At this time he had a friend staying with him,
a certain Captain Raggerton, and the two men appeared to be on very
intimate terms. I did not take to Raggerton at all. He was a
good-looking man, pleasant in his manners, and remarkably plausible. But
the fact is--I am speaking in strict confidence, of course--he was a bad
egg. He had been in the Guards, and I don't quite know why he left; but
I do know that he played bridge and baccarat pretty heavily at several
clubs, and that he had a reputation for being a rather uncomfortably
lucky player. He did a good deal at the race-meetings, too, and was in
general such an obvious undesirable that I could never understand my
cousin's intimacy with him, though I must say that Alfred's habits had
changed somewhat for the worse since I had left England.
"The fame of my purchase seems to have preceded me, for when, one day, I
produced the pendant to show them, I found that they knew all about it.
Raggerton had heard the story from a naval man, and I gathered vaguely
that he had heard something that I had not, and that he did not care to
tell me; for when my cousin and he talked about the pearl, which they
did pretty often, certain significant looks passed between them, and
certain veiled references were made which I could not fail to notice.
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