Franz Lindner! And how was Franz Lindner engaged during these stormy days? He was working out by degrees his own scheme in life for making himself rich, and so, as he thought, acceptable to Linnet.
With great difficulty, partly by saving and hoarding with Tyrolese frugality, partly by rare good luck in following a fortunate tip for last autumn’s Cesarewitch, Franz had scraped together at last the five hundred pounds which he required for working his “system” at Monte Carlo. The royal road to wealth now lay open before him. So he started blithely from Victoria one bright spring morning, bound southward straight through by therapideto Nice, with his heart on fire, and his capital in good Bank of England notes in his pocket. He meant to stop at Nice, not at Monte Carlo itself, because he was advised that living was cheaper in the larger town; and Franz, being a Tyroler, reflected with prudence that even when one’s going to win twenty thousand pounds, it’s best to be careful in the matter of expenditure till one’s sure one’s got them.
At Calais, he found a place in the through carriage for the Riviera. With great presence of mind, indeed, he secured a corner seat by pushing in hastily past a fumbling old lady with an invalid daughter. The opposite corner was already occupied by a handsome man—tall, big-built, rather dark, with brilliant black eyes, and abundant curly hair, of somewhat southern aspect. As Franz entered the carriage, the stranger scanned him, casually, with an observant glance. He had the air of a gentleman this stranger, but he was affable for all that; he entered into conversation very readily with Franz, first in English, then more fully in German, which latter tongue he spoke quite fluently. Part of his education had been acquired at Heidelberg, he said in explanation, before he went to Oxford; ’twas there he had picked up his perfect mastery of German idiom. As a matter of fact, he had picked it up rather by mixing with Jewish shop-boys from Frankfort in Denver City, Colorado; for the stranger was no other than Mr Joaquin Holmes, the Psycho-physical Entertainer, flying southward to restore his fallen fortunes at Monte Carlo.
Fate had used her Seer rather badly of late. His failure to sell Andreas’s letter to Linnet was the last straw that broke the camel’s back of Mr Holmes’s probity. Thought-reading had by this time gone quite out of fashion; Theosophy and occult science were now all in the ascendant. There were no more dollars to be made any longer out of odic force; so Mr Holmes was compelled by adverse circumstances, very much against his will, to take refuge at last in his alternative and less reputable profession of card-sharper. With that end in view, he was now on his way to the Capital of Chance in the Principality of Monaco. Where gamblers most do congregate is naturally the place for a dexterous manipulator of the pack to make his fortune. Mr Holmes was somewhat changed in minor detail as to his outer man, in order to avoid too general recognition. His hair was cut shorter; his beard was cut sharper; his moustache—a hard wrench—was altogether shaved off; and sundry alterations in his mode of dress, especially the addition of a most unnecessarypince-nez, had transformed him, in part, from the aspect of a keen and piercing Transatlantic thought-reader to that of a guileless English mercantile gentleman. But his vivid black eyes were still sharp and eager and shifty as ever; his denuded mouth, now uncovered at the corners, showed still more of a cynical smile than before; and his complete expression was one of mingled astuteness and deferential benevolence—the former, native to his face, the latter, by long use, diligently trained and cultivated.
Before they reached Paris, Seer and singer had put themselves on excellent terms with one another. They had even exchanged names in a friendly way, the Seer giving his, for obvious reasons, as plain Mr Holmes, without the distinguishing Joaquin; it was safer so: there are plenty of Holmeses scattered about through the world, and the name’s not compromising; while, on the other hand, if any London acquaintance chanced to come up and call him by it, such initial frankness avoided complications. Franz Lindner, more cautious and less wise in his way, gave his name unblushingly as Karl von Forstemann, a Vienna proprietor, out of pure foolish secretiveness. He had no reason for changing his ordinary style and title, except that he wished to be taken at Monte Carlo for an Austrian gentleman, not a music-hall minstrel. The Seer smiled blandly at the transparent lie; Franz’s accent and manner no more resembled those of a Viennese Junker than his staring tweed suit and sky-blue tie resembled the costume of an English gentleman.
However, the prudent Seer reflected immediately to himself that this sort was created for his especial benefit. Behold, a pigeon! He was even more affable than usual on that very account to Herr Karl von Forstemann. He offered him brandy out of his Russia-leather covered flask; he invited him to share his anchovy sandwiches; he regretted there was no smoking compartment on the through carriage for Mentone, or he might have introduced his new friend to a very choice brand of fragrant Havana. Going to Cannes? or San Remo? Ah, Nice! that was capital. They’d travel together all night then, without change of companions, for he himself was going on straight through to Monte Carlo.
At that charmed name, which the Seer pronounced with a keenly cautious side-glance, Franz pricked up his ears. Monte Carlo!ach, so?really? Did he play, then? The cautious Seer smiled a deep and wary smile of consummate self-restraint. Play? no, not he; the Casino was rubbish: he went there for the scenery, the music, the attractions. Occasionally of an evening, to be sure, he might just drop into the Rooms to observe what was happening. If a run of luck came on any particular colour—or number, or series, as the case might be—now and again he would back it—once in a week or a blue moon—for pure amusement. But as to makingmoneyat it—bah, bah, what puerile nonsense! With odds on the bank—one chance in thirty-six—no scientific player could regard it in that light for one moment. As excitement—“I grant you,” yes, all very well; one got one’s fun for one’s louis: but as speculation, investment, trial for luck—if it came to that—why, everybody knew it was all pure moonshine.
Franz listened with a smile, and looked preternaturally cunning. That was all very well in its way,hesaid, with a sphinx-like face—for the general public; but he had a System.
