ern
savers--and users--of time who prefer to conduct their correspondence
entirely by telegram.

They were now close to the Place de l'Opera. "Let's go on to 'The
Wash,'" said Pargeter suddenly.

The eyes of the two men became focussed on the long line of brilliantly
lit up windows of a flat overlooking the square. Here were the
headquarters of a Paris club, bearing the name of America's first and
greatest President, which had earned for itself the nickname of "Monaco
Junior."

Tom Pargeter was no gambler,--your immensely wealthy man rarely is,--but
it gave him pleasure to watch the primitive emotions which gambling
generally brings to the human surface, and so he spent at what he called
"The Wash" a good many of his idle hours.

"Let's turn in here for a minute," he said, eagerly, "Florac was holding
the bank two hours ago; let's go and see if he's still at it."

Vanderlyn made a movement of recoil; he murmured something about having
to be up early the next morning, but Pargeter, with the easy selfishness
which so often looks like good-nature, pressed him to go in. "It's quite
early," he urged again, and his companion was in no state of body or
mind to resist even the slight pressure of another's will.

* * * * *

The brightly lighted rooms of "Monaco Junior" were full of colour,
sound, and movement; the atmosphere was in almost ludicrous contrast to
that of the decorous Union. The evening was only just beginning, the
rooms were full, and Pargeter was greeted with boisterous warmth; here,
if nowhere else, his money made him king.

He led the way to the card-room which, with its crowd of men surrounding
each of the tables, was very evidently the heart of the club. "Do look
at Florac!" he murmured to Vanderlyn. "When I left here a couple of
hours ago, he was winning a bit, but I expect he's losing now. I always
like to watch him play--he's such a bad loser!"

The two men had threaded their way close to the baccarat table, and now
they formed the centre of a group who were throwing furtive glances at
the banker, a pale lean Frenchman of the narrow-jowled, Spanish type so
often repeated in members of the old noblesse.

The Marquis de Florac was "somebody," to use the expressive French
phrase,--a member of that small Parisian circle of which each individual
is known by reputation to every provincial bourgeois, and to every
foreign reader of French social news.

There had been a t