CHAPTER IX
BREAKING THE BANK
There were not many people in this part of the Casino gardens. A few love-making couples and a handful of others who preferred the chilly quietude of Nature to the throng of the interior promenade, made up the occupants of the winding paths that cover the seaward slope.
At last Mensmore halted. There was no one in front, and he turned to look if the terrace were clear behind him. He caught sight of Bruce, but did not recognize him, and leant against a low wall, ostensibly to gaze at the sea until the other had passed.
Claude came up to him and cried cheerily:
“Hello! Is that you, Mr. Mensmore? Isn’t it a lovely night?”
Mensmore, startled at being thus unexpectedly addressed by name, wheeled about, stared at the new-comer, and said, very stiffly:
“Yes; but I felt rather seedy in the Casino, so I came here to be alone.”
“Of course,” answered the barrister. “You look a little out of sorts. Perhaps got a chill, eh? It is dangerous weather here, particularly on these heavenly evenings. Come back with me to the hotel, and have a stiff brandy and soda. It will brace you up.”
Mensmore flushed a little at this persistence.
“I tell you,” he growled, “that I only require to be left in peace, and I shall soon recover from my indisposition. I am awfully obliged to you, but – ”
“But you wish me to walk on and mind my own business?”
“Not exactly that, old chap. Please don’t think me rude. I am very sorry, but I can’t talk much to-night.”
“So I understand. That is why I think it is best for you to have company, even such disagreeable companionship as my own.”
“Confound it, man,” cried the other, now thoroughly irritated; “tell me which way you are going and I will take the other. Why on earth cannot you take a polite hint, and leave me to myself?”
“It is precisely because I am good at taking a hint that I positively refuse to leave you until you are safely landed at your hotel. Indeed, I may stick to you then for some hours.”
“The devil take you! What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say.”
“If you don’t quit this instant I will punch your head for you.”
“Ah! You are recovering already. But before you start active exercise take your overcoat off. That revolver in the breast pocket might go off accidentally, you know. Besides, as I shall hit back, I might fetch my knuckles against it, and that would be hardly fair. Otherwise, I can do as much in the punching line as you can, any day.”
This reply utterly disconcerted Mensmore.
“Look here,” he said, avoiding Bruce’s steadfast gaze, “what are you talking about? What has it got to do with you, anyhow?”
“Oh, a great deal. My business principally consists in looking after other people’s affairs. Just now it is my definite intention to prevent you from blowing out your brains, or what passes for them.”
“Then all I can say is that I wish you were in Jericho. It is your own fault if you get into trouble over this matter. Had you gone about your business I would have waited. As it is – ”
It so happened that the guard, having nothing better to do, strolled along the terraces by the same path that Mensmore and Bruce had followed. The first sight that met his astonished eyes, when in the flood of moonlight he discovered their identity, was the spectacle of these two springing at each other like a pair of wild cats.
“Parbleu,” he shouted, “the solitary ones are fighting!”
He ran forward, drawing his short sword, ready to stick the weapon into either of the combatants if the majesty of the law in his own person were not at once respected.
In reality, the affair was simple enough. Mensmore made an ineffectual attempt to draw his revolver, and Bruce pinioned him before he could get his hand up to his pocket. Both men were equally matched, and it was difficult to say how the struggle might have ended had not the sword-brandishing guard appeared on the scene.
Claude, even in this excited situation, kept his senses. Mensmore, blind with rage and the madness of one who would voluntarily plunge into the Valley of the Shadow, took heed of naught save the effort to rid himself of the restraining clutch.
“Put away your sword. Seize his arms from behind. He is a suicide,” shouted the barrister to the gesticulating and shrieking Frenchman.
Fortunately, Bruce was an excellent linguist. The man caught Mensmore’s arms, put a knee in the small of his back, and doubled him backwards with a force that nearly dislocated his spine. In the same instant Claude secured the revolver, which he promptly pocketed.
“It is well,” he said to the guard. “Here is a louis. Say nothing, but leave us.”