The Seer’s eye was grave; the Seer’s face was solemn; only about the corners of his imperturbable mouth could a faint curl have betrayed his inner feelings to the keenest observer. A System! oh, well, of course, that was altogether different. No one knew what a clever and competent mathematician might do with a System. Though, mark you, mathematicians had devised the tables, too; they had carefully arranged so that no possible combination could avoid the extra chances which the bank reserved to itself. However, experience—experience is the only solid guide in these matters. Let him try his System, by all means; andifit worked—with stress on thatif—Mr Holmes would be glad for his own part to adopt it. If it didn’t, he could show him a trick worth two of that—a game where the players stood at even chances, with no rapacious bank to earn a splendid dividend and pay royally for the maintenance of a palatial establishment. And with that, he tucked himself up and subsided into his corner.
All night through, on their way to Marseilles, they slept or dozed at intervals—and then woke up once more to discuss by fits and starts that enthralling subject of winning at Monte Carlo. The fumbling old lady and her invalid daughter, propped upright in the middle seats, got no sleep to speak of, with their perpetual chatter. Before morning, the two men were excellent friends with one another. Franz liked Mr Holmes. He was a jolly, outspoken, good-natured gentleman, very kindly and well-disposed, and he recommended him to a good cheap hotel at Nice, lying handy to the station, for a man who wanted to run over pretty often to Monte Carlo. Franz went there as he was bid, and found it not amiss; ’twas pleasant, after so long a stay in England, to discover himself once more amongst compatriots, or next door—to talk in his native tongue with Swiss porters, Swiss waiters, Swiss boots, and Swiss chambermaids. With the great bare mountains rising abruptly in the rear, Nice almost seemed to him like his beloved Fatherland. The strange longing for home which is peculiar to mountaineers came over him with a rush at sight of their lonely summits.Ach, Gott,—if it weren’t that he had his fortune to make at Monte Carlo, he’d have gone on, then and there, straight through to St Valentin!
That first evening, he rested after the fatigues of the journey. He merely strolled about on the Promenade des Anglais, in the cool of the evening, and lounged along the Quays or through the Public Garden. It was a fine town, Nice, and Franz was very much pleased with it. He had given his name at the hotel as Herr Karl von Forstemann, a gentleman from Vienna; and as he sauntered along now through that gay little city, with five hundred pounds sterling in his trousers pocket, and twenty thousand awaiting him in the bank at Monte Carlo, he felt for the moment like the person he called himself. His strut was still prouder and more jaunty than ever; he stared at the pretty girls under the palm-trees of the parade as if they all belonged to him; he twirled his short cane by the arcades of the Place Masséna with a millionaire swagger. After all, it’s easy as dirt to win thousands at roulette—if only you have a System. Strange how people will toil, and moil, and slave, and save, at a desk in London, when, here by this basking tideless Southern sea, this Tom Tiddler’s ground of fortune, they might pick up coin at will just as one picks up pebbles!
Franz broke a bottle of champagne at ten o’clock, discounting his success, with two awfully jolly fellows he’d come across in the smoking-room. Nice seemed to be just cram-full of awfully jolly fellows! Then he went to bed early, and slept the sleep of the just till morning. After a cup of fragrant coffee and a fresh French roll—so unlike that bad bread man gets in London—he lounged over to the station, and took a first-class return to Monte Carlo. Oh, that exquisite journey! How bright it was, how sweet, how fairy-fair, how beautiful! Like all Tyrolese, Franz Lindner was by no means insensible to the charms of Nature; and that man must be blind and seared and dull indeed who wouldn’t gaze with hushed delight, the first time he saw them, on those endless blue bays, those craggy cliffs, those towering heights, those jagged precipices. Villefranche, with its two promontories and its quaint white town; the Cap Ferrat and its twin lighthouses; the peninsula of St Jean, with its indented outline; the great bluffs of Beaulieu; the tunnelled headlands of the coast; green water breaking white on tumbled masses in the sea; Eza, perched high on its pinnacle of rearing rock; the bastions of Monaco, rising sheer like some basking whale from the purple waves beneath; the hanging gardens of La Condamine, the bare mountains in the background: Franz drank them all in with delight and enthusiasm. But all only sharpened his zest for the game he had in view; what an enchanted tract of coast it was, to be sure, this land that led him up to the Palace of Luck, where he was to woo and win his twenty thousand pounds sterling!
He wouldn’t leave off till he had won it, every penny; on that he was determined. None of your beggarly ten or fifteen thousands for him! Twenty thousand pounds down was the goal he set before him. After that—well, who knows? He might perhaps stop . . . or—why this moderation?—he might perhaps go on, if he chose, and double it.
In such heroic mood, like a winner already, Franz mounted the broad steps of the great white Casino. Its magnificence for a moment abashed and daunted him. He had never yet entered so splendid a building; never trod so fine a room as that gorgeous atrium. However, he reflected next instant that he came there that day armed with the passport which makes a man welcome wherever he may go the wide world over—the talismanic passport of money in his pocket. Regaining his usual swagger as he mounted the steps, he followed the crowd into the office where cards of admission were issued, and gave his name boldly once more, in a very firm voice, as Herr von Forstemann of Vienna. Then, provided with the necessary pasteboard which ensures admission to the rooms, he still followed the stream into the vast, garish hall which contains the gaming tables. Its size and its gorgeousness fairly took the man’s breath away. Though the hour was still early, as Franz now reckoned time in his cosmopolitanised avatar, he was surprised to find so immense a crowd of players gathered in deep rows round table after table, opening into long perspective of saloon after saloon in the farther distance. He drew up to the first roulette-board, and watched the play carefully for several minutes. Though he had studied the subject beforehand with books and diagrams, and had made sure, as he thought, of the truth of his System by frequent imaginary trials, it interested him immensely to see at last in real life, and with tangible actors, the scene he had so long contemplated in his feverish day-dreams.
