Until five o’clock Ansell chatted and smoked with him, all the time his brain busy to invent some fresh scheme to obtain funds. Then, punctually at five, he took leave of his friend, and entering a fiacre, drove along to Deauville, that fashionable village of smart villas, with its big, white casino and its quaintly built but extremely select Hotel Normandie.
At the latter he descended and, entering, passed through the big lounge where the elegant world and the more elegant half world were chattering and taking their tea after the races. He knew the big hotel well, and many men and women glanced up and remarked as he passed, for Silas P. Hoggan had already established a reputation.
Finding nobody to speak to, he took a seat in a corner, drank tea because it was the correct thing to do, smoked a cigarette, and became horribly bored.
Those who saw him reflected upon the great burden which huge wealth as his must be, little dreaming that, after all, he was but a blackmailer and an ingenious swindler.
Presently he looked in at the casino, where he found a French Baron whom he knew, and then, after a further hour in the café, he returned to his hotel in Trouville, where he dressed carefully and later on appeared at dinner.
Whenever funds were especially low, Ralph Ansell always made it a rule to order an expensive dinner. It preserved the illusion that he was wealthy. He was especially fond of Russian Bortch soup, and this having been ordered, it was served with great ceremony, a large piece of cream being placed in the centre of the rich, brown liquid.
The dinner he ate that night was assuredly hardly in keeping with the ugly fact that, within the next four days, if funds were not forthcoming, he would find himself outside the hotel without his newly-acquired luggage.
Truly his luck was clean out.
After dinner he sat outside the hotel for an hour, watching people pass up and down the plage. The evening was close, and the sand reflected back the hot rays of the sun absorbed during the day.
He was thinking. Only those three louis remained between him and starvation. He must get money somehow—by what means it mattered not, so long as he got it.