For he knew the Marquis of Ingoldsby quite well, by repute at least, as an English pigeon with feathers well worth the plucking, and set the other two down for what they were, a pair of those hawks to be found hovering wherever the simple pigeon would try its wings. He became contemplatively interested in the trio, although he knew the ways of that wicked world far too well to suppose for an instant that he would be allowed to make a quartette of it.
"But you shall have your car, madame," he soliloquised, "presently, when I'm finished with it. And, in exchange, I'll take—"
"If only I had Sallie here now—" he said to himself with sudden self-pity, and then was seized with a hot contempt for all such as the noble marquis. "But no one under a royalty need hope for an introduction to her then," he finished, and so stifled an inconvenient twinge of conscience.
"In the meantime it looks to me as if my little overdraft on the future is going to pay me most handsomely," he reflected. And that happy thought added zest to his appetite for the excellent dinner his waiter had ordered for him, the first good dinner to which he had sat down in endless months.
He had given the man carte blanche in the matter of viands, only reserving the choice of what he should drink. So that when he ordered Vichy the waiter was not unduly depressed. Slyne also would have preferred to see a silver bucket beside the table, a pursy gold neck protruding from it, but he wanted all his wits about him that evening, while he was once more pitting himself, alone, against all comers in Monte Carlo—and, incidentally, against the odds in favour of the bank, on which he hoped to draw to the tune of at least a hundred thousand dollars during the next few days. He knew, of expensive experience, that the Widow Clicquot and her charming companions are safer society after a dangerous campaign is over than just before it begins.
He would not even venture upon an after-dinner cigar, contenting himself with a cigarette from the plain gold case with a crest on it which he purchased from the chauffeur he had so providentially picked up in Genoa that afternoon. But he tipped the waiter with such profusion that the man preceded him to the door bent almost double with gratitude, and even the Marquis of Ingoldsby was staringly impressed by the magnificence of his exit—as Slyne had intended he should be.
His masterly impersonation of an unostentatious millionaire was not without its effect on the flunkeys of the Casino also. These made as much of his entrance as he in his assumed modesty would allow on his way into the salles de jeu, where he attracted not a few appraising, inquisitive glances while he once more dared discovery as he roamed from table to table, gazing about him as though that had really been his first visit there. The world and the half-world alike seemed to be wondering who he might be; a circumstance which, otherwise, would have caused him ecstatic pleasure.
It has been stated already that he was more than passably good-looking, with regular profile and straight, spare, elegant figure. In evening clothes which fitted him to perfection, neither over-groomed nor untidy in any detail, without a flaw for the most fastidious to pick in either appearance or manner, he seemed to bear some stamp of distinction which might very well have passed current in circles much more exclusive.
The rooms were well filled, although the really fashionable world had just begun to flock south for the winter. The usual motley went to make up the highly-coloured mosaic of worshippers at the chief shrine of the goddess of chance. It would be a waste of your time and mine, too, to describe again the types to be observed there, and Slyne had seen them all very often before. He sauntered about for a little and then slipped quietly into the only seat which had been vacated since he had arrived, much to the annoyance of a short, fat Frenchman who seemed disposed to insist on his own prior claim to it, till Slyne glanced over one shoulder into his eyes.
"Good luck to you!" cried a jovial voice from the other side of the table as he sat down, and Slyne nodded coldly to his companion of the afternoon.