Chapter 17

He went slowly towards the Round Room, moving like an automaton, his expression an alternating study in callous ruthlessness and frightened indecision—the expression of a man on the verge of doing something terrible, but a man who might yet perhaps take to his heels with the deed unaccomplished. The players could not see his face, which was turned away from them. But the magistrates saw it. And they forgot Jim Barnett, the skilled impersonator, and thought only of Maxime Tuillier, the ruined gambler, who was going …