"_C'est a Monsieur_," said the croupier, indicating Lussigny.
"_Il y a une suite_," said Aristide, signifying, as was his right, that
he would retire from the bank with his winnings. "The face of that
gentleman does not please me."
There was a hush at the humming table. The Count grew dead white and
looked at his fingernails. Aristide superbly gathered up his notes and
gold, and tossing a couple of louis to the croupiers, left the table,
followed by all eyes. It was one of the thrilling moments of Aristide's
life. He had taken the stage, commanded the situation. He had publicly
offered the Comte de Lussigny the most deadly insult and the Comte de
Lussigny sat down beneath it like a lamb. He swaggered slowly through
the crowded room, twirling his moustache, and went into the cool of the
moonlit deserted garden beyond, where he waited gleefully. He had a
puckish knowledge of human nature. After a decent interval, and during
the absorbing interest of the newly constituted bank, the Comte de
Lussigny slipped unnoticed from the table and went in search of
Aristide. He found him smoking a large corona and lounging in one wicker
chair with his feet on another, beside a very large whisky and soda.
"Ah, it's you," said he without moving.
"Yes," said the Count furiously.
"I haven't yet had the pleasure of kicking your friends over Mont
Revard," said Aristide.
"Look here, _mon petit_, this has got to finish," cried the Count.
"_Parfaitement._ I should like nothing better than to finish. But let us
finish like well-bred people," said Aristide suavely. "We don't want the
whole Casino as witnesses. You'll find a chair over there. Bring it up."
He was enjoying himself immensely. The Count glared at him, turned and
banged a chair over by the side of the table.
"Why do you insult me like this?"
"Because," said Aristide, "I've talked by telephone this evening with my
good friend Monsieur Lepine, Prefect of Police of Paris."
"You lie," said the Count.
"_Vous verrez._ In the meantime, perhaps we might have a little
conversation. Will you have a whisky and soda? It is one of my English
habits."
"No," said the Count emphatically.
"You permit me then?" He drank a great draught. "You are wrong. It helps
to cool one's temper. _Eh bien_, let us talk."
He talked. He put before the Count the situation of the beautiful Miss
Errington. He conducted the scene like the friend of the family whose
astuteness he had admired as a boy in the melodramas that found their
way to Marseilles.
"Look," said he, at last, having vainly offered from one hundred to
eight hundred pounds for poor Betty Errington's compromising letters.
"Look----" He drew the cheque from his note-case. "Here are twenty-five
thousand francs. The signature is that of the charming Madame Errington
herself. The letters, and a little signed word, just a little word.
'Mademoiselle, I am a _chevalier d'industrie_. I have a wife and five
children. I am not worthy of you. I give you back your promise.' Just
that. And twenty-five thousand francs, _mon ami_."
"Never in life!" exclaimed the Count rising. "You continue to insult
me."
Aristide for the first time abandoned his lazy and insolent attitude and
jumped to his feet.
"And I'll continue to insult you, _canaille_ that you are, all through
that room," he cried, with a swift-flung gesture towards the brilliant
doorway. "You are dealing with Aristide Pujol. Will you never
understand? The letters and a confession for twenty-five thousand
francs."
"Never in life," said the Count, and he moved swiftly away.
Aristide caught him by the collar as he stood on the covered terrace, a
foot or two from the threshold of the gaming-room.
"I swear to you, I'll make a scandal that you won't survive."
The Count stopped and pushed Aristide's hand away.
"I admit nothing," said he. "But you are a gambler and so am I. I will
play you for those documents against twenty-five thousand francs."
"Eh?" said Aristide, staggered for the moment.
The Comte de Lussigny repeated his proposition.
"_Bon_," said Aristide. "_Tres bon. C'est entendu. C'est fait._"
If Beelzebub had arisen and offered to play beggar-my-neighbour for his
soul, Aristide would have agreed; especially after the large whisky and
soda and the Mumm Cordon Rouge and the Napoleon brandy which Eugene
Miller had insisted on his drinking at dinner.
"I have a large room at the hotel," said he.
"I will join you," said the Count. "Monsieur," he took off his hat very
politely. "Go first. I will be there in three minutes."
Aristide trod on air during the two minutes' walk to the Hotel de
l'Europe. At the bureau he ordered a couple of packs of cards and a
supply of drinks and went to his palatial room on the ground floor. In a
few moments the Comte de Lussigny appeared. Aristide offered him a two
francs corona which was ceremoniously accepted. Then he tore the
wrapping off one of the packs of cards and shuffled.
"Monsieur," said he, still shuffling. "I should like to deal two hands
at ecarte. It signifies nothing. It is an experiment. Will you cut?"
"_Volontiers_," said the Count.