“Monsieur understands that the honor of a French policeman – ”
“I understand that if there is any report made of this affair to the authorities you will be dismissed for negligence. Had this lunatic been left to your care he would now have been lying here dead. Do you doubt me?”
The guard hesitated. “Monsieur mentioned a louis,” he said, for Bruce’s finger and thumb had returned the coin to his waistcoat pocket.
This transaction satisfactorily ended, Bruce accosted Mensmore, who was awkwardly twisting himself to see if his backbone were all right.
“You are not hurt, I hope?”
“It is matterless. Why could you not let me finish the business in my own way?”
“Because the world has some use for a man like you. Because you are a moral coward, and require support from a stronger nature. Because I did not want to think of that girl crying her eyes out to-morrow when she read of your death, or heard of it, as she assuredly would have done.”
Mensmore, though still furious at his fellow-countryman’s interference, was visibly amazed at this final reference.
“What do you know about her?” he cried.
“Nothing, save what my eyes tell me.”
“They seem to tell you a remarkable lot about my affairs.”
“Possibly. Meanwhile I want you to give me your word of honor that you will not make any further attempt on your life during the next seven days.”
“The word of honor of a disgraced man! Will you accept it?”
“Most certainly.”
“You are a queer chap, and no mistake. Very well, I give it. At the same time, I cannot help dying of starvation. I lost my last cent to-night at roulette. I am hopelessly involved in debts which I cannot pay. I have no prospects and no friends. You are not doing me a kindness, my dear fellow, in keeping me alive, even for seven days.”
“You might have obtained your fare to London from the authorities of the Casino?”
“Hardly. I lost very little at roulette. I am not such a fool. My losses are nearly all in bets over the pigeon-shooting match which I ought to have won. I was backing myself at a game where I was apparently sure to succeed.”
“Until you were beaten by a woman’s voice.”
“Yes, wizard. I am too dazed to wonder at you sufficiently. Yet I would have lost fifty times for her sake, though it was for her sake that I wanted to win.”
“Come, let us smoke. Sit down, and tell me all about it.”
They took the nearest seat, lighting cigarettes. The guard, watching them from the shade of a huge palm-tree, murmured:
“Holy Virgin, what madmen are these English! They move apart, unknown; they fight; they fraternize; they consume tobacco – all within five minutes.”
And he lovingly felt for the louis to assure himself that he was not dreaming.
“There is not much to tell,” said Mensmore, who had quite recovered his self-control, and was now trying to sum up the man who had so curiously entered his life at the moment when he had decided to do away with it. “I came here, being a poor chap living mostly on my wits, to go in for the pigeon-shooting tournaments. I won several, and was in fair funds. Then I fell in love. The girl is rich, well-connected, and all that sort of thing. She is the first good influence that has crossed my life, so I thought that perhaps my luck was now going to turn. I backed myself for all I was worth, and more, to win the championship. If it came off I should have won over £3,000. As it is, I owe £500, which must be paid on Monday. My total assets, after I settled my hotel bill and sent a cheque to a chum who took some of my bets in his own name, was £16. Now I have nothing. So you see – ”
“Yes,” interrupted Bruce, “it is a hard case. But death is no settlement. Nobody gets paid, and everybody is worried.”
“My dear fellow, my life is in your keeping for seven days. After that, I presume, I take myself in charge again.”
The barrister took thought for a while before he inquired:
“Why did you go to the Casino to-night, if you did not patronize the tables as a rule?”
The other colored somewhat and laughed sarcastically.
“Just a final bit of folly. I dreamt that my luck had turned.”
“Dreamt?”
“Yes, last night. Three times did I imagine that I was playing roulette, and that after a certain number – whether thirteen or twenty-three I was uncertain – turned up, there was a run of seventeen on the red. The funny thing is that I had an impression that the number was twenty-three, but with a doubt that it might be thirteen. I remember, during a sub-conscious state in the third dream, resolving to listen and look more carefully to discover the exact number. But again things got blurred. The only clear point was that the run of seventeen on the red commenced at once.”
