Sallie sat up in her disordered cot with a start of alarm when Ambrizette came in to wake her, as she had directed before she lay down. She had scarcely slept at all amid dreadful dreams, and was still very weary, both body and mind. She had not yet had time to forget the horrors of over-night.
But she had no desire to dwell on them, and—there was the day's work awaiting her. Twenty minutes later she was on her way to the bridge, to relieve Da Costa.
That was not the first occasion, by many, on which she had had to fill a man's place. For Captain Dove had trained her to all the responsibilities of the sea. Da Costa touched his cap obsequiously to her and gave her the course, which she repeated after him, with mechanical precision.
As he turned to go, yawning wearily, "If you'll send and have me woke out again whenever you feel like it, Miss Sallie," he said with an ingratiating flourish, "I'll—"
"But Mr. Yoxall will be taking the next watch, won't he?" she asked, renewed doubt and distrust in her tired eyes.
The promoted Portuguese quartermaster shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
"You and I must stand watch and watch for a little, Miss Sallie," he told her with a self-satisfied smirk. "The chief mate is sick—of a fever. That Hobson he is already dead and over the side. And Captain Dove has sent order that he is not to be disturbed—unless necessary. He is broke down, he says, with illness and worry."
"Wait a minute, then, Mr. Da Costa," she said, so imperatively that he halted and let her pass. "I won't be long, and then I'll stay on duty till evening."
She hurried below by the stairway behind the chart-house, and went straight along the alleyway to Reuben Yoxall's room. She was very much alarmed; she knew how sudden and deadly the dreaded West African fever could be. She did not doubt that the wretched Hobson had fallen a victim to it.
All was quiet within the chief mate's room. She knocked gently, and the door was opened almost at once. A young man in an ill-fitting, coal-blackened suit of blue dungaree looked inquiringly out at her and then frowned.
"Keep to the other side of the passage, please," he requested crisply. "This room's in strict quarantine, and the risk of infection—"
"Oh, never mind about that," she broke in. "It's no worse for me than for you. And I must speak to Rube—Mr. Yoxall. Is he very bad? How did you—"
She had recognised him by his voice. Without his horrible mask he looked so much younger than she had supposed him that she had at first wondered who he could be, although his keen, resolute face was haggard and lined, his pale lips dreadfully drawn at the corners, and hideous remembrances still seemed to lurk behind his steady grey eyes.
"He's asleep at present—and pretty bad," said the stranger sorrowfully. "I had to give him an opiate. I volunteered to look after him—which was the very least I could do. There was no one else who knew anything, and, although I'm not a doctor, I know some of the tricks of the trade.
"And I know enough," he added, "to warn you that you must please stay away from here in the meantime."
"I won't," said Sallie simply. "He's my best friend, Mr.—"
"Carthew's my name," the young man in the doorway informed her.
"He's my best friend, Mr. Carthew. And—you must let me help."
Mr. Carthew considered the matter, and nodded.
"All right," he agreed. "If you like to see to his food—what the ship's cook has left at the door will do him no good." And she listened attentively while he went on to tell her what would be best for the sick man.
"Ambrizette will prepare it and bring it along," she promised. "And—you'll let me see him next time I come down?"
"As soon as he's fit to see anyone," her new acquaintance assured her. And with that Sallie was quite content. She felt intuitively that she could trust him.
"Are you—all right, yourself?" she asked.
"Perfectly all right," he assured her. "And very glad of the chance to repay some small part of what I owe—our friend."
"No one else will come near you here," she said reflectively. "It may all be for the best in the end."
He nodded again, and, as she turned away, shut the door very quietly.
She hurried aft, to instruct Ambrizette as to the food to be prepared and carried to the sick man's door, and no less hastily returned to the bridge. Da Costa left it by the other ladder; he evidently did not care to come too near her then. And there she remained all day, with only the sullen, silent man at the wheel for company.
Once during the afternoon she slipped down to ask how the mate was, and found him delirious. Slyne came on deck as she returned to her post, and frowned angrily as she told him, in answer to his quick question, where she had been. He had obviously intended to join her up there, but thought better of that.
"You mustn't go near him again, Sallie," he called to her peremptorily. "Captain Dove will be very ill-pleased."
"I can't help that," she answered, thankful so to escape Jasper Slyne's company. And he turned away with a still blacker frown. It was tiresome talking against the stiff head-wind.
The day dragged out its dreary length, until, late in the evening, Da Costa came on deck again.
"I'm good for all night now," he told Sallie from a safe distance. "Captain Dove's still sound asleep, although the mate's been making no end of a row."
"I'll be up again some time in the morning watch, then," she told him, and was soon knocking at the door of Yoxall's room.
Carthew's face was very grave when he looked out.
"Is he worse?" she asked breathlessly.
"Better—in one way," the young American answered. "He's conscious now. He's had some of the soup you sent along."
"Can I see him?" she begged.
"He's just been speaking of you. He told me to ask you not to come near him again."
She choked back a dry sob, and had pushed past him into the room before he could interfere.
"I'll sit with him for an hour or two now, while you get a sleep," she said, and stifled another sob as she saw how the sick man's sunken eyes grew glad at sight of her.
Nor did anything that the acting doctor could urge make any difference in her determination; and she hushed the mate's whispered protests with a brave smile.
"We're going to pull you through, Rube, between us," she whispered back, bending over him. "And you're going to obey orders for the present, instead of giving them. So don't say any more about it now."
She had seated herself on a camp-stool beside him. Carthew, convinced that it would be futile to argue any further with her, was evidently only too glad to stretch himself on the sofa and draw the curtains. And almost at once he fell fast asleep.
It was very nearly midnight before he moved and woke and sprang to his feet. And Sallie was still sitting there with one of the mate's huge hands between both of hers.
"He looks a little better, don't you think?" she asked wistfully before she tiptoed out of the room. And Carthew, after a prolonged glance at his patient, nodded approval and hope.
That night and the next day and the next again passed without any change of conditions on board. Captain Dove was still confined to his room, and would not even see Slyne, who had, therefore, to live alone, bored to the last limit, not so much afraid of the fever as shirking any needless risk of infection, his intercourse with Sallie confined to an occasional shouted caution or inquiry.
Da Costa took the bridge by night and she by day. And every night she relieved Carthew for a few hours from his unremitting attendance on the sick man. She was with Reuben Yoxall when he died.
What passed between the two of them during that last vigil is not to be told. But the dead man's face was very calm and content when Sallie at length roused Carthew from his scanty rest to tell him that the appointed end had come.
"But you promised to call me up," he said, most unhappy for her.
"If there was any need," she corrected him gently. "But there was none. He knew—before I came in."
Her downcast eyes were dry, but grief almost beyond bearing showed in them as she looked up at him on her way to the door.
"You must get away to your own room now," he urged, "and have a long, quiet rest. Don't forget that you've done all you could—and far more than most folk would ever have dreamed of doing."
Her lips trembled a little. She held out a hand to him gratefully. She could not trust herself to speak. And, by and by, in her own quarters, she slowly cried herself to sleep.
