It's all for _our_ benefit! If a man's cad enough
to blow his brains out at the tables, all over a lady's dress, he is
whisked away so quick nobody has time to realize what's up before a
glass door in the wall has opened with a spring and shut again as if
nothing had happened. Not a croupier stops spinning. I call it
magnificent. But it does make you feel a bit creepy when anybody you've
known disappears into space!"
Lord Burden, the dilapidated earl imported as a _parti_, was of opinion
that the Austrian count had merely applied for the _viatique_; and being
granted by the management a sum large enough to pay his fare and his
food, had departed without caring to show his face again at the villa.
Others were inclined to agree with Dodo, especially the women, who were
of the type that secretly enjoys mystery and horror, when unconnected
with themselves. No one ever really knew, however (unless perhaps the
Dauntreys), what had become of the youth with hair _en brosse_, and wasp
waist so slim that the body seemed held together by a mere ligament. He
was gone: that was all, and his small place in the household was more
than filled by a German couple, an ex-officer with an adoring wife, both
of whom spent half their days in bed, testing on a roulette watch
various exciting systems which, now they had come from afar off, they
lacked courage to play at the Casino. Their name was so intricate that
Dodo Wardropp said it ought to be kept a secret. As nobody could
pronounce it, however, it amounted to that, in the end.
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