“Well?”
“Well, I took my remaining cash, went to the Casino, became a bit impatient when neither number turned up for quite a while, and when thirteen appeared I backed the red. But four times it was the black that won.”
“So I saw.”
“Have you been keeping guard over me?”
“Yes, in a sort of way.”
“You are a queer chap. I can’t help saying that I am obliged to you. But it won’t do any good. I am absolutely dead broke.”
“Now listen to me. I will pay your fare back to London and give you something to live on until I return a week hence. Then you must come to see me, and I will help you into some sort of situation. But you must once and for all abandon this notion of suicide.”
“What about my debts?”
“Confound your debts. Tell people to wait until you are able to pay them.”
“And – and the girl?”
“If she is worth having she will give you a chance of making a living sufficient to enable you to marry her. She is of age, I suppose, and can marry any one she likes.”
Mensmore puffed his cigarette in silence for fully a minute. Then he said:
“You are a very decent sort, Mr. – ”
“Bruce – Claude Bruce is my name.”
“Well, Mr. Bruce, you propose to hand me £10 for my railway fare, and, say, £5 for my existence, until we meet again in London, in exchange for which you purchase the rights in my life indefinitely, accidents and reasonable wear and tear excepted.”
“Exactly!”
“Make it £20, with five louis down, and I accept.”
“Why the stipulation?”
“I want to back my dream. The number is twenty-three. It evidently was not thirteen. I want to see that thing through. I will back the red after twenty-three turns up, and if I lose I shall be quite satisfied.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Then I don’t care a bit what happens during the next seven days. After that, au revoir, should we happen to meet across the divide. Please make up your mind quickly. That run on the red may come and go while we are sitting here.”
Bruce opened his pocket-book. “Here,” he said with a smile, “I will give you four hundred francs. You will reach the maximum more quickly if you are right.”
Mensmore’s face lit up with excitement. “By Jove, you are a brick,” he said. “So you really trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Then give me back my revolver.”
Without a word, Bruce handed him the weapon.
Mensmore extracted the cartridges and threw them into a clump of shrubs.
“Come,” he cried; “come with me to the Casino. You will see something. This is not my own luck; it is borrowed. Come, quick!”
They raced off, Bruce himself being more fired with the zest of the thing than he cared to admit. Within the Casino all the tables were now crowded, but Mensmore hurried to that at which he sat during his earlier visit.
“It was here that I played in my dream,” he whispered, “soon after I came to it.”
He edged through the onlookers, closely followed by Bruce. Neither cared for the scowls and injured looks cast at them by the people whom they forced out of the way.
The Italian, the winner of half an hour ago, had come back like a moth to the candle. Now he was getting his wings singed. At last, with a groan, he hastily rose, but as a final effort flung the maximum, six thousand francs, on the black.
The disc whirled and slowly slackened pace, the ball rested in one of the little squares, and the croupier’s monotonous words came:
“Vingt-trois, rouge, impair, et passe!”
Out bounced the Italian, and Mensmore seized his chair, turning to Bruce with white face as he murmured:
“You hear! Twenty-three!”
The barrister nodded, and placed his hands on Mensmore’s shoulders as though to steady him.
Mensmore staked his ten louis on the red. They became twenty, then forty. Another whirl and they were eighty. A fourth made them one hundred and sixty.
Mensmore was now so agitated that the table and the players swam before his eyes. But Bruce, under the stress of exciting circumstances, had the gift of remaining preternaturally cool.
At the fifth coup the sum to Mensmore’s credit was £256. He would have left it all on the table had not Bruce withdrawn £16 in notes, as the maximum is £240.
When Mensmore won the sixth and seventh coups a buzz of animated interest passed around the board. People began to note the run on the red, together with the fact that a man was staking the maximum each time. Even the croupiers cast fleeting glances at the new-comer, when, several times in succession, the long rake pushed across the table the little pile of money and notes.