Captain Dove was on the bridge next morning when she appeared, pale and worn. And he flew into a passion at sight of her, rating her very bitterly for her foolhardy behaviour.
"Go away back to bed," he finally ordered, "and keep to the poop till I give you leave to come forward again, d'ye hear?"
Slyne, too, stepped hastily aside as she passed him on her way aft again, and called after her some anxious advice as to taking better care of herself. She was glad to think that she would be free of him for the next few days, for always in the back of her mind was the fear of what he had told her before still more urgent cares had come to overshadow that for a time—that he had got Captain Dove to agree to give her to him as his wife. And, now that Reuben Yoxall was gone, she felt utterly forlorn and friendless.
TheOlive Branchbored through the Strait of Gibraltar during the night, and after that Captain Dove effected sundry surprising changes in his ship's appearance. No one would have recognised the rakishOlive Branchin the clumsy looking craft with three bare pole-masts and a smokestack as high as a factory chimney which went lurching, with propellers awash, across the Gulf of Lyons. Even its name had been changed again, and the new paint carefully aged. And a tattered Norwegian flag lay ready at hand in the box beside the stubby pole at its taffrail.
No further case of fever had occurred in the interval, but he left Sallie isolated in her own end of the ship until the lights of Genoa showed white and clear in the distance. She was on deck, late though it was, watching them as they grew always clearer, when Slyne came aft for a moment to tell her that she was once more free of the ship.
"And isn't it glorious to get back to civilisation again?" he exclaimed, real gladness in his voice and his smiling eyes. "Think of the good times we're going to have now, Sallie! I can't stop to tell you all I've planned, but—I'll see you again very soon, eh? And meantime you can be getting ready to slip ashore with me early to-morrow. I thought these last few days would never end! I do believe I'd have jumped overboard but for you and the promise you made me."
He went off again, in a great hurry, before she could even deny having promised him anything. "Captain Dove wants me to fake up an old Bill of Health for him," he called back, and did not seem to hear her when she cried to him to wait.
Before she reached the quarter-deck, in her long oilskin coat, with a broad sou'wester to keep the dew from her hair, he had disappeared. And she did not care to follow him to the saloon below.
The steamer had stopped in the offing to pick up a pilot, and was already slinking in between the harbour head-lights to the quarantine anchorage. As soon as its rusty cable roared through the hawse-pipe, Captain Dove came down from the bridge, and Sallie stepped out from among the shadows to confront him, on a quick impulse.
"Is it true that you told Jasper Slyne I would marry him?" she asked directly, without any preface.
The old man shrugged his shoulders crossly. "Don't worry me just now, girl!" he growled, but paused for a moment before passing on.
"Has he been pestering you too?" he demanded, as if aggrieved himself, "the bankrupt crook! Never mind him, Sallie. I'm going to kick him off the ship first thing to-morrow morning. He hasn't a cent to bless himself with, and—no man will ever marry you without money to burn, believe me."
Sallie drew a deep breath of belated relief. That load at least had been lifted from her mind. She was at last free of the fear which had been growing day by day as theOlive Branchneared port.
A head and shoulders emerged from the engine-room skylight and she went that way. It was Brasse, the chief engineer, come up for a mouthful or two of fresh air. He nodded to Sallie.
"Your friend's all right," he told her in a low tone. "The old man left him alone in the mate's room till an hour ago and then told me to take him back to the stokehold. He's going to swim for it now. I must get a line let down—"
"I'll do that," she said swiftly, "there—between the two boats. Tell him where to look for it. And oh! Mr. Brasse—"
He would not wait to be thanked. "I'll send him up right away, then. The sooner he's over the side the better," said he, and so disappeared.
Sallie climbed the rail, and, having found a coil of rope within one of the two life-boats there, was letting that gently overside when another shadow joined her.
"How are you going to manage after you get ashore?" she asked hurriedly as she was making the rope fast.
"I have my own kit in this water-tight bundle," he told her. "I'll make for the steps below those bathing-houses on the breakwater. It's only a short swim."
"But afterwards? You'll need money."
"I have a little—enough to get along with, I assure you. I've nothing to worry about—if I could only think of some way to show you my gratitude. Is there anything at all I can do for you?"
She shook her head.
"Are you sure?" he insisted. "I don't want to presume, of course, but—Are you all right here, and quite happy? What sort of ship is this, anyhow? And how—"
"Listen, Mr. Carthew," she broke in. "The only thing you can do for me is to forget all about me and theOlive Branch. And I'd be very grateful to you if you would promise—"
"Not to forget you," he said. "I couldn't. But—all the rest I promise."
"Thank you," she returned simply. "And now—"
"There's no hurry," he declared. "We're quite safe in here. And—I'm not going to leave you until you agree that, if I can ever be of any service to you, you will let me know at once."
"Very well," she agreed, to save time. "I'll do that."
"You know my name," he reminded her, and paused, frowning.
"But—that won't suit either," he said to himself reflectively, "for more than a few weeks. And I'll be at your orders all my life.
"You see," he said, as if in apology, "I'm Justin Carthew just now, but—I'll be the Earl of Jura very soon after I get to England. And if you've ever any use for me then, all you need do will be to send word to the Earl of Jura, in London; it will soon find me, wherever I happen to be."
He laughed a little, and Sallie almost smiled too. But he had spoken quite seriously.
"You won't forget," he urged, grave again. "The Earl of Jura. I'm not joking, I assure you. And, some day I may be able—"
"I won't forget," she promised, no less gravely, and held out a hand, in her haste to get him safe away.
He lifted it to his lips before letting it go, and stifled a sigh, and, turning, let himself over the ship's side.
Sallie sighed too, as she reclimbed the rail after he was safely gone. She was wondering....
But she was not left to her own reflections for long. Slyne came on deck, and had espied her before she could escape.
"I was just going aft to look for you," he told her in a confidential tone which she did not like at all. "How about to-morrow morning, Sallie?"
"I asked Captain Dove, Jasper," she answered in a low voice. "And he says—"
"But surely you're going to keep your promise to me!" Slyne exclaimed, in a tragic voice.
"HowcanI?" she asked, not thinking it worth while even now to deny that she had made him any promise at all. And at that moment Captain Dove emerged from the chart-house behind.
"A bargain's a bargain, Slyne," said he mockingly, having overheard. "And Sallie can't keep her promise to you because you can't come away with the ready cash. So you'd better say good-bye to her now, you won't have another chance."
Slyne had drawn back a step. One of his hands fell on the haft of a flogging-hammer that some one had left lying loose on the casemate there. Had it not been for the proximity of the pilot, drowsing away the time till morning in the chart-house behind, he would most assuredly have attempted to knock the old man on the head with it. He felt sure that, but for Captain Dove, he could have managed Sallie now that Yoxall was out of the way. He stood gnawing savagely at his lower lip as she vanished along the deck in the darkness. He had taken no notice at all of her timid good-bye.
Captain Dove grinned spitefully at him through the gloom of the small hours. "You'd better be off below and pack up," the old man suggested. "You'll be going ashore as soon as we get pratique."
"But—I'll be back. Give me time to turn!" Slyne snarled at him. "A bargain's a bargain, and—I'll be back."