The result was in some ways distinctly disappointing. He hadn’t allowed to himself for so much bustle, so much noise, so many other players. In his mental picture, he had seen his own money only; he had staked and won, staked and lost, staked and won again incessantly, while croupiers and bank existed, as it were, for his sole use and benefit. But here in concrete reality, many complicating circumstances arose to distract him. Other people crowded round, row after row in serried order, to put on their own money without regard to his presence; and they put it all on in so many incomprehensible and ridiculous ways—backing dozens, or fours, or pairs, or columns, according totheirSystems, which he had never thought of—that Franz for a stray minute or two felt thoroughly bewildered. He almost lost his head. The sweet simplicity of the little game he had played by himself on paper, against a bank which took no heed of any stake but his, now vanished utterly; in its place came chaos—a complex and distracting phantasmagoria of men and women flinging down gold pieces at cross-purposes on numbers and colours; sticking about their louis hap-hazard in reckless confusion on first or last dozens; raking in and grabbing up, with eager hands, in hot haste; till Franz’s brain began to reel, and he wondered to himself, amid so many rolling coins, how each could tell at each turn what had happened to his own money. In idea, he had confined himself to the System alone; in practice, he found all the rest of the world engaged in playing ten different games at once—rouge-et-noir,passe-et-manque,pair-et-impair, and the rest of it—with distracting rapidity, at a single table.
For a minute or two, he watched, with cat-like eyes, before venturing to risk one of his hard-saved louis. But presently the sequence of numbers and colours on the board reached a point which appeared to him specially favourable for his System. Trembling greatly within, but swaggering outwardly still, Franz leaned over between two stout players who sat close by in front of him, and, edging himself sideways, passed through the jostling crowd, till he had deposited twenty francs onrouge, with a beating heart. For a minute he waited. Other people put their stakes unpleasantly close to his; coins rolled in casually, here and there, and were fixed by the croupier with his stick as voices behind directed. But Franz kept his eyes fixed fast on his own good louis. Whr’r’r, rang the roulette; “Rien ne va plus!” cried the croupier. For a second or two, as the thing spun, Franz felt his heart come up in his mouth with anxiety. The ball jumped out; his quick eyes couldn’t follow it. Instinctively, he kept them fixed on his louis still. “Dix-sept gagne; impair, rouge, manque,” cried the croupier. A flush of triumph rose up all unbidden on Franz’s face. The System was justified then! he had won a louis!
By his side, the croupier raked in whole heaps of gold and silver. Then he began to pay out; here a beggarly five francs; there, ten broad yellow pieces. At last he came to Franz, and flung a louis carelessly by the side of the Tyroler’s stake. Franz picked it up with a sense of ineffable triumph. A louis all at once! If he went on like this, he would soon grow rich! Twenty francs for a turn of the wheel! it was splendid, splendid!
He played again, and played on. Fortune favoured the beginner. They say ’tis a trick of hers. The siren lures you. Time and again, he staked and won; lost a little; won it back again. He was five louis to the good now—eight—six—four—eleven again. Then, for awhile, he went up steadily—twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and so on to twenty. By that time, he grew elated. Why, the System was sure a royal road to riches. Lieber Gott, what fortune! He’d begun by thinking of twenty-franc stakes alone; he doubled them now, putting down at each time two napoleons together. Whr’r’r went the roulette afresh; black won; the inexorable valet raked in his two louis. Eighteen to the good now! never mind; try your luck again! Bravely he adventured another forty francs, this time onpasse—so the System would have it. Twenty-two came out as the winning number! With joy and delight he saw his stake doubled; twenty to the good once more! Hurrah! this was splendid!
Stop now! The nextcoupdemanded (by the System) that he should back a number—either twelve or twenty-four, as fancy dictated. With trembling fingers he laid down two louis on twelve. Once more, fortune favoured him. When he saw the croupier pay out seventy-two good gold coins on top of his own piece, Franz was almost beside himself. He clutched them up hurriedly, lest some grabber should snatch them, as often happens at the tables. While he did so, he felt a friendly tap on his shoulder from behind. He looked round suddenly. “So your System works well!” a cheery voice exclaimed, congratulatory. Franz nodded and smiled; ’twas his friend, Mr Holmes, that despiser of all Systems.
For the rest of that day, Mr Holmes hovered near, and kept an eye on Franz quietly. From time to time, to be sure, he followed some loser outside, and disappeared for half-an-hour in a mysterious way, after which little interval he somehow always turned up smiling. But whenever he came back it was to Franz’s side; and he reappeared each time with the self-same question, “How much to the good now? been winning or losing?” And each time Franz was able, on the whole, in spite of fluctuations, to report progress;—seventy louis, ninety three, a hundred and one, a hundred and twenty! People about began to mark Franz’s play by now. ’Twas another Mr Wells, they said; one would do wisely to follow him.
He played till evening. About seven o’clock, Holmes invited him to dinner at the Hotel de Paris. Franz strolled off, well content; why shouldn’t he dine in peace? A hundred and thirty-four louis to the good was now the reckoning.
The affable stranger wished to stand champagne. But no Viennese gentleman with a Von to his name could permit such a reversal of the rules of politeness, when he was winning heavily. Franz ordered it himself—Dry Monopole of the best brand—and drank the larger half of it. After dinner, they hurried back to the tables once more. Franz soon got a seat; he was playing high enough now for Monte Carlo to respect him. For in thesalles de jeuyou are respected in precise proportion to your stakes. Mr Holmes, too, put down a quiet five-franc piece now and again on colour. “Just like my luck!” he exclaimed, as black turned up each time. “I’m the unluckiest dog at games of chance, I declare, that ever was born. I never touch them, somehow, but I burn my fingers. There’s a fate in it, I think!” And so indeed it seemed. He lost every single silver piece he adventured.