Thenceforth Mensmore sat in a state of stupor more pronounced now that he was playing and awake than when he dreamt he was playing.
Each time he mechanically staked the maximum and received back twice as much, while the eager onlookers now burst into cries of wonder that brought others running from all parts of the room.
But Bruce did not lose count.
When the red had turned up seventeen times, and the amount to Mensmore’s credit was £3,128, he shook the latter violently as he was about to shove forward another maximum, and, of his own volition, placed the money on the black.
“Douze, noir, pair et manque,” sang out the croupier, and Bruce hissed into Mensmore’s ear:
“Get up at once.”
His strangely made acquaintance obeyed, gathered up his gold and notes, fastened them securely in an inner pocket, and the pair quitted the Casino amid extravagant protestations of good-will and friendship from all the voluble foreigners present, having attracted not a little attention from the less demonstrative Americans and English in the room.
It was some time before the roulette tables began their orderly round again, for Mensmore’s sensational performance was in everybody’s mouth.
The highest recorded sum is twenty-three on the black, but a run of eighteen on the red is sufficiently remarkable to keep Monte Carlo in talk for a week.
Albert Mensmore certainly could not complain that the events of the particular evening were dull. For one hour at least he lived in the fire that consumes, for he stepped back from the porch of dishonored death to find himself the possessor of a sum more than sufficient for his reasonable requirements.
The pace was rapid and almost fatal.
CHAPTER X
SOME GOOD RESOLUTIONS
Once safe in the seclusion of Claude’s sitting-room Mensmore almost collapsed. The strain had been a severe one, and now he had to pay the penalty by way of reaction.
The barrister forced him to swallow a stiff brandy and soda, and then wished him to retire to rest, but the other protested with some show of animation.
“Let me talk, for goodness’ sake!” he cried. “I cannot be alone. You have seen me through a lot of trouble to-night. Stick to me for another hour, there’s a good fellow.”
“With pleasure. Perhaps it is the best thing you can do, after all. Let us see how much you have won.”
Bruce made a calculation on a sheet of paper and said: “Exclusive of the original stake of ten louis you ought to have £3,128.”
Mensmore pulled out of his pocket the crumpled bundle of notes and bills. Claude’s notes were among them, and he tossed them across the table with a smile.
“There’s your capital. I will see if the total is all right before we go shares.”
Claude nodded, and Mensmore began to jot down the items of his valuable package. He bothered with the figures for some time but could not get them right. Finally he tossed everything over to the other, saying:
“No matter how I count, I can’t get this calculation straight. Seventeen coups, beginning with ten louis, work out at £3,128 all right enough. But in this lot there is £3,368, and they don’t pay twice at the Casino.”
The barrister thought for a moment, and then laughed heartily. “I remember now,” he said; “I kept careful count of the series of seventeen, or eighteen, to be exact. On my own account, as you were too dazed to notice anything, I put a maximum on the black. Your dream turned up trumps, as the series stopped and black won. Hence the odd £240.”
“Then that is yours,” said the other gravely. “I will take £1,128 to square all my debts, and we go shares in the balance, a thousand each, if you think that fair. If not I will gladly hand over the lot, after paying my debts, I mean.”
Mensmore’s seriousness impressed the barrister more than any other incident of that dramatic evening.
“You forget,” he replied, “that I told you I had money in plenty for my own needs. You must keep every farthing except my own £8, which you do not now need. No. Please do not argue. I will consent to no other course. This turn of Fortune’s wheel should provide you with sufficient capital to branch out earnestly in your career, whatever it be. I will ask my interest in different manner.”
“I can never repay you, in gratitude, at any rate. And there is another who will be thankful to you when she knows. Ask anything you like. Make any stipulation you please. I agree to it.”
“It is a bargain. Sign this.”
Bruce took a sheet of notepaper, bearing the crest of the Hotel du Cercle, dated it, and wrote:
“I promise that, for the space of twelve months, I will not make a bet of any sort, or gamble at any game of chance.”
