What did this mean? There was no answer to his agonised mental inquiry.
He saw Ethel and her mother bending over a card covered with figures—one of those system cards so frequently seen at the tables, so certain to end in disaster.
He saw also the pallor of their faces. He realised in a flash of intuition that they were losing heavily.
How to warn them, how to tell them that he and he only possessed the secret key to Fortune to-night he could not think, he could not divine.
Again he glanced at his card. Habit had become mechanical. His watch pointed to ten minutes past the hour. His directions stood clear and plain in the cypher before him.
He sorted out his notes and did what was directed.
Up there, on the top of the Hôtel Malmaison, Emile Deschamps was even at that moment pressing a certain key. The result was as inevitable as sure as Fate.
And as Fate or, rather, the cunning of science, the immense trickery of the two young geniuses, spoke, Basil saw that Ethel McMahon and her mother were very hard hit.
He watched them slant-wise from the ends of his spectacles, realising, more definitely than ever, that they were playing upon some fallacious scheme, and being sure—with a jerk of memory—that old Mrs. McMahon had unearthed one of her late husband's systems, and was pursuing it to her own ruin.
Again he won, and by now he was a rich man. The excitement was tremendous, when suddenly the tall man in evening dress announced a suspension of play.