several staccato
clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its questionable character.

So at length, satiate and a little weary--drawn by curiosity
besides--he rose, endowed Pete lavishly with a handful of small change
(something over fifty cents; all he had in the world aside from his
cherished five dollars), and with an impressive air of the most
thorough-paced sophistication (nodding genially to the doorkeeper _en
passant_) slowly ascended to the second floor.

Here, in remodelling the house for its present purposes, partitions
had arbitrarily been dispensed with, aside from that enclosing the
well of the stairway; the floor was one large room, wholly devoted to
some half a dozen games of chance. With but few of these was P.
Sybarite familiar; but on information and belief he marked down a faro
layout, the device with which his reading had made him acquainted
under the designation of _les petits chevaux_, and at either end of
the saloon, immense roulette tables.

Upon all the gaming tables massive electric domes concentrated their
light. The walls, otherwise severely unadorned, were covered with
lustrous golden fabric; the windows were invisible, cloaked in
splendid golden hangings; the carpet, golden brown in tone, was of a
velvet pile so heavy that it completely muffled the sound of
footsteps. The room, indeed, was singularly quiet for one that
harboured some two-score players in addition to a full corps of
dealers, croupiers, watchers, and waiters. The almost incessant whine
of racing ivory balls with their clattering over the metal
compartments of the roulette wheels, clicking of chips, dispassionate
voices of croupiers, and an occasional low-pitched comment on the part
of one or another of the patrons, seemed only to lend emphasis to the
hush.

The warmth of the room was noticeable....

A brief survey of the gathering convinced P. Sybarite that, barring
the servants, he was a lonely exception to the rule of evening dress.
But this discovery discomfited him not at all. The wine buzzing in his
head, his demeanour, not to mince matters, rakehelly, with an eye
alert for the man with the twisted mouth, negligent hands in his
trouser pockets, teeth tight upon that admirable cigar, he strutted
hither and yon, ostensibly as much in his native element as a press
agent in a theatre lobby.

A few minutes sufficed to demonstrate that the owner of the abandoned
hat was not among those present; which fact, coupled wi