But as for Franz, he won steadily. He had advanced his stake, now, with his advancing fortunes, to five louis a turn! When he saw five louis go, he hardly even noticed it. They came back again so soon—five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Oh, oh, but this was royal sport indeed! Three hundred louis one minute, then down again the next to two hundred and seventy, and up once more with a bound to two-eighty-five, two-ninety, three hundred. Coins became as counters to him: gold seemed to flow in and flow out like water. It was five louis lost, five won, five lost again. But as the rising tide first advances, then recedes, then once more advances, so, in spite of occasional temporary reverses, the tide of Franz’s fortune rose steadily, steadily. He played on till the croupiers were clearing the tables for the night. When he left off at last, perforce, at the final spin, he reckoned to the good three hundred and twenty-seven bright French gold pieces.
Complacent Mr Holmes saw him safely off by the last train to Nice, before retiring for the night to his own snug quarters. ’Tis thus one prepares one’s pigeons for the plucking. When Franz arrived at the hotel, he called for more champagne, to celebrate his victory; and, failing other friends, shared drinks with the waiter.
Next morning, he was over again at Monte Carlo betimes, though with a chastening headache. He got a seat at once, and sat down to it like a man who means to win a fortune. His experience of yesterday had only strengthened his preconceived belief in the infallibility of his System. Encouraged by luck, he began playing from the outset now on the basis of staking five louis a time on each turn of the roulette wheel. For the first two or three twirls, fortune still went with him. He won as easily as he had won the preceding evening. But, after a few hazards, the chance began to change; he lost once, twice, thrice, as quickly as he had won at the outset of his playing. Presently, he was aware of Mr Holmes at his side, watching his play with a self-restrained smile of cynical indifference. That smile put Franz Lindner at once upon his mettle. He began to plunge desperately. Five louis on black;—they went like water. Five louis onmanquewere equally unsuccessful. Time after time Franz played; and time after time he lost again. His winnings had gone down now to two hundred louis. He began to reflect whether it mightn’t be wise to reduce his stake again for a while, during this run of ill-luck, from five louis to two. He even tried it once; but a disapproving murmur from a lady behind decided him to stick to the game he had so far been playing. “You should never change your stakes,” she said, “when you’re losing, you know; it’s an insult to chance, and it brings bad luck with it.” Franz was too good a Tyroler not to be thoroughly superstitious; so he accepted the bystander’s disinterested advice, and continued to put down his five gold pieces.
But still, luck was hard. If it’s easy to win three hundred pounds at a go, it’s easier still to lose them. And yet, Franz felt sure that, sooner or later, the Systemmustwin; the System was infallible; his friend the betting man had made all that so clear to him. Recklessly and desperately he hurried on with his game—five louis, five louis, five louis once more—lost, lost, lost, lost—till he was sick and tired of it. Now and again, luck varied, to be sure, for a time, as it had varied yesterday; but while yesterday with minor fluctuations it steadily rose, to-day with minor fluctuations it as steadily fell again. By two o’clock that afternoon, he had lost the whole of his last night’s winnings, and was reduced once more to his original capital.
He was going to stake yet again, somewhat haggard and feverish, when Joaquin Holmes, who had been watching him with the profoundest interest, tapped him lightly on the arm and invited him to luncheon. “You want food,” he said “—and wine. After a good glass of Mumm, you’ll play better and stronger again!” In the altered state of the money-market, Franz felt himself less punctilious on the score of treats than the day before; he accepted the lunch, and the offer of champagne, with despondent alacrity. The Seer, ever prudent, stood a bottle of the best wine the cellar of the Hotel de Paris could produce. It was excellent and invigorating. As lunch proceeded, Franz’s spirits returned; the champagne supplied him with fresh sinews of war—Dutch courage for the onset. “If I were you, Von Forstemann,” the Seer said in his friendliest and most insinuating tone, “I wouldn’t play any more. You’re sure to lose in the end by it.” But Franz stood by his colours. “Ah, no,” he answered, smiling, “I can’t lose. I’ve got a System. It’s been tried before. A friend of mine, do you know, made twenty thousand pounds in these very rooms by it.”
Flushed and fired by his wine, he went back to the tables. The Seer paid the bill for their lunch, and followed him. Franz had found another seat, and was deep in his play. But he lost, lost, lost—won a little—then lost again. All the afternoon long, he kept on losing. The Seer walked about, exchanging a word or two at times with friends and with ladies of his acquaintance (some of whose faces Franz fancied he had seen before at the London Pavilion), but came back again to his side after each such excursion, with friendly persistence.
“How much have you lost now?” he asked each time.
And Franz, very shamefaced, yet proud in a way that he could own to such losses, made answer again and again, as the case might be, “A hundred and twenty,” “Two hundred and thirty,” “Three hundred and twenty-seven.”Ach Gott, it was pitiful!
At last, about six o’clock, the Tyroler found himself reduced to a hundred and fifty pounds of his original capital. He couldn’t understand it; this was strange, very strange; the System somehow didn’t seem to work as it ought to do. In his despair, he almost began to disbelieve in its virtues. Just then, the Seer strolled casually by once more, chatting gaily to a lady. He paused, and looked at Franz. In the thirst for human sympathy we all feel at such times, Franz beckoned him up with one hand, and confided to him in a hoarse whisper the painful state of his exchequer. “Come out and have a drink,” the Seer said, bending low, with his most courteous manner. “Let’s work this thing out. Just you show me your System?”
Franz followed him blindly across to the café opposite. The Seer ordered two cognacs and a syphon of soda-water. “Now, tell me how you do it,” he said, in a very grave voice. And, with some little reluctance, looking down at the table, Franz proceeded to disclose to his attentive listener the main points of his System.
It was a transparent fallacy, of course. Such systems always are; and the Seer, who was no fool at the doctrine of chances, saw through it at a glance. His lip curled lightly. “You’re a good mathematician?” he asked, with a well-suppressed sneer.
