The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
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“I didn’t recognise anyone. You were mistaken. He perhaps nodded to somebody else.”
This reply of hers increased the mystery. Had she deceived me when she told me that she was the daughter of old Dumont the jeweller? If so, then I had sent Bindo back to London on a wild goose-chase.
We passed back into the roulette rooms, and for quite a long time she stood at the first table at the left of the entrance, watching the game intently.
A man I knew passed, and I crossed to chat with him. In ten minutes or so I returned to her side, and as I did so she bent and took from the end of the croupier’s rake three one-thousand-franc notes, while all eyes at the table were fixed upon her.
One of the notes she tossed upon the “rouge,” and the other two she crushed into her pocket.
“What!” I gasped, “are you playing? And with such stakes?”
“Why not?” she laughed, perfectly cool, and watching the ball, which had already begun to spin.
With a final click it fell into one of the red squares, and two notes were handed to her.
The one she had won she passed across to the “noir,” and there won again, and again a second time, until people at the table began to follow her lead. Gamblers are always superstitious when they see a young girl playing. It is amazing and curious how often youth will win where middle-age will lose.
Five times in succession she played upon the colours with a thousand francs each time, and won on each occasion.
I tried to remonstrate, and urged her to leave with her winnings; but her cheeks were flushed, and she was now excited. One of the notes she exchanged with the croupier for nine hundreds, and five louis. The latter she distributed à cheval, with one en plein on the number eighteen.
It won. She left her stake on the table, and again the same number turned up. Three louis placed on zero she lost, and again on the middle dozen.
But she won with two louis on thirty-six. Then what she did showed me that, if a novice at a convent, she was, at any rate, no novice at roulette, for she shifted her stake to the “first four”—a favourite habit of gamblers—and won again.
Then, growing suddenly calm again, she exchanged her gold for notes, and crushing the bundle into her pocket, turned with me from the table.
I was amazed. I could not make her out in the least. Had all her ingenuousness been assumed? If it had, then I had been sadly taken in over her.
Together we went out, crossed the Place, and sat on the terrace of the Café de Paris, where we took tea—with orange-flower water, of course. While there she took out her money and counted it—eleven thousand two hundred francs, or in English money the respectable sum of four hundred and forty-eight pounds.
“What luck you’ve had, mademoiselle!” I exclaimed.
“Yes; I only had two hundred francs to commence, so I won exactly eleven thousand.”
“Then take my advice, and don’t play again as long as you are in this place, for you’re sure to lose it. Go away a winner. I once won five hundred francs, and made a vow never to play again. That’s a year ago, and I have never staked a single piece since. The game over there, mademoiselle, is a fool’s game,” I added, pointing to the façade of the Casino opposite.
“I know,” she answered; “I don’t think I shall risk anything more. I wonder what Madame will say!”
“Well, she can only congratulate you and tell you not to risk anything further.”
“Isn’t she quaint?” she asked. “And yet she’s such a dear old thing—although so very old-fashioned.”
I was extremely anxious to get to the bottom of her acquaintance with that veritable prince of adventurers, Regnier, yet I dare not broach the subject, lest I should arouse suspicion. Who was that ugly old woman at the Bristol? I wondered. She was Madame Vernet, it was true, but what relation they were to each other Pierrette never informed me.
At half-past six, after I had taken her along the Galerie to look at the shops, and through the Casino gardens to see the pigeon-shooting, I ran her back to Beaulieu on the car, promising to return for her in the morning at eleven.
Madame seemed a strange chaperon, for she never signified her intention of coming also.
About ten o’clock that night, when in dinner-jacket and black tie I re-entered the Rooms again, I encountered Regnier. He was on his way out, and I followed him.
In the shadow of the trees in the Place I overtook him and spoke.
“Hulloa, Ewart!” he exclaimed, “I saw you this afternoon. Is Bindo here?”
“He’s been, but has returned to London on business.”
“Coming back, I suppose?” he asked. “I haven’t seen anything of any of you of late. All safe, I hope?”
“Up to now, yes,” I laughed. “We’ve been in England a good deal recently. But what I wanted to know was this: You saw me with a little French girl this afternoon. Who is she?”
“Pierrette.”
“Yes, I know her name, but who is she?”
“Oh, a little friend of mine—a very charming little friend.”
And that was all he would tell me, even though I pressed him to let me into the secret.
V
WHAT THE REVELLERS REVEALED
After luncheon on the following day I called at Beaulieu and picked up both ladies, who expressed a wish for a run along the coast as far as San Remo.
Therefore I took them across the frontier at Ventimiglia into Italy. We had tea at the Savoy at San Remo, and ran home in the glorious sundown.
Like all other old ladies who have never ridden in a car, she was fidgety about her bonnet, and clung on to it, much to Pierrette’s amusement. Nevertheless, Madame seemed to enjoy her ride, for just as we slipped down the hill into Beaulieu she suggested that we should go on to Nice and there dine.
“Oh yes!” cried Pierrette, with delight. “That will be lovely. I’ll pay for a nice dinner out of my winnings of yesterday. I’ve heard that the London House is the place to dine.”
“You could not do better, mademoiselle,” I said, turning back to her, my eyes still on the road, rendered dangerous by the electric trams and great traffic of cars in both directions. It struck me as curious that I, the Count’s chauffeur, should be treated as one of themselves. I wondered, indeed, if they really intended to invite me to dinner.
But I was not disappointed, for having put the car into that garage opposite the well-known restaurant, Pierrette insisted that I should wash my hands and accompany them.
The ordering of the dinner she left in my hands, and we spent a very merry hour at table, even Madame of the yellow teeth brightening up under the influence of a glass of champagne, though Pierrette only drank Evian.
The Riviera was in Carnival. You who know Nice, know what that means—plenty of fun and frolic in the streets, on the Jetée Promenade, and in the Casino Municipal. Therefore, after dinner, Pierrette decided to walk out upon the pier, or jetée, as it is called, and watch the milk-and-water gambling for francs that is permitted there.
The night was glorious, with a full moon shining upon the calm sea, while the myriad coloured lamps everywhere rendered the scene enchanting. A smart, well-dressed crowd were promenading to and fro, enjoying the magnificent balmy night, and as we walked towards the big Casino at the end of the pier a man in a pierrot’s dress of pale-green and mauve silk, and apparently half intoxicated, for his mauve felt hat was at the back of his head, came reeling in our direction. A Parisian and a boulevardier evidently, for he was singing gaily to himself that song of Aristide Bruant’s, “La Noire,” the well-known song of the 113th Regiment of the Line—
“La