"Many a dollar have I lost within its accursed walls," he said, as the three men hurried through the deserted city; "but that's in our favor now, for the keepers of the house know me, and I know the trick of the door, which is a secret only confided to the habitual visitors of the house; so we shall get into the infernal den without any difficulty, and once in we'll find out what all this means, and whether Don Juan's daughter is deceiving you."
"She deceive me!" exclaimed Paul indignantly; "she is all truth, all purity; but if the man who was with her is he whom I imagine, she is the victim of treachery as vile as that from which I am a sufferer."
Thanks to Captain Prendergills, they had no difficulty in penetrating the mysterious building.
A man, seated in a little ante-room on the stairs took their hats from them, and told them which way to go to the gambling-saloons; but at the very moment they reached the top of the principal staircase the thrilling shriek of Camillia Moraquitos echoed through the house.
The ear of Paul Lisimon, sharpened by anxiety, told him whence this shriek proceeded. It came from a long corridor to their left.
They rushed down this corridor, and burst open the door at the end as a second shriek pealed through the building.
The result is already known to the reader.
The letter written by Silas Craig, which summoned Don Juan Moraquitos from the opera-box, was a part of the planter's base plot, and had been planned between him and the lawyer.
The business relations between Silas and Don Juan were so complicated that it was easy for the artful attorney to occupy the Spaniard in discussing them till long after midnight.
The two men sat talking till nearly three o'clock in that very apartment ornamented with the map of the United States, and communicating with the gambling-house in Columbia Street.