And Franz was obliged perforce to admit, in this critical moment, that he had got no further in that abstruse science than the first four rules of arithmetic.
The Seer assumed his kindliest and most didactic manner. “Now, you look here, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, leaning over towards his new friend confidentially; “you’ve allowed yourself to be duped; you’ve been grossly imposed upon. I can show you in a minute your System’s all bosh. The bank stands always its regular chance to win, no matter what you do, and it dodges you exactly where you think you’ve dodged it.”
He took out a pencil and paper, and began with great show of care and patience to make the fallacy as clear as day to his unwilling pupil. Franz leant over him and looked. Step by step the clever American unravelled before his eyes all the tangled mass of false assumptions and baseless conclusions Franz called his System. Poor Franz stood aghast; the demolition was patent, irresistible, crushing. Joaquin Holmes was in his element; he was a specialist on games of chance; he demonstrated with loving care that in this case, as in all others, the bank had exactly thirty-seven chances for itself, against thirty-six for the players. Franz saw it with his own eyes: sorely against his will he was forced to see it. He couldn’t gainsay it: it was clear as mud; he could only murmur in a feebly illogical way, “But my friend made twenty thousand pounds in these rooms right off with it.”
The Seer was remorseless. “Accident!” he answered, calmly, with a bland wave of the hand. “Pure luck! Coincidence! And if it happened once, by a mere fluke, to pull itself off so well, all the less reason to believe such a wonderful sequence of happy shots would ever manage to repeat itself. The bank stands always its fixed chance to win in a certain proportion; by good fortune you may circumvent it, by calculation, never!”
Franz was convinced against his will. But the blow was an appalling one. He had lost three hundred and fifty pounds already; he saw no hope of recovering it. And, what was far worse, he had practically lost twenty thousand into the bargain. During all those years while he had been saving and scraping, he had considered his fortune as good as made, if he could but once go to Monte Carlo with five hundred pounds of ready money in his pocket. In five short minutes the affable stranger had knocked the bottom out of his drum—demolished the whole vast superstructure of false facts and bad reasoning Franz had reared so carefully; and now, like a house of cards, it had tumbled about his ears, leaving the poor duped Tyroler blankly hopeless and miserable.
The reaction was painful and piteous to behold. From a potential millionaire, Franz descended at once to be the owner of a paltry hundred and fifty pounds in English money. The Seer did his best in these straits to console and comfort him. He pointed out that while no man can ensure a fortune at games of chance by trying to play on a system, any man may have the good luck to win large sums if he treats it frankly as a question of fortune, not of deliberate planning. “Only,” he added, with a significant glance towards the Casino, “it’s foolish to play where one backs one’s luck against a public bank which stands to win, by its very constitution, a certain regular proportion of all money staked against it.”
His words fell on stony ground. Franz was simply inconsolable. The longer he looked at those irrefragable calculations, the more clearly did he recognise now that the Seer was right, and the System on which he had staked his all was a pure delusion. But Mr Joaquin Holmes extended him still the most obtrusive sympathy. “I’m awfully sorry for you, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, over and over again, regarding his figures sideways. “This has been a hard trial to you. But you mustn’t give up because you’ve been bitten once. Sooner or later, luck must turn. You’ve lost a great deal; all the sooner, then, must it change for you. Give me the pleasure of dining with you at the restaurant round the corner. You’ll see things in a truer light, you know, when you’ve digested your dinner.”
Franz followed him mechanically. He had no heart for anything. The Seer ordered a choice repast, and plied his pigeon well with the best wines in the cellar. All the while, as they dined, he harped still on three chords—his own persistent ill-luck at all games of chance; the folly of playing where the odds are against you, no matter how little, at a public table; and the certainty of winning back, on the average, what you’ve lost, if only you play long enough at even betting.
Emotions, once well roused, tend to flow on unchecked, in spite of temporary obstacles, in an accustomed channel. As the dinner digested itself, and the Dry Monopole fired Franz’s brain once more, the thrasonic mood of the gambler came over him yet again as strong as ever. Like a born braggart that he was, a true Tyrolese Robbler, he began to boast in thick tones of how he would get the better still of those swindling tables. The Seer encouraged him to the echo in this gallant resolution, but thought ill of his chances at the unfair roulette-board, against the certain dead-weight of a mathematical calculation. “Come up with me to my room after dinner,” he put in, carelessly, “and I’ll show you a little game I learnt when I went buck-shooting in the Rockies some years ago. It’s perfectly fair and square, with no sort of advantage to one side over the other. None of your beastly zeros: all even chances. I won’t play it with you myself—or at least, only for a turn or two, just to show you how it’s done—I’m so deuced unlucky. But there are lots of fellows around who’ll be glad enough to give you a chance of your revenge; and, in my opinion, it’s just about the very evenest game a sensible man ever put his money down upon.”
Franz submitted to be taught with a very good grace. He was ready enough now for anything on earth that would help him to win back his solid lost sovereigns. They went round to a large hotel in the direction of La Condamine. People were moving in and out of the doorway by degrees, for it was just after dinner, and the town was crowded. Franz followed the Seer upstairs to a nicely furnished bedroom on the second floor, arranged as a salon, with an alcove for the bed, after the continental fashion. Nobody took much notice of them; come and go is the rule at Monte Carlo everywhere; and, besides, Mr Joaquin Holmes, that affable new-comer, was very much in the habit of taking strangers to play in his bedroom.
They sat down at the table, and the Seer, after much show of fumbling in his box, produces at last a pack of English cards, the cover still unbroken. With an innocent air of very slight acquaintance with the game he had proposed, he shuffled and cut them. “Let me see,” he said, knitting his brows, and pretending to recollect. “It’s like this, I think. Ah, yes, I remember.” And he dealt out a card to himself, and another to Franz, with most ingenious carelessness.