"You'd better not," Captain Dove advised in a very ominous voice, and went on his way below, leaving Slyne to his own aggrieved, embittered reflections.
To Jasper Slyne the past few days had been like a foretaste of purgatory. Captain Dove had interdicted all communication with Sallie, and had proved a most unpleasant companion himself throughout the unspeakably wearisome passage from the North-west African coast, a passage made at the poorest speed of the ship because coal was scarce and he was afraid to call anywhere by the way to fill up his bunkers. Amid the dire squalor and discomfort, the enforced inaction and loneliness of life under such conditions, Slyne's only solace had been the hope of finally winning Sallie, by fair means or foul. He who, in his time, had met and made love to so many charming adventuresses, who would not have thought any more about her had she been one of their sort, had become absolutely obsessed by ambitions to be fulfilled with her for his wife.
And now—he knew that neither force nor finesse would avail him against Captain Dove's ultimatum. He had not the cash to meet the old man's demands, and that was apparently the end of the matter.
Most men, in Slyne's place, would have owned themselves beaten then. But not so he. Thinking it all over again, he would admit to himself no more than that he was for the moment baffled by contrary circumstances; circumstances such as had been his lot for so long that he could contemplate them almost unmoved. It was his happy creed that in the very face of failure itself one may, as often as not, discern the inspiriting features of final success. The dark hour that heralds dawn he spent pacing the cluttered quarter-deck of theOlive Branchin the cold, his far-away eyes always fixed on the twinkling dock-lights, his almost bloodless lips straight and compressed under his black moustache, cudgelling his brains for some safe means of immediately obtaining the money he wanted.
He had not the cash to meet Captain Dove's demands. But neither was he so entirely penniless as Captain Dove supposed him. He had only a hundred dollars in hand, but he had twenty thousand francs at his credit in a French bank. Many a millionaire had risen to affluence from infinitely smaller beginnings.
But it would have been idle to offer Captain Dove any such trifling sum on account of the price he had set on Sallie. And, rack his own overworked wits as he would, Slyne could think of no safe plan for turning his modest capital over at a sufficient profit within the time at his disposal.
"The only possible way," he told himself finally, his teeth set, "theonlypossible way is to chance my luck at those cursèd tables again. Although, God knows that's a risk I'd give up anything else to avoid. But—it's the only possible way now," he repeated vexedly, recalling the very excellent reasons he had for never showing his face in Monte Carlo again.
For, only a season or two before, he had figured throughout the Côte d'Azur as accessory in anaffairewith which the whole civilised world had afterwards rung, in spite of every effort to hush it up, anaffairewhose tragic consequences had caused such a flutter of scandalised chagrin among the private police of three great European powers that he could never again cross their frontiers without fear. Since he knew very well that, if he were ever identified, he would deservedly disappear, without any further fuss, to spend the rest of his life as a nameless cypher, forgotten, among the living dead, entombed in some secure fortress. In that cosmopolitan underworld to which such as Slyne belong, occur many curious incidents not reported in the newspapers, and the citizens of Cosmopolis have nowhere consul or minister to protect them against unfortunate consequences.
Slyne had no illusions as to what his fate would be if he were recognised on the Riviera.
"But she's worth the stake," he told himself with dogged determination, "even though itislife and liberty as well as my last few francs. And—I'd just as soon be done with things if I can't capture Sallie from that old scoundrel."
He knew very well, of course, that his prospect of making a financial success at the tables was no less of a forlorn hope. But he had all a professional gambler's blind faith in the goddess of chance. And since he would not withdraw from the contest, he had no option but to play that losing hazard also.
Day had broken before he had completed his plans. And then Captain Dove reappeared, sleepy-eyed and unshaven, to interview the port-doctor.
As soon as that functionary had glanced at the forged Bill of Health put before him and seen the crew mustered to the tally it told, the yellow flag at the fore was hauled down and Captain Dove hailed a shore-boat, to which he had Slyne's baggage transferred, and curtly told Slyne to be off ashore.
Nor did Slyne delay to bid him farewell. Each was heartily sick of the sight of the other, and each had plans of his own to promote in a hurry. They separated without so much as a nod. Sallie was invisible. And Slyne, in the boat on his way to the Custom-house, only looked back once at the ports of the poop-cabin, to see, within the dingy brass frame of one, a face that seemed to be watching him very thankfully as he went, a horrible face, with blubber lips, almost inhumanly ugly, the face of Sallie's devoted attendant, the dumb black dwarf, Ambrizette.
A yawning Customs' searcher glanced at his baggage and passed it unopened. In return for which courtesy Slyne bestowed upon him a doubtful rix-dollar and a few words in fluent Italian concerning theOlive Branch—words which would not improve Captain Dove's prospects of an early departure from Genoa, but might, conversely, increase by a little his own scanty time-allowance in that desperate bout with fortune to which he had committed himself. He knew that Captain Dove was intent on coaling and sailing again without the loss of a minute that might be saved.
He had all his own movements mapped out in anticipation. He drove to an hotel at which he had stayed once before, and, after a Turkish bath and breakfast, went on to the Crédit Lyonnais office to cash his draft. Then he made a number of purchases in inconspicuous shops, where he had to spend a good deal of time in bargaining, looked in at the Motor-Car Mart & Exchange, where he saw a big touring-car over which he argued for some minutes with the salesman; and, after a belated but liberal lunch in a first-class restaurant, he turned back toward the sale-room.
A man in an elaborate chauffeur's uniform, and evidently English, stopped him in the street outside, to ask whether he would care to buy a gold cigarette-case, a bargain. Slyne looked him over, and sized him up at a glance.
"Stranded?" he asked, and the man nodded sulkily.
"Want a few days' work?"
The chauffeur's dissipated face brightened.
"Yes, sir," said he, "I do."
"Wait here, then," said Slyne, and went inside.
"Well," he asked the salesman, "have you thought it over? What's the last word?"
"Fifteen thousandlire, milor—not asoldoless," declared the dapper, frock-coated salesman, in a tone of final decision which Slyne's sharp ears judged unfeigned. "The car is worth twice as much. Indeed, I could not let it go at such a ruinous loss were it not—But,ecco! The owner himself. He would probably be very ill pleased to hear it was actually sold at that ridiculous price."
Slyne looked round at the grey-haired, portly, prosperous-looking individual threading his way through the agglomeration of cars in the background, and his half-parted lips snapped together again.
He wanted that particular car and had made up his mind to buy it, rash though such an investment might prove, but he had surmised from a lynx-like glance at the seller that he might be able to get it for even less than the salesman was authorised to accept. And, since his own pockets were so poorly lined for the expensive part he was playing, he, who despised chaffering, was yet bent on making the very best bargain he could.
"It's more than I've got about me," he told the salesman in a very audible voice, as the fat man in the fur coat halted indeterminately a few paces away. And at the words the new-comer's puffy face lighted up, as if with relief, behind the pince-nez he was wearing. He came forward and spoke.
"An Englishman, by Jove!" he remarked with a great semblance of geniality. "So am I. Very happy to meet you, sir. You're interested in my car?"
