CHAPTER IX
WARDEN BEGINS HIS ODYSSEY
Evelyn’s weekly letter from Scotland usually arrived by the mail–boat due at Ostend about three o’clock in the afternoon. Warden, sitting on the plage among a cosmopolitan crowd that delighted in its own antics, watched the steamer from Dover picking its way along the coast and into the harbor. He was dining with a friend that evening in one of the big hotels on the sea front. He could call for his letters after he had dressed—meanwhile, he had an hour or more at his disposal, and he was weary of the frolics of Monsieur, Madame et Bébé, and of a great many other people who came under a less domestic category.
To kill time, he strolled into the Casino and drank a cup of the decoction which Belgians regard as tea. Then he went to the so–called Club to look at the gamblers. Play did not appeal to him, but he had joined the Cercle Privé because some men he knew went there regularly for baccarat. To–day, to dispel the ennui of existence between meals, a German baron was opening banks of five hundred louis each, and losing or winning money with a bored air. He had just closed one bank successfully, and the table was set for another, when a young American, bright–eyed, clean–shaven, and pallid, stirred the pulses of both onlookers and players by crying, “Banco!” Even in Ostend one does not often see four hundred pounds won or lost at a single coup. Warden, whose sympathies were against the stolid banker, stood by the side of the younger man until the incident was ended.
There was no waiting. The challenger, impassive as a Red Indian, gave a bundle of notes to the croupier, who counted them. The baron dealt the two tableaux, and his adversary stooped and picked up the first.
“Huit!” he said, throwing the cards face upwards on the table. He took the second pair.
“Neuf!”
An excited buzz of talk rose around the board. With a blasé smile, the banker showed his cards—two queens.