‘L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace,’ Le Gautier returned. ‘I sigh for new temptations; the sight of the gaming-table is to me what the smell of battle afar off is to the war-horse. I came here intending to risk a louis; I have lost everything. There is nothing like courage at the tables; and as it had a spice of danger in it, I risked’——
‘Your life! You do not seem to comprehend the danger.’
‘But, my dear friend, it is exactly that spice of danger that gives the thing its nameless charm. Come, you are hipped, out of sorts. You see the duties of the Order in every action; you see the uplifting of the avenging dagger in every shadow that trembles on the wall. Be a man!’
‘I am all the more disturbed,’ Salvarini observed with moody, uneasy face, ‘that the orders have come. That is the principal reason I am here to look for you. We are translated to London.’
‘That is good news, at anyrate,’ Le Gautier exclaimed briskly. ‘I have been literally dying to get back there. By the bright eyes of Enid—— What is that?’
Above the clamour of tongues and the rattle of the gold pieces, a low laugh was heard distinctly close to the speaker’s elbow. He turned sharply round; but there was no one within a few feet of them. Apparently, it had not disturbed the inthralled players, though the croupier swept his cold eye around to discover the author of this unseemly mirth.
‘Strange!’ Le Gautier observed. ‘I seem to have heard that laugh before, though I cannot remember where.’
‘And so have I,’ Salvarini whispered hoarsely—‘only once, and I hope that I may never hear it again. It is horrible!’
Le Gautier looked at his companion, amazed to see the agitation pictured on his face. It was white and drawn, as if with some inward pain. Salvarini wiped his damp brow as he met the other’s piercing gaze, and tried to still the trembling of his limbs.
‘A passing fancy,’ he explained—‘a fancy which called up a remembrance of my boyhood, the recollection of a vengeance as yet unpaid.—But I am idling; let us get outside. The orders have come, as I tell you, for London. We are to meet the Head Centre at the old address.’