Aristide took up the pack, dealt three cards to the Count, three cards
to himself, two cards to the Count, two to himself and turned up the
King of Hearts as the eleventh card.
"Monsieur," said he, "expose your hand and I will expose mine."
Both men threw their hands face uppermost on the table. Aristide's was
full of trumps, the Count's of valueless cards.
He looked at his adversary with his roguish, triumphant smile. The Count
looked at him darkly.
"The ordinary card player does not know how to deal like that," he said
with sinister significance.
"But I am not ordinary in anything, my dear sir," laughed Aristide, in
his large boastfulness. "If I were, do you think I would have agreed to
your absurd proposal? _Voyons_, I only wanted to show you that in
dealing cards I am your equal. Now, the letters----" The Count threw a
small packet on the table. "You will permit me? I do not wish to read
them. I verify only. Good," said he. "And the confession?"
"What you like," said the Count, coldly. Aristide scribbled a few lines
that would have been devastating to the character of a Hyrcanean tiger
and handed the paper and fountain pen to the Count.
"Will you sign?"
The Count glanced at the words and signed.
"_Voila_," said Aristide, laying Mrs. Errington's cheque beside the
documents. "Now let us play. The best of three games?"
"Good," said the Count. "But you will excuse me, monsieur, if I claim to
play for ready money. The cheque will take five days to negotiate and if
I lose, I shall evidently have to leave Aix to-morrow morning."
"That's reasonable," said Aristide.
He drew out his fat note-case and counted twenty-five one-thousand-franc
notes on to the table. And then began the most exciting game of cards he
had ever played. In the first place he was playing with another person's
money for a fantastic stake, a girl's honour and happiness. Secondly he
was pitted against a master of ecarte. And thirdly he knew that his
adversary would cheat if he could and that his adversary suspected him
of fraudulent designs. So as they played, each man craned his head
forward and looked at the other man's fingers with fierce intensity.
Aristide lost the first game. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. In
the second game, he won the vole in one hand. The third and final game
began. They played slowly, carefully, with keen quick eyes. Their
breathing came hard. The Count's lips parted beneath his uptwisted
moustache showed his teeth like a cat's. Aristide lost sense of all
outer things in the thrill of the encounter. They snarled the
stereotyped phrases necessary for the conduct of the game. At last the
points stood at four for Aristide and three for his adversary. It was
Aristide's deal. Before turning up the eleventh card he paused for the
fraction of a second. If it was the King, he had won. He flicked it
neatly face upward. It was not the King.
_"J'en donne."_
_"Non. Le roi."_
The Count played and marked the King. Aristide had no trumps. The game
was lost.
He sat back white, while the Count smiling gathered up the bank-notes.
"And now, Monsieur Pujol," said he impudently, "I am willing to sell
you this rubbish for the cheque."
Aristide jumped to his feet. "Never!" he cried. Madness seized him.
Regardless of the fact that he had nothing like another thousand pounds
left wherewith to repay Mrs. Errington if he lost, he shouted: "I will
play again for it. Not ecarte. One cut of the cards. Ace lowest."
"All right," said the Count.
"Begin, you."
Aristide watched his hand like cat, as he cut. He cut an eight. Aristide
gave a little gasp of joy and cut quickly. He held up a Knave and
laughed aloud. Then he stopped short as he saw the Count about to pounce
on the documents and the cheque. He made a swift movement and grabbed
them first, the other man's hand on his.
"_Canaille!_"
He dashed his free hand into the adventurer's face. The man staggered
back. Aristide pocketed the precious papers. The Count scowled at him
for an undecided second, and then bolted from the room.
"Whew!" said Aristide, sinking into his chair and wiping his face. "That
was a narrow escape."
He looked at his watch. It was only ten o'clock. It had seemed as if his
game with Lussigny had lasted for hours. He could not go to bed and
stood confronted with anti-climax. After a while he went in search of
Eugene Miller and having found him in solitary meditation on stained
glass windows in the dim-lit grounds of the Villa, sat down by his side
and for the rest of the evening poured his peculiar knowledge of Europe
into the listening ear of the young man from Atlanta.
On the following morning, as soon as he was dressed, he learned from the
Concierge that the Comte de Lussigny had left for Paris by the early
train.
"Good," said Aristide.
A little later Mrs. Errington met him in the lounge and accompanied him
to the lawn where they had sat the day before.
"I have no words to thank you, Monsieur Pujol," she said with tears in
her eyes. "I have heard how you shamed him at the tables. It was brave
of you."
"It was nothing." He shrugged his shoulders as if he were in the habit
of doing deeds like that every day of his life. "And your exquisite
daughter, Madame?"
