And there he reflected until the pink dawn spread, and upon the horizon he saw the early morning steamer crossing from Havre.
He was broke!
Perhaps Ted Patten had treated him just as he had treated Adolphe. That letter might, after all, be only a blind.
“He may have got money, and then written to frighten me,” he muttered to himself. “Strange that he didn’t give an address. But I know where I shall find him sooner or later. Harry’s in Paris is his favourite place, or the American Bar at the Grand at Brussels. Oh, yes, I shall find him. First let me turn myself round.”
Then, rising, he walked back to Trouville in the brilliant morning, and going up to his room, went to bed.
Whenever he found himself in an hotel with no money to pay the bill, he always feigned illness, and so awakened the sympathies of the management. In some cases he had lain ill for weeks, living on luxuries, and promising to settle for it all when he was able to get about.
He had done the trick at the Adlon, in Berlin, till found out, and again at the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York. This time he intended to “work the wheeze” on the Palace at Trouville, though he knew that he could not live there long, for the short season was nearly at an end, and in about three weeks the hotel would be closed.
But for a fortnight he remained in bed—or, at least, he was in bed whenever anyone came in. The doctor who was called prescribed for acute rheumatism, and the way in which the patient shammed pain was pathetic.
This enforced retirement was in one way irksome. Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he, after a week in bed, was sufficiently well to sit at the window and look down upon the gay crowd on the plage below, and sometimes he even found himself so well that he could appreciate a cigar.