At that moment a woman came from the Rooms, and the girl ran to her eagerly. The woman was tall and handsome, and her face was alight with joy. Opening her gold chain bag, she showed the girl the contents. They both laughed, almost hysterically, and went off arm in arm. With a start Hugh recognized the cream-coloured cape; it was the lady who had broken the plate.
2.
In the days that followed Hugh came to know the great building intimately. He gave fanciful names to the various Rooms. Beyond the “Hall of Light,” as he called the main gambling room, was the “Hall of Gloom.” In decoration it was heavy, dark, depressing. There was something Teutonic about it, even to the panels of lumpish Amazons that filled in the wall spaces. On the only occasion he played there, he came away whistling the “Dead March.”
To the right of the “Hall of Light” was a little gem of a room which contained only one table. He called it the “Room of the Opium Dreamer,” on account of the exquisitely painted ceiling of naked nymphs voluptuously sprawling on fleecy clouds. Its windows looked on the terrace and often he pulled aside the silken blind to marvel at the radiant beauty of the sea. The air in this room was unusually bad.
Beyond this was what he called the “Hall of the Three Graces,” on account of the huge wall panel that dominated it. It represented three nude women against a Florentine background. Mr. Tope gave him some curious information about this picture.
“These,” he said, “were three demi-mondaines, frequenters of the Casino. They claimed to be Swiss: but it turned out that they were Austrian spies in the pay of Germany.”
Hugh looked at them with a new interest.
“When war was declared all three cleared out in a hurry. The directer himself had to get away. He had, they say, gotten the Casino Company to acquire the golf links on Mont Agel, and right under the eyes of the French garrison he had all prepared for the installation of a wireless outfit. It was an ex-captain of Uhlans. His son made a demonstration in favour of Germany in front of the Casino and was mobbed.... Oh, this was a great place before the war, a hotbed of treason. I’m told the French Government had to put pressure on the Government of Monaco to clear them out. And now they’re creeping back again.”
3.
Hugh soon came to recognize the various types that frequented the place. The women known as the skimmers particularly interested him. They haunted the Rooms, hovering over the tables and waiting for a chance to grab the stakes of others. They were the cause of most of the disputes. In the course of an afternoon a dozen of these rows would occur. As a rule, the croupiers discreetly professed ignorance of the cause. Although the disputants often called one another nasty names, Hugh saw them come to blows only on one occasion.