John followed the directions given and soon found himself in a room handsomely but scantily furnished.  There were some large easy chairs, a wide comfortable sofa, and tables covered with green baize.  A fire blazed fitfully in a bright steel grate, but there were no pictures, no ornaments of any kind, no books or musical instruments.  The gas burned dimly and the fire was dull and smoky, for there was a heavy fog outside which no light could fully penetrate.  The company were nearly all middle-aged and respectable-looking.  Their hands were full of cards, and they were playing with them like men in a ghostly dream.  They never lifted their eyes.  They threw down cards on the table in silence, they gathered them up with a muttered word and went on again.  They seemed to John like the wild phantasmagoria of some visionary hell.  Their silent, mechanical movements, their red eyelids, their broad white faces, utterly devoid of intellect or expression, terrified him.  He could not avoid the tense, shocked accent with which he called his brother’s name.

Harry looked up as if he had heard a voice in his sleep.  A strained unlovely light was on his face.  His luck had turned.  He was going to win.  He could not speak.  His whole soul was bent upon the next throw and with a cry of satisfaction he lifted the little roll of bills the croupier pushed towards him.

Then John laid his hand firmly on Harry’s shoulder. “Give that money to me,” he said and in a bewildered manner Harry mechanically obeyed the command.  Then John, holding it between his finger and thumb, walked straight to the hearth and threw the whole roll into the fire.  For a moment there was a dead silence; then two of the youngest men rose to their feet.  John went back to the table.  Cards from every hand were scattered there, and looking steadily at the men round it, John asked with intense feeling,

“GENTLEMEN, what will it profit you, if you gain the whole world and lose your own souls; for what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

A dead silence followed these questions, but as John left the room with his brother, he heard an angry querulous voice exclaim,

“Most outrageous!  Most unusual!  O croupier! croupier!”

Then he was at the door.  He paid the promised pound, and as his cab was waiting, he motioned to Harry to enter it.  All the way to Charing Cross, John preserved an indignant silence and Harry copied his attitude, though the almost incessant beating of his doubled hands together showed the intense passion which agitated him.

Half an hour’s drive brought them to the privacy of their hotel rooms and as quickly as they entered them, John turned on his brother like a lion brought to bay.

“How dared you,” he said in a low, hard voice, “how dared you let me find you in such a place?”

“I was with gentlemen playing a quiet game.  You had no right to disturb me.”