gambling tables, on the other side of the room from the bar, were small
tables, easy chairs of ample proportions, lounges, and a fireplace.
Everything was most ornate. The ceilings and walls were ivory white and
much gilt. Heavy chandeliers, with the usual glass prisms and globes,
revolved slowly or swayed from side to side. Huge oil paintings with shaded
top and foot-lights occupied all vacant spaces in the walls. They were
"valued" at from ten to thirty thousand dollars apiece, and that fact was
advertised. "Leda and the Swan," "The Birth of Venus," "The Rape of the
Sabines," "Cupid and Psyche" were some of the classic themes treated as
having taken place in a warm climate. "Susannah and the Elders" and "Salome
Dancing" gave the Biblical flavour. The "Bath of the Harem" finished the
collection. No canvas was of less size than seven by ten feet.

The floor was filled with people. A haze of blue smoke hung in the air.
There was no loud noise except from the minstrel stage at the end. A low
hum of talk, occasionally accented, buzzed continuously. Many of the people
wandering about, leaning against the bar, or integers of the compact groups
around the gambling tables, were dressed in the height of fashion; but, on
the other hand, certainly half were in the roughest sort of clothes--floppy
old slouch hats, worn flannel shirts, top boots to which dried mud was
clinging. These men were as well treated as the others.

Fascinated, Keith would, have liked to linger, but Sansome threaded his way
toward the farther corner. As Keith passed near one of the close groups
around a gambling table, it parted momentarily, and he looked into the eyes
of the man in charge, cold, passionless, aloof, eyes neither friendly nor
unfriendly. And he saw the pale skin; the weary, bored, immobile features;
the meticulous neat dress; the long, deft fingers; and caught the
withdrawn, deadly, exotic personality of the professional gambler on duty.