‘Something connected with the League, I suppose,’ Le Gautier yawned. ‘If it was not yourself I was talking to, I should say, confusion to the League.’
‘How rash you are!’ Salvarini returned in a low tone, accompanied by an admiring glance at his companion. ‘Consider what one word spoken lightly might mean to you. The attendants here, the croupier even, might be a Number in the League.’
‘Very likely,’ Le Gautier replied carelessly; ‘but it is not probable that, if I should whisper the magic words in his ear, he would give me credit for a few napoleons. I am in no mood for business to-night, Luigi; and if you are the good fellow I take you for, you will lend me’——
‘One Brother must always aid another according to his means, says the decree. But, alas! I have nothing.—I came to you with the intention’——
‘Oh, did you?’ Le Gautier asked sardonically. ‘Then, in that case, I must look elsewhere; a few francs is all my available capital.’
‘Hector,’ the Italian exclaimed suddenly, in a hoarse whisper, ‘where is the?’—— He did not finish his sentence, but pointed to the watchchain the other was idly twirling in his fingers.
Le Gautier smiled sarcastically. ‘It is gone,’ he said lightly—‘gone to swell the bloated coffers of the bank. Fortune, alas! had no favour even for that mystic coin. Sacred as it should have been, I am its proud possessor no more.’
‘You are mad, utterly mad!’ Salvarini exclaimed. ‘If it were but known—if it has fallen into the hands of the bank, or a croupier happens to have a Number, think of what it means to you! The coin would be forwarded to the Central Council; the signs would be called in; yours missing’——
‘And one of these admirable German daggers would make acquaintance with my estimable person, with no consolation but the fact of knowing what a handsome corpse I shall make. Bah! A man can only die once, and so long as they do not make me the posthumous hero of a horrible tragedy, I do not care. It is not so very serious, my Luigi.’
‘It is serious; you know it is,’ Luigi retorted. ‘No Brother of the League would have had the sublime audacity, the reckless courage’——