“You did,” said the other coolly. “That is how I came to know you. Though not personally in evidence in the 'house' itself, San Francisco is my home, and my information as to what goes on there at least is fairly accurate.”
The young man resumed his pacing up and down the sand.
“And I might add,” said the tall man after a moment, “that from a point of ethics I see little difference in the moral status between one who comes to gamble and one who furnishes the other with the opportunity to do so. You are perhaps hesitating to take the hurdle on that account?”
“Moral status!” exclaimed the young man sharply. He halted abruptly before the other. “No—at least I am not a hypocrite! What right have I to quarrel with moral status?”
“Very well, then,” said the other; “I will go farther. I will give you everything in life that you desire. You will live as a gentleman of wealth surrounded by every luxury that money can procure, for that is your rôle. You may gamble to your heart's content, ten, twenty, fifty thousand a night—in my houses. You will travel the length and breadth of America. I will pay every expense. There is nothing that you may not have, nothing that you may not do.”
The young man was silent for a full minute then, with his hands dug in his pockets, he fell to whistling under his breath very softly—but very deliberately.
An almost sinister smile spread over the tall man's lips as he listened.
“If I am not mistaken,” he observed dryly, “that is the aria from Faust.”
“Yes,” said the young man—and stared the other in the eye. “It is the aria from Faust.”
The tall man nodded—but now his lips were straight.