When Mensmore read the document his face fell a little. “Won’t you except pigeon-shooting?” he said. “I am sure to beat that Russian next time.”
“I can allow no exceptions.”
“But why limit me for twelve months?”
“Because if in that time you do not gain sense enough to stop risking your happiness, even your life, upon the turn of a card or the flight of a bird, the sooner thereafter you shoot yourself the less trouble you will bring upon those connected with you.”
“You are a rum chap,” murmured Mensmore, “and you put matters pretty straight, too. However, here goes. You don’t bar me from entering for sweepstakes.”
He signed the paper, and tossed it over to Bruce, while the latter did not comment upon the limitation of his intentions imposed by Mensmore’s final sentence. The man undoubtedly was a good shot, and during his residence in the Riviera he might pick up some valuable prizes.
“And now,” said the barrister, “may I ask as a friend to what use you intend to put your newly found wealth?”
“Oh, that is simple enough. I have to pay £500 which I lost in bets over that beastly unlucky match. Then I have a splendid ‘spec,’ into which I will now be able to place about £2,000 – a thing which I have good reason to believe will bring me in at least ten thou’ within the year, and there is nearly a thousand pounds to go on with. And all thanks to you.”
“Never mind thanking me. I am only too glad to have taken such a part in the affair. I will not forget this night as long as I live.”
“Nor I. Just think of it. I might be lying in the gardens now, or in some mortuary, with half my head blown off.”
“Tell me,” said Bruce, between the contemplative puffs of a cigar, “what induced you to think of suicide?”
“It was a combination of circumstances,” replied the other. “You must understand that I was somewhat worried about financial and family matters when I came to Monte Carlo. It was not to gamble, in a sense, that I remained here. I have loafed about the world a good deal, but I may honestly say I never made a fool of myself at cards or backing horses. At most kinds of sport I am fairly proficient, and in pigeon-shooting, which goes on here extensively, I am undoubtedly an expert. For instance, all this season I have kept myself in funds simply by means of these competitions.”
His hearer nodded approvingly.
“Well, in the midst of my minor troubles, I must needs go and fall over head and ears in love – a regular bad case. She is the first woman I ever spoke two civil words to. We met at a picnic along the Corniche Road, and she sat upon me so severely that I commenced to defend myself by showing that I was not such a surly brute as I looked. By Jove, in a week we were engaged.”
The barrister indulged in a judicial frown.
“No. It’s none of your silly, sentimental affairs in which people part and meet months afterwards with polite inquiries after each other’s health. I am not made that way; neither is Phil – Phyllis is her name, you know. This is for life. I am just bound up in her, and she would go through fire and water for me. But she is rich, the only daughter of a Midland iron-master with tons of money. Her people are awfully nice, and I think they approve of me, though they have no idea that Phil and I are engaged.”
He paused to gulp down a strong decoction of brandy and soda. The difficult part of his story was coming.
“You can quite believe,” he continued, “that I did not want to ask her father, Sir William Browne – he was knighted by the late Queen for his distinguished municipal services – to give his daughter to a chap who hadn’t a cent. He supposes I am fairly well off, living as I do, and I can’t bear acting under false pretences. I hate it like poison, though in this world a man often has to do what he doesn’t like. However, this time I determined to be straight and above board. It was a very odd fact, but I just wanted £3000 to enable me to make a move which, I tell you, ought to result in a very fair sum of money, sufficient, at any rate, to render it a reasonable proposition for Phil and me to get married.”
Claude was an appreciative listener. These love stories of real life are often so much more dramatic than the fictions of the novel or the stage.
“The opportunity came, to my mind, in this big tournament. I had no difficulty of getting odds in six or seven to one to far more than I was able to pay if I lost. Phil came into the scheme with me – she knows all about me, you know – and we both regarded it as a certainty. Then the collapse came. She wanted to get the money from her mother to enable me to pay up, but I would not hear of it. I pretended that I could raise the wind some other way. The fact is I was wild with myself and with my luck generally. Then there was the disgrace of failing to settle on Monday, combined with the general excitement of that dream and a fearfully disturbed night. To make a long story short, I thought the best thing to do was to try a final plunge, and if it failed, to quit. I even took steps to make Phil believe I was a bad lot, so that she might not fret too much after me.”
