“I have not seen her. Madame is a widow,” he went on. “Alas! there are so many in France as the result of the terrible war.”
“Then she is young,” said Timothy. “They didn’t send old men to the front.”
“She may be young,” replied the agent, “or she may be old. One does not know.”
He called the assistant who had shown the lady the house and had taken the documents for her to sign. The assistant was aged sixteen, and at the age of sixteen most people above twenty are listed amongst the aged. He was certain she was a widow and very feeble, because she walked with a stick. She always wore a heavy black veil, even when she was in the garden.
“Is it not natural,” said the house agent romantically, “that the madame who has lost all that makes life worth living should no longer desire the world to look upon her face?”
“It may be natural in Monte Carlo,” said Timothy, “but it is not natural in London.”
He located the house on a large plan which the obliging agent produced, and went back to the hotel, firmly resolved to take the first opportunity of calling on Madame Serpilot and discovering what object she had in view when she arranged to endanger his young life.
Mary was waiting for him, a little impatiently for one who had such a horror of gambling.
“We have to get tickets at the Bureau,” she said, “and the concierge says we must have special membership cards for the Cercle Privée.”
The tickets were easy to procure, and they passed into the great saloon where, around five tables, stood silent ovals of humanity. The scene was a weird one to Timothy and fascinating too. Besides this, all the other gambling games in the world, all the roulette tables and baccara outfits, were crude and amateurish. The eight croupiers who sat at each table in their black frock coats and their black ties, solemn visaged, unemotional, might have been deacons in committee. The click of rakes against chips, the whirr of the twirling ball, the monotonous sing-song announcement of the chief croupier—it was a ritual and a business at one and the same time.