CHAPTER IX
Into the glittering rooms Basil Gregory strolled.
He had left the Hôtel Malmaison but five minutes before. The metal check for his light coat and opera hat was in his waistcoat pocket, and as he walked slowly up the Atrium, smoking a cigarette, he seemed—even in an environment where some of the most important people in the world congregate—a very distinguished person indeed.
As he came up to the doors quick-eyed officials in their black frock coats—carrion-crows people have called them—made their bows and pushed open one of the great cedar portals.
Already the word had gone round that this tall and cool gentleman was an unknown millionaire, who was pleased to amuse himself for an hour or two at the tables.
Basil entered. People were still dining. The rooms were full—they always are full—but of the ordinary and hungry crowd who do little more than venture a few francs, and hardly dare take a chair at any table when one is vacant.
Basil sauntered up to the right hand table in the large central salon. Some people call this table the "suicides' table," others give that sinister designation to another. Be that as it may, Basil found a chair and sat down—on the left of the croupier who spins the wheel and his colleague who sits behind him on a higher chair and directs the whole operations of the table.
Basil sat down, took out his watch and placed it upon the space of green baize before him. Then he drew twenty or thirty gold coins from his pocket, and a couple of five hundred franc notes.