Since it was useless to look for him here, and no other place seemed promising at this hour, there was nothing to do but pass the moments until time to change for dinner.  Accordingly I watched the tables.  Once, like most men of my age, I had been bitten by the roulette fever and had wrestled with “systems” in their thousands, not so much for the mere “gamble,” as for the joy of striving to beat the wily Pascal at his own invention.

In those old days the wheel had been like a populous town for me, inhabited by quaint little people, each living in his own snug house; the Little People of Roulette.  Not a number on the board but his face was familiar to me; I would have known him if I had met him in the street.  There was sly, thin, dark little Dix, always sneaking up on tiptoe when you did not want him, and popping out behind your back.  Business-like, successful, bustling Onze; tactless but honest Douze; treacherous yet fascinating Treize; blundering Seize; graceful, brunette Dix-Sept; and the faithful, friendly Vingtneuf; feminine Rouge; brusque, virile Noir; mean little, underbred Manque, and senile Passe; priggish Pair with his skittish young wife; the Dozens, nouveaux-riches, thinking themselves a cut above the humbler Simple Chances in Roulette Society; the upright, unbending Columns; the raffish Chevaux; the excitable Transversales, and the brilliant Carres; charming on first acquaintance, but fickle as friends; the twin, blind dwarfs, the Coups des Deux; these and many more, down to the wretched, worried Intermittances, ever in a violent hurry to catch a train but never catching it.  I could see them all, still; but I saw them pass with calmness now, for I wanted to find the Boy.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXI

The Boy’s Sister

    “A little thing would make me tell
     . . . how much I lack of a man.” 
                         —­SHAKESPEARE.

The palace clock over in Monaco was striking eight as I reached the steps of the Hotel de Paris.  Eight had been the hour appointed.  Now, here were both the Hour and the Man:  but where was the Boy?

I walked into the gay restaurant, with its window-wall, and the long rank of candle-lit tables ready for dinner.  Twenty people, perhaps, were dining; but there was no slim figure in short black jacket, Eton collar, and loose silk tie; no curly chestnut head; no blue-star eyes.  Cordially disliking everybody present, I marched down the length of the room, and took a corner table, which was laid for four.  On the sparkling snow of the damask cloth burned a bonfire of scarlet geraniums, and two red-shaded wax candles, of the kind which the Boy used to call “candles with nostrils,” made wavering rose-lights on the white expanse.

I sat down, and an attentive waiter appeared at my elbow, having apparently shot up from the floor like a pantomime demon.