeniable. The green cloth, the patter of the cards, the call of the croupiers, the rattling of the roulette ball, each had their fascination. It was the other things of which he seemed to have suddenly tired, which somehow, in a moment of presentiment as he looked through one of the great windows towards the moon, hanging down over the harbour, he knew would never appeal to him in quite the same way again. The following morning he supplemented his letter home by a telegram: