“Yet you have no objection to your future wife’s playing? That seems to me strange.”
“Indeed, I have the strongest objection,” Preston answered quickly, in a strange voice. “I have been through the mill, and I know what it means when the craving to gamble gets a grip on you which, try as you will, you can’t shake off. Unfortunately Miss Hagerston met an acquaintance here yesterday—that tall, handsome woman—you must have noticed her—who last night induced her to play, and they won a lot of money. Miss Hagerston became so exultant that she promised Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson she would play with her again to-night, and nothing I could say would dissuade her. I can only hope that to-night their luck will be reversed, and then Miss Hagerston will see the folly of the whole thing.”
For a minute the major did not reply. Then he said abruptly:
“Who are the two men who are always in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s company—I think you said that was her name?”
“Just friends. They are constantly with her in London too, where she is well-known in Society; some say there is no romance or scandal associated with their friendship; others say there is.”
For a long while they conversed on various topics, and particularly about the war. Presently the major said:
“I noticed a person in the hotel to-day who had a curious reputation before the war—a man called Michaud, Alphonse Michaud. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Odd, your asking that,” Preston answered. “He was pointed out to me last night at supper at the Casino—a dark man, rather Jewish looking, with black wavy hair.”
“That’s the fellow. He was mixed up in several shady affairs some years before the war, and I understand he is now ‘commander-in-chief’ of a most successful inquiry agency in London, with branches on the Continent and abroad. I suppose it is the old idea, ‘set a thief to catch a thief,’” and he laughed.
“What do you know about him?” Preston asked, suddenly interested. “How the Metropolitan Secret Agency is so successful in ferreting out secrets in people’s private lives has long puzzled London Society, also the London police, and I have often heard it hinted that the Agency in question of which I now understand Michaud is the moving force, has recourse to questionable methods to obtain its information.”