The King Diamond by Fred M. White — Read

Zambra made his way thoughtfully along the streets until he came, at length, to a small house in a thoroughfare that led out of Grosvenor Place. Here he rang the bell and presently a footman in a sombre livery opened the door and admitted him. He hung up his hat and coat in a tastefully furnished hall and then, with the air of a man who is thoroughly at home, walked up the broad, thickly carpeted stone stairs into a big room at the back where a score or two of men and women were seated at a number of bridge tables. They were well-known society people for the most part, some of whom were personally known to Zambra, so that his entrance excited no comment.

There was an air of quiet serenity and refinement about the whole room which would have struck a stranger as appropriate directly he entered. No suggestion whatever of a gambling-den, because it lacked all the appliances that usually go with that type of establishment. Nothing but seven or eight small, green-baize tables at which a number of society people were passing the evening over a quiet rubber of bridge. There was not even so much as a coin to be seen anywhere.