Then he went on to explain in very glowing terms the simplicity of this game, and its peculiar guilelessness. “You back your card for what you like, and if I choose, I double you. You see, it’s even chances. We each stand to win equally. It’s easy as A.B.C. But my luck’s so bad, I won’t play you for money. Let’s stake an imaginary five pounds on the turn-up.”
They tried a deal or two, for love, on this imaginary basis, and Franz won twice out of three times. He wished it had been for sovereigns. He tried again and again, the Seer manipulating his pack all the time with conspicuous awkwardness, and managing to lose with surprising regularity. What a pity the man was so shy of tempting fate, Franz thought; though, to be sure, it was no wonder. For he lost, lost, lost, with almost incredible persistence. Still, Franz was annoyed to think that so many lucky shots, at so even a game, should all go for nothing. And he himself—why, he could win at this play like wildfire. If only he could find such a pigeon to pluck! He’d drain his man dry of all he had at a sitting!
“Come, put a louis on it!” he exclaimed at last, with a “Who’s afraid” sort of air, to the reluctant stranger.
The Coloradan hesitated. He pulled out a purse full of notes and gold. “No; I can’t go to a louis,” he answered, gingerly, after a pause. “I’ve such beastly bad luck. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll lay you ten francs on it!”
His air was candid enough to disarm the most suspicious mind. He played, and lost. Franz picked the coins up nimbly. “Try it again,” he said, with a broad smile; and Joaquin Holmes tried it. Four times running Franz won; then the American lost patience. “I’ll go you a louis,” he cried, warming up, and drawing a coin from his purse. Franz took him, and won it. At that, Holmes, as the Robbler thought, lost his head and grew frantic. He plunged; he doubled; he lost; he cursed his luck; and once more he boldly plunged again. Now and then, to be sure, he won; but ’twas always on the times when he omitted to double. This was a first-rate game, Franz thought; he was winning back his own again.
After a while, the Seer pulled up his chair, and settled down to it seriously. “I’m a devil of a gambler,” he said, with a smile, “when once I get well into it. I won’t leave off now till you’ve broken my bank, and got my bottom dollar. I’ve eight hundred pounds here”—which was a simple trade lie—“and I won’t stop now till I’ve lost every penny of it.”
Ha, ha; that was game! They buckled to in earnest. Franz played with a will. He won, won, won; he laughed loud; he picked up gaily; then, suddenly, strange to say, he lost, lost, lost again. All at once, the Seer’s fingers seemed to go like lightning. He dealt fast and furious; he doubled every time; luck had somehow changed; he was winning now heavily. Franz didn’t think quite so well of the game as it proceeded; he began to regard it, in fact, as little short of a swindle. But, as his pile diminished, the Seer gave him scant time to reflect between deals. “Stake! I double you!” Flash went the card; the Seer raked in the money. That was very strong champagne, and Franz’s head was reeling. Still he played, played, played, lost, lost, lost, yet played again. His pile was dwindling now with appalling rapidity. He took a pull at the brandy and soda the Seer had obligingly placed by his side. What was this? The affable stranger was clearing him out every time. Franz began to suspect a plant. Could the man be a swindler?
He glanced at his little heap. A cold thrill coursed through him. Only seven louis left! When those seven were gone—why, then he would be penniless!
The Seer dealt again. With a loud German oath, Franz seized his hand and stopped it. “Isawyou do it,” he cried. “You rogue, I’ve found you out! You felt one card, changed it, and then pushed out another.”
The Seer sprang up angrily. “That’s an imputation on myhonour,” he cried, standing up and facing him with an air of indignant virtue. “I’m an English gentleman. If you insult me like that——”
But before he could say another word,—quick as thought, a knife flashed in the air with unspeakable swiftness. The Seer’s hand darted into his pocket for the trusty six-shooter. It was dagger against pistol, Tyroler against Westerner. But Franz was too sharp for him. Before the Coloradan’s deft fingers could reach the trigger of the revolver, that keen blade was buried deep in his exposed left breast—buried deep and gurgling. Without a word, without a groan, the American dropped back short into the easy-chair he had that moment quitted. Blood spurted from the wound—spurted fast in little jets. It had penetrated his heart. He was dead in a second.
In less time than it takes to say it, Franz realised what he had done, and pulled himself together from his paroxysm of passion. Leaving the notes where they lay, he crammed his own gold hastily into his waistcoat pocket. He let the knife stop in the wound; it was in no way compromising. Then he opened the door, and walked calmly out, and down the broad stone steps, and into the streets of Monte Carlo.
A Robbler’s not a man to be lightly discomposed by the mere accident that he happens to have committed a murder. Franz’s first impulse, indeed, as he left that blood-stained room, was to run away helter-skelter from the scene of his hasty crime—to disappear into space—London, the Tyrol, anywhere—without even going back to his hotel at Nice to reclaim his portmanteau. But second thoughts showed him how foolish so precipitate a retreat would be. By adopting it, he would be throwing away many valuable chances which now told in his favour. It was wholly to the good, for example, that he’d happened to give his name all along the line as Karl von Forstemann from Vienna. Even if the authorities found reason to suspect him of having killed this man Holmes, they’d lost much useful time in trying to track down the imaginary Von Forstemann; while he himself might be making his way quietly across the length and breadth of the continent, meanwhile, under his own true name as Franz Lindner of the London Pavilion. Though, to be sure, there was no reason why they should ever suspect him. Hundreds of people flock in and out of Monte Carlo every day; hundreds of people come and go at every hotel, unnoticed. Besides, it wasn’t likely the body’d be discovered till to-morrow morning; and by that time,Gott sei dank, he’d be safe and away across the Italian frontier.
