‘Oh, how kind you are!’ he cried. ‘Anything—I can repay the money next week——’
‘Nonsense. You will return it when you have it. The condition is that you take my advice.’
‘And give up playing altogether! Yes, I know I should, but I cannot promise that.’ His face fell again.
‘No, don’t promise me anything. Promise yourself, as a man, that you will never play for more than you have in your pocket. Here are the five hundred francs.’
He put the notes into an envelope, rose, and handed them to the delighted boy. Not knowing what might happen in the course of the day, he had taken all of his not very large store of cash with him.
‘I shall ask you a little service in my turn,’ he said, interrupting his young friend’s voluble thanks. ‘I do not go to gambling-houses myself, but for a strong reason I want the exact address of one which is said to exist in Via Belsiana. Do you happen to remember it?’
‘The one that has a little door opening on the street, with a foreign doctor’s door-plate over the bell? Is that the one?’
‘Is there any other in the same street?’
‘None that I know of. Of course, one goes there in civilian’s clothes, and it is open after three in the afternoon, though there are never many people there till later. The password is made up of three numbers, twenty-six, eight, seventeen. Say that to the man at the door and he will let you in.’
Castiglione smiled.