"Not at the price," Slyne returned, with an indifferent hauteur which he judged likely to be effective with one in the stranger's presumable plight. And the fat man's lips drooped visibly, the pouches under his uneasy eyes became more marked. He was obviously disappointed, and felt himself snubbed. He did not seem quite sure what to say or do next.
Slyne, congratulating himself on his talent for character reading, turned away, to look at a cheap runabout, as carelessly as though he had all time at his disposal, instead of being, as he was, in a fever of ill-restrained impatience. The salesman figuratively washed his hands of them both; he could already foresee a forced sale at a calamitous sacrifice. And so it fell out.
Slyne, cavalier to the verge of rudeness, finally bought the big scarlet car, which the other almost forced upon him, for about half its market value, and paid for it there and then, in the new French notes which had almost been burning a hole in his pocket since he had left the Crédit Lyonnais office—so eager was he to be off on his last forlorn hope of winning Sallie.
"If you had allowed me only a few hours longer, I could have got you twice that amount," said the disappointed salesman in a stage aside to the seller as he counted over his own diminished commission. But the fat man merely bestowed on him a look of contemptuous annoyance, and, having signed the receipt Slyne required, tucked away in an empty pocket-book the balance of the crisply-rustling bills he had just received.
Even then he did not appear to know what next to do with himself. For, having glanced at his watch, he gave vent to a grunt of disgust, and hung on his heel undecidedly, after making a move to go.
"It's only about a hundred miles to Monaco, isn't it?" Slyne asked the salesman; and was answered in the affirmative.
The fat man gasped and choked for a moment, and then spoke again, with more confidence: a change due, perhaps, to the improvement in his finances.
"Pardon me, sir," said he, "but—if you're going that way, I wonder—It would be a most tremendous favour to me, and I haven't haggled over giving you the best of our bargain. The train's just gone, and—"
Slyne, chin in air, once more looked him over appraisingly, as he stammered and hesitated; and was very much disposed to cut him adrift without more ado. But some indefinable impulse, some feeling that here was a bird of a feather very sadly astray, caused him to alter his mind. "I'll be glad to give you a lift," he said, more graciously, "if you're ready to start now. But I can't wait."
The fat man's face lighted up again. "My luck's on the mend at last!" he declared. "I'm in as great a hurry as you can be, sir. I'm more than obliged to you for your courtesy. May I offer you my card?"
Slyne glanced at the slip of pasteboard conferred upon him while the car was being shifted out of the showroom into the street, where his elaborate chauffeur was in waiting. And, "Jump in, Mr. Jobling," he requested with unconcealed coldness as he himself took the wheel, relegating the chauffeur to a back seat. It ruffled his self-satisfied mood of the moment more than a little to learn that the fat man in the fur coat was in fact a London solicitor. With the law in any shape or form Jasper Slyne wanted nothing whatever to do, and especially at such a juncture. He was already repenting his ill-timed politeness.
However, he could not very well rid himself of his passenger then. All he could do was to dash through the busy streets of Genoa in the dusk at a pace calculated to make the hair of any respectable and self-respecting solicitor stand on end. But, out of the corner of one eye, he observed that Mr. Jobling was wearing a blandly contented smile.
That gentleman did not seem so well pleased, however, as they turned up-hill into the Via Roma, and Slyne, understanding, relented a little again. "I have some baggage at the Isotta," he volunteered, and the cloud at once lifted from Mr. Jobling's brow.
Several assiduous porters stowed hastily in the tonneau, beside the ornamental chauffeur, the travel-worn trunks and suit-cases which Slyne had left there that morning, and stood at the salute till he drove away, when they no doubt returned to their lairs to count the profits of such politeness. He had, as usual, been very lavish with his small change. And his passenger was also impressed by his liberality.
Meanwhile the car was negotiating more carefully the lumpy patchwork with which the old Via Carlo Alberto is paved, and Mr. Jobling's puffy features spoke his discontent over its slow progress. But, once beyond Sampierdarena, clear of close traffic, on the open road to Savona, Slyne made more speed; and it was self-evident that he knew how to get the most out of his horse-power.
He looked, indeed,—if looks go for anything nowadays,—quite at home, very much in his element, lying lazily back in the driver's seat of the richly-appointed car which had been his companion's an hour before. It was late on a winter afternoon, and what wind there was had a chill in it, caught, no doubt, in crossing the Apennines. But Slyne also was wearing a heavy fur coat and had pulled on a pair of gauntlets at the hotel.
As the car rocked and swayed on its rapid way through the last outskirts of Savona, he was humming light-heartedly to himself the antique aria ofThe Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.
"Been gambling a bit?" he presently asked his silent companion. And Mr. Jobling admitted the soft impeachment.
"And no luck," Slyne inferred amusedly. He could view with an equable eye the misfortunes of others as well as his own; especially since the stout solicitor's losses had brought his own way such a substantial profit as could be readily realised by the re-sale of his car.
"No luck at all," Mr. Jobling affirmed explosively, and the troubles fermenting in his mind at length found outlet in speech. "I wouldn't have believed anyone could have been so unlucky!" he declared with great bitterness; "and at such a critical moment. I want so little, too; I've no ambition to break the bank. It wasn't with any such foolish idea thatIcame to Monte Carlo. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the bank holds."
"Which isn't a great deal," commented Slyne. "I've broken the bank more than once myself, and lost twice as much the next evening."
"You play some system, perhaps?" his companion inquired, but Slyne shook his head reminiscently. "I've tried several myself, but none seemed to be of the slightest use. And now—It doesn't matter, of course. I didn't come to Monaco to make money; I'm not such a fool! But it's most infernally inconvenient ... may cost me my chance of a fortune ... practically within my grasp." His voice had died away to a mere mutter. Slyne was smiling in disdain.
"But I can't go on losing at the tables for ever," he exploded again. "My turn must come. I feel in better fettle this evening—as if my luck had changed. It's no doubt since I met you; I must thank you again for this lift. If I'd had to wait in Genoa for the slow train, I might have got back too late to take the tide at the flood. I'm a great believer, you know, in striking while the iron's hot."
"So am I," said Slyne dryly, and much amused by his monologue.
"I'm sure my luck's on the mend," Mr. Jobling went on, growing still more communicative under encouragement, "and the mere matter of winning a few thousand francs is nothing to what will follow—whatmustfollow. I've made up my mind to win all along the line; and there's a great deal in the theory that, if you apply sufficient will-power to any project, its success is assured. I'm ab-so-lutelydeterminedto win fifty thousand francs to-night, and then ... I fancy it was a mistake to come here at all.... But, of course, a man who never makes a mistake will never make anything.... I'll go straight back to London, and surely, among the five or six million people there....
"Look out!Good—God!"
Between his two excited ejaculations Slyne had outwitted calamity. Taking a rash curve at top speed, he had come to an unexpected rectangle in the roadway running almost parallel there with the shore below, and, rounding that corner safely with a quick wrench of the wheel, had almost crashed into a heavy, high-built ox-wagon which was backing blindly out from some steep, hidden side-lane. The hubs of the car's wheels had all but grazed the parapet of the roadway at Mr. Jobling's side, and Slyne, on the other, had barely escaped being brained by the timbers protruding from the rear of the wagon. The ornamental chauffeur was fast asleep in the tonneau behind.
