The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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expected it to be.
M. Polperro spread out his hands with an eloquent gesture. "I beg of M'sieur," he said, "to allow me to conduct him to the Casino! Madame Bailey will not be here for some time, not perhaps for one hour, perhaps for two hours. I will have the luggage sent on to the Pension Malfait."
Strange—very strange! At home in Market Dalling Sylvia had always been fond of going to bed quite early; yet now, according to the hotel-keeper, she was perhaps going to stay out till one o'clock—till one o'clock on Sunday morning!
M. Polperro led Chester into the stately, long drawing-room; but in a very few moments he reappeared, having taken off his white apron and his chef's cap, and put on a light grey alpaca coat and a soft hat.
As they hurried along the path which skirts the lake, Chester began to feel the charm of the place. It was very gay and delightful—"very French," so the English lawyer told himself. The lake, too, looked beautiful—mysteriously beautiful and fairy-like, in the moonlight.
Soon they turned into a narrow dark lane.
"This is not a grand entrance to our beautiful Casino," said M. Polperro, ruefully, "but no matter, it is lovely once you get inside!" and he chuckled happily.
When in front of the great glass doors, he touched Chester on the arm.
"I wonder whether M'sieur would care to become a member of the Club," he said in a low voice. "I do not press M'sieur to do so! But you see, both Madame Bailey and her friends are members of the Club, and it is almost certain that it is there we shall find them. I fear it is no use our going to the Playing Rooms downstairs."
The Playing Rooms? Sylvia a member of a club? And—for Chester's quick, legal mind had leapt on the fact—of a gambling club?
No, that was incredible.
"I think there must be some mistake," he said distantly. "I do not think that Mrs. Bailey is a member of a club."
M. Polperro looked very much surprised.
"Oh, yes, indeed she is," he answered confidently. "It is only the quite common people who content themselves, M'sieur, with risking a franc and playing the little games. But just as M'sieur likes—" he shrugged his shoulders. "I do not press M'sieur to become a member of the Club."
Without answering, Chester paid the couple of francs admission for himself and his companion, and they walked slowly through the lower rooms, threading their way through the crowd.
"You see, M'sieur, I was right! Madame Bailey is in the Club!"
"Very well. Let us go to the Club," said Chester, impatiently.
He was beginning, or so he thought, to understand. The Club was evidently a quiet, select part of the Casino, with a reading room and so on. Sylvia had probably made friends with some French people in her hotel, and they had persuaded her to join the Club.
He was beginning to throw off his tiredness; the unaccustomed atmosphere in which he found himself amused and interested, even if it rather shocked him.
Ten minutes later he also, thanks to the kind offices of M. Polperro, and by the payment of twenty francs, found himself a member of the Club; free of that inner sanctuary where the devotees of the fickle goddess play with gold instead of silver; and where, as even Chester could see, the people who stood round the table, risking with quiet, calculating eyes their twenty-franc pieces and bank-notes, were of a very different social standing from the merry, careless crowd downstairs.
In the Baccarat Room most of the men were in evening clothes, and the women with them, if to Chester's eyes by no means desirable or reputable-looking companions, were young, pretty, and beautifully dressed.
Still, the English lawyer felt a thrill of disgust at the thought that Sylvia Bailey could possibly be part of such a company.
Baccarat was being played at both tables, but the crowd of players centred rather round one than the other, as is almost always the way.
M. Polperro touched his companion on the arm. "And now, M'sieur," he said briefly, "I will with your permission depart home. I think you will find Madame Bailey at that further table."
Chester shook the owner of the Villa du Lac cordially by the hand. The little man had been really kind and helpful. It was a pity there was no vacant room in his hotel.
He made his way to the further table, and gradually reached a point of vantage where he could see those of the players who were seated round the green cloth.
As is generally the case when really high play is going on, the people who were playing, as also those watching them, were curiously quiet.
And then, with a shock of surprise which sent the blood to his cheeks, Chester suddenly saw that Sylvia Bailey was sitting nearly opposite to where he himself was standing.
There are certain scenes, certain human groupings of individuals, which remain fixed for ever against the screen of memory. Bill Chester will never forget the sight which was presented to him in the Lacville Casino by the particular group on which his tired eyes became focussed with growing amazement and attention.
Sylvia was sitting at the baccarat table next to the man who was acting as Banker. She was evidently absorbed in the fortunes of the game, and she followed the slow falling of the fateful cards with rather feverish intentness.
Her small gloved hands rested on the table, one of them loosely holding a tiny ivory rake; and on a bank-note spread open on the green cloth before her were two neat piles of gold, the one composed of twenty-franc, the other of ten-franc pieces.
Chester, with a strange feeling of fear and anger clutching at his heart, told himself that he had never seen Sylvia look as she looked to-night. She was more than pretty—she was lovely, and above all, alive—vividly alive. There was a bright colour on her cheek, and a soft light shining in her eyes.
The row of pearls which had occasioned the only serious difference which had ever arisen between them, rose and fell softly on the bosom of her black lace dress.
Chester also gradually became aware that his beautiful friend and client formed a centre of attraction to those standing round the gambling-table. Both the men and the women stared at her, some enviously, but more with kindly admiration, for beauty is sure of its tribute in any French audience, and Sylvia Bailey to-night looked radiantly lovely—lovely and yet surely unhappy and ill-at-ease.
Well might she look both in such a place and among such a crew! So the English lawyer angrily told himself.
Now and again she turned and spoke in an eager, intimate fashion to a man sitting next her on her left. This man, oddly enough, was not playing.
Sylvia Bailey's companion was obviously a Frenchman, or so Chester felt sure, for now he found himself concentrating his attention on Mrs. Bailey's neighbour rather than on her. This man, to whom she kept turning and speaking in a low, earnest tone, was slim and fair, and what could be seen of his evening clothes fitted scrupulously well. The Englishman, looking at him with alien, jealous eyes, decided within himself that the Frenchman with whom Sylvia seemed to be on such friendly terms, was a foppish-looking fellow, not at all the sort of man she ought to have "picked up" on her travels.
Suddenly Sylvia raised her head, throwing it back with a graceful gesture, and Chester's eyes travelled on to the person who was standing just behind her, and to whom she had now begun speaking with smiling animation.
This was a woman—short, stout, and swarthy—dressed in a bright purple gown, and wearing a pale blue bonnet which was singularly unbecoming to her red, massive face. Chester rather wondered that such an odd, and yes—such a respectable-looking person could be a member of this gambling club. She reminded him of the stout old housekeeper in a big English country house near Market Dalling.
Sylvia seemed also to include in her talk a man who was standing next the fat woman. He was tall and lanky, absurdly and unsuitably dressed, to the English onlooker, in a white alpaca suit and a shabby Panama hat. In his hand he held a little book, in which he noted down every turn of the game, and it was clear