He did not desire Mr. Jobling's further acquaintance, and would have ignored his greeting entirely but that he had noticed in front of the stout solicitor quite a noteworthy stack of winnings; and he did not know whether he might not yet have occasion to draw on the other's expressed ambition to repay him a favour done. In any case, he dismissed all such ideas from his mind for the moment, and started to play, very cautiously.
A cautious player, who can keep his head, need seldom lose a great deal at any game. Slyne had drunk nothing stronger than Vichy since the night before. He was tensely on the alert. His luck came and went until he had lost a couple of thousand francs, and then he began to win.
He had been winning, slowly but surely, with only an occasional set-back, for over an hour before he became aware that a growing group of interested onlookers had gathered behind him, and that he had accumulated within the space between his protective elbows a pile of notes and gold which reached to his chin. And, thus convinced that he was in the vein, spurred on by some sudden remembrance of Sallie caged in her cabin on the Olive Branch, an ever-present temptation to play to the gallery, to stake no less than the maximum on every turn of the wheel, had almost vanquished all his discretion when he encountered the quiet glance of a man who was contemplating him from behind the players seated at the other side of the table, a man whom he knew only too well as one of the cleverest of those mouchards whose frequent comings and goings attract so little attention there, and who knew him.
The brilliant lights about him grew strangely blurred. He felt faint and ill. But, by a desperate effort of will, he managed to maintain an outward composure. He yawned openly, and then let his eyes fall to look at his watch. The detective was carelessly moving round the table in his direction. He shifted his rake to his left hand and, slipping his right across his chest to within the lapel of his evening-coat, laid out some small further stake, entirely at random.
He lost that, and two or three more, before he yawned again, as if fatigued by such trifling, and pushed a much larger amount into place, as a blind man might, for a final venture. No hand had as yet fallen on his shoulder, but the suspense of not knowing at what moment that would happen was hard to bear. He felt like one in the grip of a hideous nightmare as the croupier presently shovelled over toward him a large and miscellaneous assortment of notes and gold and counters, which, none the less, he collected indifferently and dully conscious of an envious sigh from behind him.
He hesitated a little before letting go his hold of the pistol about whose butt the fingers of his right hand were still closely clasped, in order to pocket his profits of the evening. He had laid down his rake. It was at once seized by a woman who had been standing close at his shoulder, and, as she pushed eagerly past him into his seat, the bunch of camellias in her corsage brushed his face. It was the woman with whom Lord Ingoldsby had been dining. Slyne noticed her husband among the crowd in the rear as he himself made his way out into the open. He noticed also, approaching him entirely as if by accident, the inconspicuous spy whose appearance there had so alarmed him.
Slyne had not even time to hesitate. Without the slightest change of expression he stopped and confronted his enemy, addressing him by name, in the execrable French of the average Englishman.
"Bon soir, M. Dubois. Comment ça va? Bien, eh?"
"Monsieur has the advantage of me," the detective returned in effortless English, and over his features flitted the faintest shadow of disappointment.
"Oh, I scarcely supposed you would know me," said Slyne with a deprecatory shrug. "This is my first trip so far afield, though I've seen you several times in Paris, and we all know you quite well in London, of course."