Mr. Jobling lay back and gasped while Slyne held on as if nothing had happened, at the same breakneck pace. But neither spoke again for some time.
Through village after village they dashed, always at grave risk and yet without accident. The moon rose just before they reached Alassio. Slyne even managed to improve the pace a little then, and his passenger made no protest, but sat with eyes downcast, his lips always moving mutely.
"A slight overdraft on the future—it's no more than that," remarked Mr. Jobling a little later, as if he had been alone, and Slyne looked round at him for an instant, with nostrils curled in a faint, superior smile.
Slyne thought he could guess some part at least of the troubles afflicting his chance acquaintance, and was very little inclined to hear more about them. He was too busy considering his own plan of campaign, the blood in his own veins was running too briskly under the stimulus of that wild flight through the keen night air, to waste any time or thought on another man's worries. But—a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. "Cheer up!" said he suddenly. "Every one overdraws more or less on his luck, at one time or another. If that's all you've done, it's nothing to mope about."
Mr. Jobling sat up with a start, and stared at him. "That's all," he asserted, a little too hurried in his assurance. "I give you my word, sir...." And then he recollected himself and laughed uncomfortably, confused.
"I've been thinking aloud," said he. "But you mustn't take any notice of that. It's a bad habit of mine. And, as you say, we all overdraw on the future, from time to time. As a man of the world, sir, you'll understand what I mean to convey to you. And of course these little overdrafts are always met when they're due.
"What a fine night this is for a fast spin!"
"What's the nature of your present overdraft?" Slyne inquired perversely, safe in the certainty that the other could not resent that rudeness, and was again amused by Mr. Jobling's cough of discomfiture.
But, "Purely metaphorical," that gentleman countered cleverly. "We'll soon be in San Remo at this rate. I wouldn't wonder if we've established a record. It isn't every day there's such a car in the market."
"No, it isn't," Slyne agreed. "Nor a buyer for it." And conversation languished again.
But Slyne's spirits, none the less, were steadily rising as he drew nearer, mile by mile, to the chief temple of that goddess of chance to whom he looked to befriend him now—since it was not on his own behalf alone that he was seeking her shrine, since mischance must entail consequences so dire to Sallie as well as to him. The personal risk he was running lent added zest to the piquancy of his most unusual position as a champion of maidenhood in distress. And what Sallie's fate would be if his own luck failed him, he could picture in vivid detail from his own experience of a world most men know nothing about.
Within a few days theOlive Branch, with a supply of cheap coal and some makeshift repairs, would be gone from Genoa, leaving behind no trace but such bills as Captain Dove could escape without paying. She would enter Port Said and leave Suez in some effective disguise and under another assumed name which would last her through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; beyond which she would disappear, perhaps for good, into whatever strange world she might raise over the mysterious sea-rim which lies beyond "the Gate of the Place of Tears."
Captain Dove was an old man already. And even he could not for ever go on living such a life as he led. He had spoken of this trip East as his last, and it was his avowed object in it to turn Sallie to some account. Slyne, who, as you will perhaps suppose, was no squeamish moralist, sickened at thought of what time might still have in store for the girl.
"Just imagineher," said he to himself, "cooped up in some slat-eyed Chinaman's filthyyamentill she grows grey, or eating her heart out in some coffee-coloured sultan's clay palace, with nothing to comfort her but a crooked brass crown—and not even that by and by. It's damnable to think—But what's the use of thinking about it! I'm going to save her from all that—in spite of herself." And his selfishly sentimental mood of the moment once more gave place to a philosophic contentment with things as they were, and that in turn to an exhilarating anticipation of pleasures to come.
The lights of San Remo looked very alluring to him, who had for so long spent his nights at sea with no more companionable illuminant than a reeking kerosene lamp or the cold, aloof stars. He became jocular, in a lofty way, with the always impatient Jobling, and at the frontier was so patronisingly polite to the officials there that they let him pass almost at once, under the apparent impression that he was some personage of importance—a circumstance which lent him a little additional self-confidence.
From Menton Garavan in to Monte Carlo is only some seven miles. And for that short distance he sat silent, once more mentally reviewing the manifold chances of mischance ahead of him. While Mr. Jobling, beside him, continued to mumble and mutter at intervals of misfortune—no fault of his own—and fortune, that marvellous fortune which was to be his so soon, since he had made up his mind that it must.
"I'm absolutelydetermined," said Mr. Jobling, unconsciously raising his voice again. "Eh? What? Oh, yes. I beg your pardon. I have a room at the Métropole. Where are you going to put up?"
"I always stay at the Paris," Slyne lied easily. He had no inclination for any more of his companion's society, especially while he had no idea how he himself might be received at any hotel in the Principality.
"I'll walk on from here, then, if you'll allow me," suggested that gentleman. "And—er—by the way, you won't be mentioning to anyone the circumstances—er—about the car."
"We'll let it be understood that I bought it in London—last month," said Slyne, ready to be obliging since it would be for his own benefit; and, cutting short with a curt "Good night" some further profuse expressions of gratitude on the part of his passenger, glad, indeed, to be so well quit of him, drove on in more state, his sleepy chauffeur in the seat vacated by Mr. Jobling, to make his next move in that desperate game in which he was going to stake life and liberty also on the infinitesimal chance of returning triumphant to Genoa to claim Sallie from Captain Dove.
For, "If they spot me, I'll blow out my brains before they can lay hands on me," said he to himself as he drew up with an imperativehonk-honk-honk!before the Hôtel de Paris.
If you have ever had to walk unconcernedly into the crowded vestibule of a fashionable hotel, not knowing at what moment you might be identified and arrested as a notorious criminal, you will no doubt understand, and, perhaps, sympathise with Slyne's state of mind as he entered the Hôtel de Paris. If not, you can at least imagine how he felt as he made his way through the throng toward the bureau, grimly conscious of every inquisitive glance.
There was little enough to shield him from immediate detection, beyond the flight of time and the facts that he had been wearing a beard and living under a Frenchalias—or, as he would have preferred to put it, incognito—when, only a season or two before, he had earned such undesired and undesirable distinction throughout the Côte d'Azur. And he knew very well what his fate would be if he were recognised.
He was very devoutly thankful, therefore, when, having safely run the gauntlet of all those argus eyes which had seemed to be searching his by the way, he found himself installed in an ornate apartment vacated only that morning by a grand duke.
"I can't afford to do things by halves now!" he had reflected, shrugging his shoulders, as he had agreed with the manager, who happened to be on the spot, that the suite in question would probably serve his turn. And even the manager had been impressed by his manner—and his fine car.
"So far, so good, then," said Slyne to himself with a somewhat nervous grimace, as he crossed to the window of his sitting-room and looked out over the moonlit bay, after tossing his keys to a valet with a curt order to lose no time. "And now—I must go on as I've begun. But—I can't help wishing I were well through with it all. I didn't half like the way that clerk watched me with his mouth wide open—andIknewhimall right!"
