An Amiable Charlatan | Page 9

"Glad to see you, sir--and your daughter," he said, glancing keenly at
them both and then at me. "This gentleman is a friend of yours?"
"Certainly," Mr. Parker replied. "I won't introduce you, but I'll answer
for him."
"You would like to play?"

"I will play, certainly," Mr. Parker answered cheerfully. "My friend
will watch--for the present, at any rate."
He waved us away, himself taking a seat at the table. I led Eve to a
divan at the farther corner of the room. We sat there and watched the
people. There were many whose faces I knew--a sprinkling of
stock-brokers, one or two actresses, and half a dozen or so men about
town of a dubious type. On the whole the company was scarcely
reputable. I looked at Eve and sighed.
"Well, what is it?" she asked.
"This is no sort of place for you, you know," I ventured.
"Here it comes," she laughed; "the real, hidebound, respectable
Englishman! I tell you I like it. I like the life; I like the light and shade
of it all. I should hate your stiff English country houses, your highly
moral amusements, and your dull day-by-day life. Look at those
people's faces as they bend over the table!"
"Well, I am looking at them," I told her. "I see nothing but greed. I see
no face that has not already lost a great part of its attractiveness."
"Perhaps!" she replied indifferently. "I will grant you that greed is the
keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else
do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion
actuating a number of very different people in an altogether different
manner?"
"For an adventuress," I remarked, "you seem to notice things."
"No one in the world, except those who live by adventures, ever has
any inducement to notice things," she retorted. "That is why amateurs
are such failures. One never does anything so well as when one does it
for one's living."
"The question is arguable," I submitted.

She shrugged her shoulders.
"Every question is arguable if it is worth while," she agreed carelessly.
"Look at all those people coming in!"
"I don't understand it," I confessed. "These places are against the law,
yet there seems to be no concealment at all! Why aren't we raided?"
"Raids in this part of London only take place by arrangement," she
assured me. "This place will reach its due date sometime, but every one
will know all about it beforehand. They are making a clear profit here
of about four hundred pounds a night and it has been running for two
months now. When the raid comes Mr. Rubenstein--I think that is his
name--can pay his five- hundred-pound fine and move on somewhere
else. It's wicked--the money they make here some nights!"
"You seem to know a good deal about it," I remarked.
"The place interests father," she told me. "He comes here often."
"And you?"
"Sometimes. I am not always in the humor."
I looked at her long and thoughtfully. Her beauty was entirely the
beauty of a young girl. There were no signs of late hours or anxiety in
her face. She puzzled me more than ever.
"I wish I knew," I said, "exactly what you mean when you call yourself
an adventuress."
She laughed.
"It means this," she explained: "To-night I have money in my purse,
jewels on my fingers, a motor car to ride home in. In a week's time, if
things went badly with us, I might have nothing. Then father or I, or
both of us, would go out into the world to replenish, and from
whomever had most of what we desired we should take as opportunity
presented itself."

"Irrespective of the law?"
"Absolutely!"
"Irrespective of your sense of right and wrong?"
"My sense of right and wrong, according to your standards, does not
exist."
I gave it up. She seemed thoroughly in earnest, and yet every word she
spoke seemed contrary to my instinctive judgment of her. She pointed
to the table.
"Look!" she whispered. "These people don't seem as though they had
all that money to gamble with, do they? Look! There must be at least a
thousand or fifteen hundred pounds upon the table."
It was just as she said these words that the thing happened. From
somewhere among the little crowd of people gathered round the table
there came the sound of heavy stamping on the floor, and in less than a
moment every light in the room went out. The place was in somber
darkness. Then, breaking the momentary silence, there came from
outside a shrill whistle. Again there was a silence--and then
pandemonium! In a dozen different keys one heard the same shout:
"The police!"
Eve gripped