Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/327

 countess—some bit of rumor, not entirely creditable to the woman's husband.

What was it? Faith, he couldn't nail it down, at all, at all; it was right there, on the tip of his tongue, so to speak, but it wouldn't form itself into coherency; something—

Impatient with himself for bothering his head over other people's business, O'Rourke sat him down in a big armchair, placed comfortably between two of the long French windows that opened out upon the piazza. He started a fresh cigar, and tried to put young Senet and his hopeless love affair out of his mind.

But he was not to be permitted to forget. For a gambling room, this salon was rather quiet; the patrons at the tables were mostly hardened habitués, who placed their stakes and accepted losses and gains with silent aplomb. Only the croaking of the croupier and the chatter of the chips sounded loudly.

So that it was an easy matter to accustom one's ears to outside noises. O'Rourke found himself attentive to the measured tread of a couple who were promenading the veranda—listening to their footsteps die out in the distance, and then gradually come to a crescendo as they approached and passed his windows.

They were a man and a woman—he knew that from the rustle of the woman's skirts and the heavy, steady tread of the man. And quite suddenly he knew the woman from her voice, when she spoke in passing.

It was the Countess of Seyn-Altberg.

And the man? O'Rourke grew impatient for their return, that he might place the fellow by his voice. When they did come back, however, he was disappointed; he did not recognize those guttural accents.