If you have ever had to walk unconcernedly into the crowded vestibule of a fashionable hotel, not knowing at what moment you might be identified and arrested as a notorious criminal, you will no doubt understand, and, perhaps, sympathise with Slyne\'s state of mind as he entered the H?tel de Paris. If not, you can at least imagine how he felt as he made his way through the throng toward the bureau, grimly conscious of every inquisitive glance.
There was little enough to shield him from immediate detection, beyond the flight of time and the facts that he had been wearing a beard and living under a French alias—or, as he would have preferred to put it, incognito—when, only a season or two before, he had earned such undesired and undesirable distinction throughout the C?te d\'Azur. And he knew very well what his fate would be if he were recognised.
He was very devoutly thankful, therefore, when, having safely run the gauntlet of all those argus eyes which had seemed to be searching his by the way, he found himself installed in an ornate apartment vacated only that morning by a grand duke.
"I can\'t afford to do things by halves now!" he had reflected, shrugging his shoulders, as he had agreed with the manager, who happened to be on the spot, that the suite in question would probably serve his turn. And even the manager had been impressed by his manner—and his fine car.
"So far, so good, then," said Slyne to himself with a somewhat nervous grimace, as he crossed to the window of his sitting-room and looked out over the moonlit bay, after tossing his keys to a valet with a curt order to lose no time. "And now—I must go on as I\'ve begun. But—I can\'t help wishing I were well through with it all. I didn\'t half like the way that clerk watched me with his mouth wide open—and I knew him all right!"
No one could have appeared more care-free, however, than he when, an hour later, he left his dressing-room, ready to face—and outface—the detective talent he still must meet, and sauntered very much at his leisure, a cigarette between his tight lips, in the direction of the table d\'h?te.
"Seems pretty dull here," he commented, after an indifferent inspection of the elaborate company there. "I\'ve a good mind to go on to Ciro\'s—and find out if they have forgotten my face by now too. I won\'t have any peace of mind till I\'ve been all round the old place." In pursuit of which bold policy he sent a page for his coat and hat, and stood displaying himself to the general public till they arrived.
He found Ciro\'s well filled, as usual, when he strolled in, taking with perfect outward calm the risk that he might be remembered there. But no hostile glance met his roving eye as he entered the restaurant. He was obsequiously received by an observant head-waiter, and shown to a table which suited his immediate needs to a nicety.
Among the more ebullient gathering in that gay resort he could discover no cause for alarm. And no one took any special notice of him until, among some still later comers, he noticed a haggardly handsome woman, in a gown so scant that she might well have been glad of the great bunch of camellias she wore at her breast, who was pointing him out to one of the two men in her company.
Slyne\'s heart almost stopped beating at that, and one of his hands involuntarily slipped round to where, in a padded pocket within the arm-hole of his thin evening-coat, he had a little double-barrelled pistol concealed.
He caught the woman\'s eye again while she was whispering volubly to the attentive listener at her elbow, a fashionably foolish-looking young man of a stamp whose appearance is sometimes deceitful, and wondered sickly what was coming as that individual, having looked him over quite openly and with the aid of an eye-glass, rose and approached him across the room.
He glanced up in admirably assumed surprise, however, for all answer to the other\'s gruffly casual, "Good evenin\', sir.
"Will you excuse my askin\' whether you\'d care to sell the car I saw you drivin\' past in, an hour ago?" inquired the stranger, quite unabashed. "Because—I want it, don\'t y\'know."
Slyne\'s face remained an immobile mask, although in his heart he was dully conscious of an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
"It isn\'t for sale at the moment," he answered, suavely enough, but as if a little offended.
"But—I want it," reiterated the stranger, who did not seem to lack a sufficient sense of his own importance. "And I\'ll give you practically your own price for it. It\'s for a lady, don\'t y\'know—and as a favour to me, eh?"
"I\'d be very glad to oblige you," said Slyne, elated beyond expression to find not only that his fears had been groundless, that his visitor was really a fool and not a knave in disguise, but also that, if he played his own cards properly, he might pocket a still fatter profit upon his car than he had anticipated, "but—I can\'t at the moment. Are you going to be here for a few days?"
"I\'m at the Cap Martin for a week. As soon as you change your mind you can come over an\' see me there. Ask for Lord Ingoldsby. Good evenin\' to you," answered his visitor with all the sulky insolence of a spoiled child; and slouched back to his own table, where, Slyne had the satisfaction of seeing, he had to endure a rating from his enchantress for his ill-success on her errand. And Slyne almost smiled.
For he knew the Marquis of Ingoldsby quite well, by repute at least, as an English pigeon with feathers well worth the plucking, and set the other two down for what they were, a pair of those hawks to be found hovering wherever the simple pigeon would try its wings. He became contemplatively interested in the trio, although he knew the ways of that wicked world far too well to suppose for an instant that he would be allowed to make a quartette of it.
"But you shall have your car, madame," he soliloquised, "presently, when I\'m finished with it. And, in exchange, I\'ll take—"
"If only I had Sallie here now—" he said to himself with sudden self-pity, and then was seized with a hot contempt for all such as the noble marquis. "But no one under a royalty need hope for an introduction to her then," he finished, and so stifled an inconvenient twinge of conscience.
"In the meantime it looks to me as if my little overdraft on the future is going to pay me most handsomely," he reflected. And that happy thought added zest to his appetite for the excellent dinner his waiter had ordered for him, the first good dinner to which he had sat down in endless months.
He had given the man carte blanche in the matter of viands, only reserving the choice of what he should drink. So that when he ordered Vichy the waiter was not unduly depressed. Slyne also would have preferred to see a silver bucket beside the table, a pursy gold neck protruding from it, but he wanted all his wits about him that evening, while he was once more pitting himself, alone, against all comers in Monte Carlo—and, incidentally, against the odds in favour of the bank, on which he hoped to draw to the tune of at least a hundred thousand dollars during the next few days. He knew, of expensive experience, that the Widow Clicquot and her charming companions are safer society after a dangerous campaign is over than just before it begins.
He would not even venture upon an after-dinner cigar, contenting himself with a cigarette from the plain gold case with a crest on it which he purchased from the chauffeur he had so providentially picked up in Genoa that afternoon. But he tipped the waiter with such profusion that the man preceded him to the door bent almost double with gratitude, and even the Marquis of Ingoldsby was staringly impressed by the magnificence of his exit—as Slyne had intended he should be.
His masterly impersonation of an unostentatious millionaire was not without its effect on the flunkeys of the Casino also. These made as much of his entrance as he in his assumed modesty would allow on his way into the salles de jeu, where he attracted not a few appraising, inquisitive glances while he once more dared discovery as he roamed from table to table, gazing about him as though that had really been his first visit there. The world and the half-world alike seemed to be wondering who he might be; a circumstance which, otherwise, would have caused him ecstatic pleasure.
It has been stated already that he was more than passably good-looking, with regular profile and straight, spare, elegant figure. In evening clothes which fitted him to perfection, neither over-groomed nor untidy in any detail, without a flaw for the most fastidious to pick in either appearance or manner, he seemed to bear some stamp of distinction which might very well have passed current in circles much more exclusive.
The rooms were well filled, although the really fashionable world had just begun to flock south for the winter. The usual motley went to make up the highly-coloured mosaic of worshippers at the chief shrine of the goddess of chance. It would be a waste of your time and mine, too, to describe again the types to be observed there, and Slyne had seen them all very often before. He sauntered about for a little and then slipped quietly into the only seat which had been vacated ............