It was early still—only a little past ten. Tremulous and startled by the magnitude of his crime, he strolled about for awhile to cool himself in the Casino gardens. Then a happy thought struck him—he’d go in and play for a bit to avoid suspicion. Hot at heart as he was, but trying his best to look unconcerned, he passed into those huge over-heated rooms once more, and played for half-an-hour with very languid attention. The greater stake now in jeopardy made it difficult for him when he won to remember even to take up his money; he let it lie once or twice on the board till it doubled and trebled itself. But that was all to the good; it suited his book well: people noticed only the more how coolly he was playing. Strange to say, he was winning, too, when he cared so little whether he won or lost—winning pounds at a time on every turn of the tables. It was a master-stroke of policy, and Franz plumed himself not a little on being clever enough to think of it. How could people ever say it washewho killed the man, when he’d spent half the night at play in the gambling rooms of the Casino?
At eleven, he left off, several pounds to the good, and strolled down to the station with well-assumed carelessness. He returned in a carriage with the two jolly young Englishmen. Casually, on the way, he mentioned to them that he was going to leave Nice next morning. At the hotel they broke another bottle of champagne together. Franz sat up, and talked excitedly, and even sang comic songs; he was afraid to go to bed; though still self-possessed, and by no means panic-stricken, he was nervous and agitated.
That night, he never undressed. He lay in his clothes on the bed, and slept by snatches fitfully. In the morning, he rose early, and looked hard for spots of blood as he washed and dressed himself. But he had done his work far too neatly to spatter his clothes. “Coffee, quick, and my bill!” he said to the waiter who answered the bell; “I want to catch an early train at the station for England.” He said England on purpose, though he meant it to be Italy. With a true Tyroler’s instinct, he would strike straight home—by Milan, Verona, and the Brenner, to St Valentin.
At the station, he took a through ticket, first-class, for Genoa. He had to pass Monte Carlo, and he did so with repugnance. Yet he wasn’t much afraid; the Robbler instinct was still strong within him. A couple of fat Frenchmen got into the carriage at Monaco; they were talking of some tragedy that had happened last night at an hotel at La Condamine. Franz pricked up his ears but tried to look unconcerned. “Somebody dead?” he inquired in his Teutonic French, with a show of languid interest.
“Yes; another suicide,” one of the Frenchmen answered, shrugging his shoulders, with a smile. “Que voulez-vous?An Englishman—a fellow called Holmes—or, some say, an American. He stabbed himself last night, after losing heavily. He was stopping at my hotel: he went to bed all well; the servants knocked this morning—got no answer—went in and found the body in afauteuil, where themalheureuxhad stabbed himself.”
Franz’s eye gleamed bright. So at first they had put the best interpretation upon it! The mere suspicion of a suicide might give him a start that would enable him to escape. He shrugged his shoulders in return. “A common episode of life as things go at Monte Carlo!” he murmured, philosophically.
The Frenchmen got out and left the train at Mentone. At Ventimiglia, Franz crossed the frontier with a beating heart; so far, at least, no telegram to arrest or detain him. All morning, the train crawled on at a snail’s pace towards Genoa. Franz chafed and grumbled, eating his heart out with impatience. At San Pier d’Arena, the junction-station, he took his portmanteau in his hand, and re-booked for Milan. There he spent that second night in fear and trembling. On his way up to an hotel, he bought a copy of an evening paper—theCorriere della Sera. The same story still—Suicidio a Monte Carlo.
He didn’t sleep much; but he slept—that was ever something. At seven o’clock, he was up, and walked out towards the Cathedral. But that mount of marble, with its thousand spires and its statued pinnacles in the myriad niches, had no power on such a day to arrest his attention; beside the great west door, he was looking for a boy with a morning newspaper. Soon he found one, and tore it open under the arcades of the Piazza. He knew no Italian, but by the aid of his scanty French he could make out the meaning of one sinister paragraph. “It is now believed that the man Holme or Holmes, who was found stabbed in his room at the Hotel des Étrangers, at Monte Carlo, yesterday morning, met his death by foul means, and not, as was at first suspected, by suicide. The doctors who have examined the wound concur in the opinion that it could hardly by any possibility be self-inflicted. Holmes is now known to have been a notorious card-sharper, and it is surmised that he may have been murdered in a fit of revengeful passion by one of his victims, several of whom he is said to have duped during the last few days in the neighbourhood of the Casino. No clue, however, has as yet been obtained to the name or personality of his supposed assailant.”
Murder! they called it murder to stab that cheating rogue! and they took him for a murderer just because he’d revenged himself! When they’d got as far as that, it was probable before long they’d track the deed home to Herr Karl von Forstemann. Franz saw clearly enough now what his next move must be. Herr Karl von Forstemann must disappear as if by magic from this earthly scene, and Franz Lindner of St Valentin, and of the London Pavilion, that honest and simple-minded Tyrolese musician, must at once replace him.
He paid his bill at the hotel, took a cab to the station instead of the omnibus, and caught the through train to Venice direct—throwing the police off his track, if it came to police, by getting out short, portmanteau in hand, at Verona, for the Brenner. All day long, he travelled on by that beautiful mountain line, up the Adige towards Botzen; and, though he was flying for his life, it gave him none the less a genuine thrill of joy when he beheld once more those beloved Tyrolese peaks, and heard the German tongue spoken with a Tyrolese accent. He slept that night at Botzen. There, he felt his foot once more upon his native heath. In the morning, he rose early, and went into a hatter’s, where he bought a Tyrolese hat of the old conical pattern; all fugitive that he was, the ingrained instincts of his youth yet made him turn the blackcock’s feather in it the wrong way forward, Robbler-wise. Vain-glorious still and defiant, nobody would ever have taken him for a runaway criminal. He bought also a pair of stout Tyrolese boots, and introduced a few other little changes in his costume, sufficient to transform him at once from the cosmopolitan snob into the simple Franz Lindner of the old days at St Valentin. Then he took the train north again, right through to Innsbruck, where he slept his third night, more confident than before, and had a chance of reading all in a Vienna paper.
