I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on the principle that misery loves company that I forgathered with Talbot, or rather that Talbot forgathered with me.  Certainly, under happier conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard.  But, either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious gayety of our few fellow passengers, or because the young man in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.

Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the inclination to turn him down.  Indeed, had not some of the passengers testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice.  On the first night I met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.  All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that, though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his years in India, playing polo, he was an American.  He seemed to have spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French watering-places and on the Riviera.  I felt sure that it was in France I had already seen him, but where I could not recall.  He was hard to place.  Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips.  It was his taking the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object.  I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a favor.  Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could not tell.  But in forcing himself upon me, except in self-interest, I could think of no other motive.  The next evening I discovered the motive.

He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a bank at baccarat.  When he asked me to sit down I said:  “I saw you last summer at Aix-les-Bains.”

His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for some particular card.

“What was I doing?” he asked.

“Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs.”

With obvious relief he laughed.

“Oh, yes,” he assented; “jolly place, Aix.  But I lost a pot of money there.  I’m a rotten hand at cards.  Can’t win, and can’t leave ’em alone.”  As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me to excuse him, he smiled appealingly.  “Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like ’em all,” he rattled on, “but they don’t like me.  So I stick to solitaire.  It’s dull, but cheap.”  He shuffled the cards clumsily.  As though making conversation, he asked:  “You care for cards yourself?”