No one could have appeared more care-free, however, than he when, an hour later, he left his dressing-room, ready to face—and outface—the detective talent he still must meet, and sauntered very much at his leisure, a cigarette between his tight lips, in the direction of thetable d'hôte.
"Seems pretty dull here," he commented, after an indifferent inspection of the elaborate company there. "I've a good mind to go on to Ciro's—and find out if they have forgotten my face by now too. I won't have any peace of mind till I've been all round the old place." In pursuit of which bold policy he sent a page for his coat and hat, and stood displaying himself to the general public till they arrived.
He found Ciro's well filled, as usual, when he strolled in, taking with perfect outward calm the risk that he might be remembered there. But no hostile glance met his roving eye as he entered the restaurant. He was obsequiously received by an observant head-waiter, and shown to a table which suited his immediate needs to a nicety.
Among the more ebullient gathering in that gay resort he could discover no cause for alarm. And no one took any special notice of him until, among some still later comers, he noticed a haggardly handsome woman, in a gown so scant that she might well have been glad of the great bunch of camellias she wore at her breast, who was pointing him out to one of the two men in her company.
Slyne's heart almost stopped beating at that, and one of his hands involuntarily slipped round to where, in a padded pocket within the arm-hole of his thin evening-coat, he had a little double-barrelled pistol concealed.
He caught the woman's eye again while she was whispering volubly to the attentive listener at her elbow, a fashionably foolish-looking young man of a stamp whose appearance is sometimes deceitful, and wondered sickly what was coming as that individual, having looked him over quite openly and with the aid of an eye-glass, rose and approached him across the room.
He glanced up in admirably assumed surprise, however, for all answer to the other's gruffly casual, "Good evenin', sir.
"Will you excuse my askin' whether you'd care to sell the car I saw you drivin' past in, an hour ago?" inquired the stranger, quite unabashed. "Because—I want it, don't y'know."
Slyne's face remained an immobile mask, although in his heart he was dully conscious of an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
"It isn't for sale at the moment," he answered, suavely enough, but as if a little offended.
"But—I want it," reiterated the stranger, who did not seem to lack a sufficient sense of his own importance. "And I'll give you practically your own price for it. It's for a lady, don't y'know—and as a favour to me, eh?"
"I'd be very glad to oblige you," said Slyne, elated beyond expression to find not only that his fears had been groundless, that his visitor was really a fool and not a knave in disguise, but also that, if he played his own cards properly, he might pocket a still fatter profit upon his car than he had anticipated, "but—I can't at the moment. Are you going to be here for a few days?"
"I'm at the Cap Martin for a week. As soon as you change your mind you can come over an' see me there. Ask for Lord Ingoldsby. Good evenin' to you," answered his visitor with all the sulky insolence of a spoiled child; and slouched back to his own table, where, Slyne had the satisfaction of seeing, he had to endure a rating from his enchantress for his ill-success on her errand. And Slyne almost smiled.
For he knew the Marquis of Ingoldsby quite well, by repute at least, as an English pigeon with feathers well worth the plucking, and set the other two down for what they were, a pair of those hawks to be found hovering wherever the simple pigeon would try its wings. He became contemplatively interested in the trio, although he knew the ways of that wicked world far too well to suppose for an instant that he would be allowed to make a quartette of it.
"But you shall have your car, madame," he soliloquised, "presently, when I'm finished with it. And, in exchange, I'll take—"
"If only I had Sallie here now—" he said to himself with sudden self-pity, and then was seized with a hot contempt for all such as the noble marquis. "But no one under a royalty need hope for an introduction to her then," he finished, and so stifled an inconvenient twinge of conscience.
"In the meantime it looks to me as ifmylittle overdraft on the future is going to pay me most handsomely," he reflected. And that happy thought added zest to his appetite for the excellent dinner his waiter had ordered for him, the first good dinner to which he had sat down in endless months.
He had given the mancarte blanchein the matter of viands, only reserving the choice of what he should drink. So that when he ordered Vichy the waiter was not unduly depressed. Slyne also would have preferred to see a silver bucket beside the table, a pursy gold neck protruding from it, but he wanted all his wits about him that evening, while he was once more pitting himself, alone, against all comers in Monte Carlo—and, incidentally, against the odds in favour of the bank, on which he hoped to draw to the tune of at least a hundred thousand dollars during the next few days. He knew, of expensive experience, that the Widow Clicquot and her charming companions are safer society after a dangerous campaign is over than just before it begins.
He would not even venture upon an after-dinner cigar, contenting himself with a cigarette from the plain gold case with a crest on it which he purchased from the chauffeur he had so providentially picked up in Genoa that afternoon. But he tipped the waiter with such profusion that the man preceded him to the door bent almost double with gratitude, and even the Marquis of Ingoldsby was staringly impressed by the magnificence of his exit—as Slyne had intended he should be.
His masterly impersonation of an unostentatious millionaire was not without its effect on the flunkeys of the Casino also. These made as much of his entrance as he in his assumed modesty would allow on his way into thesalles de jeu, where he attracted not a few appraising, inquisitive glances while he once more dared discovery as he roamed from table to table, gazing about him as though that had really been his first visit there. The world and the half-world alike seemed to be wondering who he might be; a circumstance which, otherwise, would have caused him ecstatic pleasure.
It has been stated already that he was more than passably good-looking, with regular profile and straight, spare, elegant figure. In evening clothes which fitted him to perfection, neither over-groomed nor untidy in any detail, without a flaw for the most fastidious to pick in either appearance or manner, he seemed to bear some stamp of distinction which might very well have passed current in circles much more exclusive.
The rooms were well filled, although the really fashionable world had just begun to flock south for the winter. The usual motley went to make up the highly-coloured mosaic of worshippers at the chief shrine of the goddess of chance. It would be a waste of your time and mine, too, to describe again the types to be observed there, and Slyne had seen them all very often before. He sauntered about for a little and then slipped quietly into the only seat which had been vacated since he had arrived, much to the annoyance of a short, fat Frenchman who seemed disposed to insist on his own prior claim to it, till Slyne glanced over one shoulder into his eyes.
"Good luck to you!" cried a jovial voice from the other side of the table as he sat down, and Slyne nodded coldly to his companion of the afternoon.
He did not desire Mr. Jobling's further acquaintance, and would have ignored his greeting entirely but that he had noticed in front of the stout solicitor quite a noteworthy stack of winnings; and he did not know whether he might not yet have occasion to draw on the other's expressed ambition to repay him a favour done. In any case, he dismissed all such ideas from his mind for the moment, and started to play, very cautiously.
A cautious player, who can keep his head, need seldom lose a great deal at any game. Slyne had drunk nothing stronger than Vichy since the night before. He was tensely on the alert. His luck came and went until he had lost a couple of thousand francs, and then he began to win.
