At the far table three men were playing with one woman, whose back was turned to me. Facing her, and me, sat a bright-eyed, youngish fellow with short black hair, a face almost crimson-red, and on his right and left respectively a dandified-looking chap with waxed moustaches, and a good solid individual of immobile swarthy countenance, the image of a substantial, dependable Englishman. This ponderous person was dealing with a regular, unhurried motion that recalled to me the grinding of the mills of God.
“A pretty kettle of fish!” I murmured to myself, and added to Crofts, “A variegated lot, old fellow! So many different tempers and purposeful minds reduced to the same dead level by the permutations of fifty-two pasteboard slips. Saddening, Crofts, saddening.”
“All intimates, one way or another,” he whispered. “Good friends, mind you, but you’ll find them fighting half the time.”
“They certainly look engrossed in the game.”
“Ah, but that’s a pretence. They keep up a very brave front, but any trifling disturbance would set them wild.”
“You don’t say so.”
“I tell you, man, there’s something foul and fearful in this damned Vale. I half regret—well, come on. You’ve got to meet them sometime. They’ve all heard about you.”
V.
Kingmaker
Forthwith commenced that three-legged race I have already described, in whose zigzag course I was presented to all these people in about two minutes.
While my mind was still in a haze, a small thing caught my eye and made me give a much larger thing a rapid, cursory, and at the same time careful survey. The small thing was still another image of a cat’s head, this one in profile with jaws apart and bared teeth, the head forming a heraldic badge tucked into one spandril of the Hall fire-arch. The renewed sight of this insistent emblem had a bad effect on me. The leering head at the outer door, the sleek head at the foot of the balustrade, and this vindictive head brought the sharp, nerve-tearing cry of the outer darkness into my ears again.