Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/93

 before he left Marseilles. Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the Double on the wheel—fate's percentage in every game; she could not know the Vendée would be warned from lingering at Malta because of the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria, after all.

The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical exactness of deduction. As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria—the poor deluded body of a dupe. With this certitude of logic came the beginnings of resolve. Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by the absinth to focus, was this new determination. Capper nursed it, elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing himself in the new light of a humble hero. It was near morning, and the Tavern of Thermopylæ was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to his hotel. His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and acutely sober.