Yet at Ostend the
system developed such grave faults in the first hour of play that we
were forced to lay up in Paris to economize.
For myself I had entertained doubts of the system from the moment of
its purchase, for it seemed awfully certain to me that the vendor
would have used it himself instead of parting with it for a couple of
quid, he being in plain need of fresh linen and smarter boots, to say
nothing of the quite impossible lounge-suit he wore the night we met
him in a cab shelter near Covent Garden. But the Honourable George had
not listened to me. He insisted the chap had made it all enormously
clear; that those mathematical Johnnies never valued money for its own
sake, and that we should presently be as right as two sparrows in a
crate.
Fearfully annoyed I was at the denouement. For now we were in Paris,
rather meanly lodged in a dingy hotel on a narrow street leading from
what with us might have been Piccadilly Circus. Our rooms were rather
a good height with a carved cornice and plaster enrichments, but the
furnishings were musty and the general air depressing, notwithstanding
the effect of a few good mantel ornaments which I have long made it a
rule to carry with me.
Then had come the meeting with the Americans.
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