He had been winning, slowly but surely, with only an occasional set-back, for over an hour before he became aware that a growing group of interested onlookers had gathered behind him, and that he had accumulated within the space between his protective elbows a pile of notes and gold which reached to his chin. And, thus convinced that he was in the vein, spurred on by some sudden remembrance of Sallie caged in her cabin on theOlive Branch, an ever-present temptation to play to the gallery, to stake no less than the maximum on every turn of the wheel, had almost vanquished all his discretion when he encountered the quiet glance of a man who was contemplating him from behind the players seated at the other side of the table, a man whom he knew only too well as one of the cleverest of thosemouchardswhose frequent comings and goings attract so little attention there, and who knew him.
The brilliant lights about him grew strangely blurred. He felt faint and ill. But, by a desperate effort of will, he managed to maintain an outward composure. He yawned openly, and then let his eyes fall to look at his watch. The detective was carelessly moving round the table in his direction. He shifted his rake to his left hand and, slipping his right across his chest to within the lapel of his evening-coat, laid out some small further stake, entirely at random.
He lost that, and two or three more, before he yawned again, as if fatigued by such trifling, and pushed a much larger amount into place, as a blind man might, for a final venture. No hand had as yet fallen on his shoulder, but the suspense of not knowing at what moment that would happen was hard to bear. He felt like one in the grip of a hideous nightmare as the croupier presently shovelled over toward him a large and miscellaneous assortment of notes and gold and counters, which, none the less, he collected indifferently and dully conscious of an envious sigh from behind him.
He hesitated a little before letting go his hold of the pistol about whose butt the fingers of his right hand were still closely clasped, in order to pocket his profits of the evening. He had laid down his rake. It was at once seized by a woman who had been standing close at his shoulder, and, as she pushed eagerly past him into his seat, the bunch of camellias in her corsage brushed his face. It was the woman with whom Lord Ingoldsby had been dining. Slyne noticed her husband among the crowd in the rear as he himself made his way out into the open. He noticed also, approaching him entirely as if by accident, the inconspicuous spy whose appearance there had so alarmed him.
Slyne had not even time to hesitate. Without the slightest change of expression he stopped and confronted his enemy, addressing him by name, in the execrable French of the average Englishman.
"Bon soir, M. Dubois. Comment ça va? Bien, eh?"
"Monsieur has the advantage of me," the detective returned in effortless English, and over his features flitted the faintest shadow of disappointment.
"Oh, I scarcely supposed you would know me," said Slyne with a deprecatory shrug. "This is my first trip so far afield, though I've seen you several times in Paris, and we all know you quite well in London, of course."
The faintest shadow of what might have developed into a smile hovered for an instant about the famous man-hunter's lips and eyes, and Slyne made a mental note of the fact that he was not above being flattered.
"I'm over here after a fat fellow called Jobling," continued Slyne, ingratiatingly communicative. "I don't suppose you know anything about him?"
The other sniffed, disdainfully.
"An embryo embezzler," said he, in a tone of such conscious superiority that Slyne would surely have laughed in his face if he himself had felt safe. "Give him rope enough and he'll do the rest. Don't disclose yourself for a day or two, but watch him carefully.
"Are you working for New Scotland Yard?"
Slyne had expected some such question, and did not stammer over his answer.
"I've started a private agency on my own account. This is my first case. A thousand thanks for your hint. If all my official friends were as courteous, life would be much pleasanter for me." He spoke with a most respectful inflection, but always in barbarous Anglo-French. "Mille remerciements encore, mon confrère. Et maintenant—à demain."
His new acquaintance nodded with most gracious condescension and moved on in the direction of an obese German diplomatist who had just met amid the throng and greeted with over-acted surprise a pretty Viennese countess. And Slyne did not fail to observe, amid all his own agitation, how promptly the two of them parted again at sight of M. Dubois.
He was conscious that his own nostrils were nervously twitching, and that there were tiny beads of cold perspiration about his forehead.
"He thought he knew me," said he to himself, very tremulously. "And, though I've put him off the scent to some extent, he'll root about till—" For all his nerve of steel, he shivered and changed countenance.
"I can't trust myself to play any more to-night—and just when I was getting my hand in! But I suppose I may thank my stars that I'm no worse off since I caught his eye—he'd have been down on me in an instant, if I had so much as blinked. And now I must bluff him out—I'mnotgoing to be scared off.
"There's this about it, anyhow—if I've really got him hoodwinked, none of the others need worry me!" With which conditional self-encouragement, and having made sure that his enemy was no longer watching him, he turned back on an impulse, to see how Mr. Jobling was getting on. But Mr. Jobling had already gone off with his winnings.
"I wonder if he'd take a hand at écarté now?" thought Slyne. "His name came in very useful just now—and I might as well have my own money back out of him while he's got it. He'll probably be fancying himself at the moment, too."
And with that business-like ambition before him, he roamed the rooms till he could be sure that his proposed victim was nowhere within the Casino. Among the multitude there he could run across no one else who seemed likely to prove easy prey. So he gave up the quest with a philosophical shrug, got his coat and hat, and sauntered out on to the terrace, a fragrant cigar between his thin lips.
"And I'll stand myself a bottle of something at supper, to buck me up," he promised himself. "I'll look into Ciro's again presently, and get the good of the gold piece I had to waste on that scoundrelly waiter. If I chance across Jobling there, I'll get a free meal as well; or, if I should see that ass Ingoldsby, I'll tackle him while his precious keepers are out of the way. They're evidently makinghisfeathers fly!"
The night was still, and even unusually mild for that season of the year. The moon had disappeared. Slyne looked down at the sea, all dark and mysterious, with a strong feeling of distaste; he had lately seen more than enough of it to last him a lifetime. He turned his steps toward the deserted gardens, to escape a party of chattering tourists who had trespassed on his privacy.
He was in no hurry at all for supper, and wanted a few minutes of peace and quietness in which to compose his still troubled mind, and to consider the situation as touching his lordship of Ingoldsby—who would undoubtedly prove a far more profitable companion than Mr. Jobling, even although the latter should have won the fifty thousand francs that had been his ambition.
"What a fool that fellow is, for a lawyer!" mused Slyne, having more or less successfully combated an inclination to let his thoughts stray back to theOlive Branch—and Sallie. And,Click!something answered him from behind a bush not very far from the verge of the path he was meditatively pacing.
He jumped aside at the sound, as any man would who has known what it is to be ambushed, and then, recollecting himself, stood still, with a mirthless, annoyed half-smile. He did not believe that Dubois would adopt any such noisy means to get rid of him, but—none the less, he felt impelled to find out who was in hiding behind that bush.
Slyne skirted a flower-bed cautiously and, approaching the shadowy background by a flank movement, found a stout individual in a voluminous coat kneeling on the grass there, with some white, metallic object in one trembling hand lifted in the direction of his own left eyelid. A secondClick!startled Slyne disproportionately, and he spoke at that, in a very querulous voice. "Hey! you fool," he said, "you're wasting your time. Wait till I show you how.
"Good Lord! is thatyou, Jobling?"
Mr. Jobling suddenly cast a revolver from him, with a wailing execration, and, attempting to rise, sank down beside it, blubbering, entirely unstrung after the agonising strain of the past few seconds. Slyne, eyeing him with exasperated contempt, picked the weapon up and fingered it for an instant.
"A damned rotten make!" he commented morosely. "But it'll do the job for you all right now. You can't shoot it off, you know, with the safety catch set."