That all was bad enough. No doubt now remained on the minds of the French police that Joaquin Holmes had been really murdered. The hypothesis of suicide broke down at every step. Suspicion pointed most to one or other of three persons whom he was believed to have duped just before the murder. One of these three was being traced by detectives to Marseilles and Paris; the other two, it was believed, had gone on to Italy. In the interests of justice, the police would mention no names at present, but one of these three, they held, must almost certainly be the murderer.
Still, the instinct of his race urged Franz on to St Valentin. He took the afternoon train north as far as Jenbach; then he tramped all the way on foot to his native village. It was late when he arrived, and, tired and hunted down, he went straight to theWirthshaus. Cousin Fridolin held up his hands in astonishment to see the wanderer. It wasn’t merely surprise that Franz should come back at all, but that he should come back as he went—a genuine Tyroler. All were well in the place: the Herr Vicar and everyone. And Andreas Hausberger and Linnet were here as well—returned home for a holiday.
It was Franz’s turn now to start back in surprise. What, Andreas and Linnet come back to St Valentin! Impossible! You don’t mean it!
But Cousin Fridolindidmean it—with his thumbs in the armholes of his red Tyrolese waistcoat. They’d retired for the night—they were here at the inn; but he’d knock at their door (full of country hospitality as he was, the simple soul!) and tell them to come out and welcome a friend home again.
Franz seized his arm to prevent him. “Oh no,” he cried; “not that. . . . There are reasons why you mustn’t. . . . Andreas and I had a difference some years ago at Meran; and though we patched it all up again in a way in London, I don’t want to see him now—at least, not till to-morrow.”
As for Cousin Fridolin, standing back and regarding him in surprise, he could hardly understand these fine town-bred manners. If Franz had come back a true Tyroler in dress, he brought with him none the less all the airs and graces of Western civilisation, as understood by the frequenters of the London Pavilion. They sat awhile and talked, while Franz ate the rough supper and drank as much as was good for him of the thin country beer; but Cousin Fridolin noticed that his old rival and companion seemed unaccountably stiff and reserved in his demeanour. Especially did he shirk any obtrusive questions as to whence he had come, and by what route he had got there. As they parted for the night, Franz turned to Cousin Fridolin, who alone in the village had yet seen or spoken with him. “Don’t tell Andreas and Linnet I came here to-night,” he said. “I want them not to know till they meet me as a surprise to-morrow morning.”
Cousin Fridolin, much wondering, promised compliance with his wish. He lighted Franz to his room, and bade him good-night in a very audible whisper. Herr Andreas and his wife had the next rooms to him, he said. Franz nodded a distant assent, and shook his hand somewhat coldly. The terror that had stood over him since he left Monte Carlo grew somehow much deeper, much nearer, much more real, as he found himself once more in these familiar surroundings. He bolted the door with its little wooden button, and sat alone on the bed for some minutes in silence. The solitude appalled him more than ever before; he felt conscious, in some dim way, the hue-and-cry of the police was now well after him.
As he sat there and listened to his own heart beating, while the tallow candle guttered on the table by his side, a low sound from the next room began to attract his attention. It was a stifled sound, with a choking sort of sob in it. Just at first, too preoccupied with his own emotions, Franz hardly noticed it; but at last it obtruded itself upon him by its very unobtrusiveness. Of a sudden, he realised to himself what manner of noise this was. It was the deep suppressed sound of a woman weeping. With her head under the bed-clothes, she was crying, crying, crying silently.
Rising up from his bed, Franz crept over to the door of communication between the two rooms, his mind for the moment distracted by the sound even from his own immediate and pressing danger. For it was borne in upon him at once by what Fridolin Telser had said, that the woman in the next room was none other than Linnet!
Sob, sob, sob, the voice continued, chokingly. Franz could feel rather than hear that the noise was muffled by the intervention of the bed-clothes, and that Linnet, if it was she, was doing the very best she knew to check it. But, in spite of her efforts, the sobs broke out afresh every now and again, spasmodically; she was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, as if her heart would break—sobbing by herself in the solitude of her bedroom.
All terrified as he was, Franz’s heart stood still at it.
Presently, another door on the far side seemed to open, and a voice was heard saying in low, angry tones, “Won’t you stop that noise? I can’t sleep for hearing you.”
It was Andreas Hausberger’s voice; Franz clenched his hands to hear it. But Linnet seemed to raise her head from the bed-clothes at those words, and speak at last with a great effort to calm herself. “Andreas,” she said, through her sobs, “as the Church bids, I follow you; but I can’t help crying when I think how you treat me. I cry as silently and quietly as I can to myself. If I keep you awake, you must take another room a little farther off from me.”
That was all. She said no more; and Andreas closed the door, as Franz judged, and went back again. But even in his own hour of peril and terror—perhaps all the more keenly because of all that had happened to him—Franz read in those few words the whole story of Linnet’s unhappy marriage. He had suspected it before, of course, but now he knew it. Andreas’s gruff tone of reproof, poor Linnet’s shrinking accent of despairing misery, were more eloquent in his ears than whole hours of deliberate and demonstrative talking. This episode meant much to him. It was for Linnet he had hazarded and encountered everything—it was for Linnet, indirectly, he had risked his own life by stabbing that wretched man away over at Monte Carlo!
His anger burned bright against Andreas Hausberger; Hausberger who had cheated him of his Linnet long ago; Hausberger who was making his Linnet’s life a burden to her! The cold-blooded wretch! How Franz wished it was intohimhe had plunged that good knife that did swift execution on the dead cheat at Monte Carlo! Ah well, ah well, it was not too late even now! If he couldn’t marry Linnet, he could at least avenge her! He could have wiped out old scores and redressed new wrongs—if it had only been Andreas in place of that other man!