Mensmore’s voice was a little unsteady in this last sentence. The barrister tried to cheer him by a little bit of raillery:
“I hope you have not succeeded too well?” he laughed.
“Oh, it is all right now. I mean that I left her some papers which would bring things to her knowledge that, unexplained by me, would give any one a completely false impression.”
The subject was evidently a painful one, so Bruce did not pursue it.
“About this speculation of yours,” he said. “Are you sure it’s all right, and that you will not lose your money?”
“It is as certain as any business can be. It is a matter I thoroughly understand, but I will tell you all about it. If you will pardon me a moment I will bring you the papers, as I should like to have your advice, and it is early yet. You don’t want to go to bed, I suppose?”
“Not for hours.”
Mensmore rose, but before he reached the door a gentle tap heralded the appearance of the hall-porter.
“There is a letter for the gentleman. Monsieur is not in his room. He is reported to be here, so I bring it.”
Mensmore took the note, read it with a smile and a growing flush, and handed it to the barrister, saying: “Under the circumstances I think you ought to see this. Isn’t she a brick?”
The tiny missive ran:
“Dearest One, – You must forgive me, but we are both so miserable about that wretched money that I told mother everything. She likes you, and though she gave me a blowing up, she has promised to give me £500 to-morrow. We can never thank her sufficiently. Do come around and see me for a minute. I will be in the verandah until eleven.
“Ever yours,“Phyllis.”
Claude returned the note.
“Luck! you’re the luckiest fellow in the South of France!” he said. “Why, here’s the mother plotting with the daughter on your behalf. Sir William hasn’t the ghost of a chance. Off you go to that blessed verandah.”
When Mensmore had quitted the hotel Bruce descended to the bureau to take up the threads of his neglected quest. The letter to Sydney H. Corbett was still unclaimed, and he thought he was justified in examining it. On the reverse of the envelope was the embossed stamp of an electric-lighting company, so the contents were nothing more important than a bill.
An hour later Mensmore joined him in the billiard-room, radiant and excited.
“Great news,” he said. “I squared everything with Lady Browne. Told her I was only chaffing Phil about the five hundred, because she spoiled my aim by shrieking out. Sir William has chartered a steam yacht to go for a three weeks’ cruise along the Gulf of Genoa and the Italian coast. They have put him up to ask me in the morning to join the party. Great Scott! what a night I’m having!”
They parted soon afterwards, and next morning Bruce was informed that his friend had gone out early, leaving word that he had been summoned to breakfast at the Grand Hotel, where Sir William Browne was staying.
During the afternoon Mensmore came to him like a whirlwind. “We’re off to-day,” he said. “By the way, where shall I find you in London?”
The barrister gave him his address, and Mensmore, handing him a card, said, “My permanent address is given here, the Orleans Club, St. James’s. But I will look you up first. I shall be in town early in March. And you?”
“Oh, I shall be home much sooner. Good-bye, and don’t let your good luck spoil you.”
“No fear! Wait until you know Phyllis. She would keep any fellow all right once he got his chance, as I have done. Good-bye, and – and – God bless you!”
During the next three days Bruce devoted himself sedulously to the search for Corbett. He inquired in every possible and impossible place, but the man had utterly vanished.
Nor did he come to claim his letter at the Hotel du Cercle. It remained stuck on the baize-covered board until it was covered with dust, and the clerk of the bureau had grown weary of watching people who scrutinized the receptacle for their correspondence.
Others came and asked for Corbett – sharp-featured men with imperials and long moustaches – the interest taken in the man was great, but unrequited. He never appeared.
At last the season ended, the hotel was closed, and the mysterious letter was shot into the dustbin.