The miserable man on the grass held out his hand for it, humbly. But Slyne was not at all prepared to take any risks on his account—for suicide and murder are often very difficult to distinguish, in their results—and made up his mind to keep it, in the meantime at any rate.
"Get up," he ordered in his sharpest tone, "and come away out of this. If you could only see yourself, you wouldn't want to sit there and whimper."
Under the spur of that insult Mr. Jobling seemed to recall some stray shred of his forfeited self-respect. He got on to his knees, with an effort, and thence by degrees to his feet.
"I think you might show a little more decent feeling," he sobbed brokenly, "when—"
"And I think you might show a vast deal more sense," snapped Slyne. "Button up your coat, and come away out of this. You can kill yourself just as easily—a good deal more so, in fact, since I've shown you how—in half an hour, after I'm in a safer position to prove analibiif any inconvenient questions are asked about it afterwards. Come on, now."
His whilom acquaintance followed him meekly, muttering, to a secluded corner where there was a seat.
"What's the trouble?" demanded Slyne magisterially, sitting down at one end of the bench and motioning him to the other. "But I suppose I need scarcely ask. Trust funds mysteriously melted away—the usual childish attempt to recover them by sheer chance, and with all the odds against you!—the dread of exposure and disgrace—which never worry a dead man. You've been a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, eh, my respectable friend? And you'd rather die in the dark than face the world in broad daylight without your immaculate fleece."
Mr. Jobling groaned.
"But why, after all, finish playing the knave by playing the fool? If you were the man of the world you fancy yourself, you'd know that sheep are very seldom successful in real life. It's all very well to pose in a sheep-skin, but it isn't everything. A wolf undisguised can do very well for himself, so long as his teeth are sufficiently sharp. And, when he becomes a big millionaire, he can buy himself, among other things, a nice new merino coat."
His parable amused himself, but his auditor did not seem possessed of a sufficient sense of humour to appreciate its personal application.
"You're labouring under a misapprehension," said that gentleman, who had meantime regained some grip on himself, in accents anything but properly grateful. "I may, perhaps, have been unfortunate with—er—a few small investments for clients, but your inference that I have—er—er—You're positively insulting, sir!"
Slyne laughed, in better humour. "Bah!" said he. "What's the use of bluffing? You weren't going to blow out your brains—if any—because you had been too honest, were you?"
"I'm a desperate man," declared Mr. Jobling, thus rudely reminded of the matter in hand. "Life isn't worth living, now that I've lost—" He gulped and gasped, once more on the verge of tears, but a furtive glance at Slyne's impassive features, dimly visible in the glow of a half-smoked cigar, showed him he need not expect any excess of sympathy from that quarter. It also seemed to suggest to him, in the midst of his anguish of mind, an idea. He looked round at Slyne again.
"You're a man of wealth," he said in a husky voice whose suddenly inspired eagerness he could not conceal, and some spark of hope perhaps sprang up in his fainting heart again since Slyne did not deny that erroneous suggestion. Slyne was waiting to hear what more he might have to say, though not with any intention of helping him.
"I wonder—" the stout solicitor muttered. "It might interest you to—Two heads are better than one, and—Some sort of partnership—"
"I can only spare you five minutes more," said Slyne crisply. "As soon as I've finished my cigar, I'm going across to Ciro's for supper. The Marquis of Ingoldsby is expecting me."
"Do you know his lordship?" breathed Mr. Jobling, his new-born hope no doubt gaining strength and his respect for his chance companion obviously increased. "Then you'll understand me when I tell you that I've ruined myself—ab-so-lutelyruinedmyself over the Jura succession."
"I haven't the least idea what the devil you're talking about," said Slyne.
Mr. Jobling groaned again. He was most grievously disappointed.
"I thought every one had heard of the case," he went on. "A couple of millions in cash—"
"Millions of what?" demanded Slyne with a little more lively interest.
"Pounds sterling," the London lawyer explained, rather testily. "A couple of millions in cash and forty or fifty thousand a year going a-begging may not seem a very important matter to a moneyed man like you, but I've thought of nothing else, night and day, for the past five years, and—"
"I've been all over the world for the past five years," mentioned Slyne loftily, but impatient now, "and the latest news of the parish pump has probably failed to reach me. Get on with your story, anyhow. If there's anything in it—I don't know but that I may be disposed to lend you a hand—if there's anything in it." And, having lighted a fresh cigar, he composed himself to listen. His time was his own. The chance of catching Lord Ingoldsby alone at Ciro's was too remote to be worth more than the passing thought. A story with so much money in it might prove at least as entertaining as a solitary supper.
Mr. Jobling gazed with glistening eyes at his providential acquaintance. "I've told you what there is in it," said he in a tremulous tone. "A couple of millions in cash and forty or fifty thousand a year that will all ultimately fall to the Crown—unless I can find that girl, or—"
"What girl?" Slyne demanded irritably.
"The late Earl of Jura's daughter. You'll no doubt remember—But if you've been abroad for so long, I'd better repeat—" And, having got over his nervous prolixity, he became much more explicit.
"The late earl's first wife, as you must recall, sir, was Lady Eulalie Orlebarre. But she did not survive the birth of their only child, a son, in 1876.
"The earl married again, in '94. His second wife was Josceline Beljambes, the famous dancer. A daughter was born to them. But they separated, by mutual agreement, only a year or two later, and the countess retained custody of her daughter. The earl was a good deal older than she.
"She was a very restless, erratic woman, and fond of travel. In '99 she disappeared most mysteriously, somewhere abroad, and has never been heard of since.
"The following year, Lord St. Just, the earl's son by his first wife and, of course, his heir, was found dead one day at the foot of the cliffs near Loquhariot, the family seat in Scotland. He had grown up a very headstrong, troublesome lad, I have heard. There was some suspicion of foul play on the part of one of the gamekeepers on the estate—some scandalous story about a girl in the village—but the coroner's jury returned an open verdict.
"The earl himself died in 1906, a little more than five years ago. The estates fell into Chancery. And ever since I've been trying to trace his second wife—or their child; for, failing an heir-male, the female line of succession maintains in the family.
"The Court of Chancery is quite prepared to presume the mother dead, and I have evidence sufficient to prove that assumption a certainty. So that now, you see, if I could only find—"
He hesitated, to scrutinise his companion's inscrutable face.
"I was a consummate fool, of course, ever to have come to Monte Carlo," he went off at a tangent. "Though I had a good enough reason for coming," he went on, defending himself to himself. "I didn't dare trust anyone in London. And I—I thought that I might find here—" He balked again.
"It was merely to pass the time that I first tried my luck at the tables—and look at me now! I haven't even money to pay my hotel bill. For want of a few thousand francs I must lose my chance of the fortune on which I've staked every penny I could scrape together and—and five years of my good time, and—" He started to one side as Slyne cut him short.
"I'm not going to waste five seconds ofmygood time," said Slyne with concentrated bitterness, "in telling you how many different sorts of a damned fool you are." His expensive cigar had gone out, unheeded. But his keen, close-set eyes were aglow. He was finding it extremely difficult to contain himself.