"Poor Betty! She is prostrate. She says she will never hold up her head
again. Her heart is broken."
"It is young and will be mended," said Aristide.
She smiled sadly. "It will be a question of time. But she is grateful to
you, Monsieur Pujol. She realizes from what a terrible fate you have
saved her." She sighed. There was a brief silence.
"After this," she continued, "a further stay in Aix would be too
painful. We have decided to take the Savoy express this evening and get
back to our quiet home in Somerset."
"Ah, madame," said Aristide earnestly. "And shall I not have the
pleasure of seeing the charming Miss Betty again?"
"You will come and stay with us in September. Let me see? The fifteenth.
Why not fix a date? You have my address? No? Will you write it down?"
she dictated: "Wrotesly Manor, Burnholme, Somerset. There I'll try to
show you how grateful I am."
She extended her hand. He bowed over it and kissed it in his French way
and departed a very happy man.
The Erringtons left that evening. Aristide waylaid them as they were
entering the hotel omnibus, with a preposterous bouquet of flowers which
he presented to Betty, whose pretty face was hidden by a motor-veil. He
bowed, laid his hand on his heart and said: "_Adieu, mademoiselle._"
"No," she said in a low voice, but most graciously, "_Au revoir_,
Monsieur Pujol."
For the next few days Aix seemed to be tame and colourless. In an
inexplicable fashion, too, it had become unprofitable. Aristide no
longer knew that he was going to win; and he did not win. He lost
considerably. So much so that on the morning when he was to draw the
cash for the cheque, at the Credit Lyonnais, he had only fifty pounds
and some odd silver left. Aristide looking at the remainder rather
ruefully made a great resolution. He would gamble no more. Already he
was richer than he had ever been in his life. He would leave Aix.
_Tiens!_ why should he not go to his good friends the Bocardons at
Nimes, bringing with him a gold chain for Bocardon and a pair of
ear-rings for the adorable Zette? There he would look about him. He
would use the thousand pounds as a stepping-stone to legitimate fortune.
Then he would visit the Erringtons in England, and if the beautiful Miss
Betty smiled on him--why, after all, _sacrebleu_ he was an honest man,
without a feather on his conscience.
So, jauntily swinging his cane, he marched into the office of the Credit
Lyonnais, went into the inner room and explained his business.
"Ah, your cheque, monsieur, that we were to collect. I am sorry. It has
come back from the London bankers."
"How come back?"
"It has not been honoured. See, monsieur. 'Not known. No account.'" The
cashier pointed to the grim words across the cheque.
"_Comprends pas_," faltered Aristide.
"It means that the person who gave you the cheque has no account at this
bank."
Aristide took the cheque and looked at it in a dazed way.
"Then I do not get my twenty-five thousand francs?"
"Evidently not," said the cashier.
Aristide stood for a while stunned. What did it mean? His thousand
pounds could not be lost. It was impossible. There was some mistake. It
was an evil dream. With a heavy weight on the top of his head, he went
out of the Credit Lyonnais and mechanically crossed the little street
separating the Bank from the cafe on the Place Carnot. There he sat
stupidly and wondered. The waiter hovered in front of him. "_Monsieur
desire?_" Aristide waved him away absently. Yes, it was some mistake.
Mrs. Errington in her agitation must have used the wrong cheque book.
But even rich English people do not carry about with them a circulating
library assortment of cheque books. It was incomprehensible--and
meanwhile, his thousand pounds....
The little square blazed before him in the August sunshine. Opposite
flashed the white mass of the Etablissement des Bains. There was the old
Roman Arch of Titus, gray and venerable. There were the trees of the
gardens in riotous greenery. There on the right marking the hour of
eleven on its black face was the clock of the Comptoir National. It was
Aix; familiar Aix; not a land of dreams. And there coming rapidly across
from the Comptoir National was the well knit figure of the young man
from Atlanta.
"_Nom de Dieu_," murmured Aristide. "_Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!_"
Eugene Miller, in a fine frenzy, threw himself into a chair beside
Aristide.
"See here. Can you understand this?"
He thrust into his hand a pink strip of paper. It was a cheque for a
hundred pounds, made payable to Eugene Miller, Esquire, signed by Mary
Errington, and marked "Not known. No account."
"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" cried Aristide. "How did you get this?"
"How did I get it? I cashed it for her--the day she went away. She said
urgent affairs summoned her from Aix--no time to wire for funds--wanted
to pay her hotel bill--and she gave me the address of her old English
home in Somerset and invited me to come there in September. Fifteenth of
September. Said that you were coming. And now I've got a bum cheque. I
guess I can't wander about this country alone. I need blinkers and
harness and a man with a whip."
He went on indignantly. Aristide composed his face into an expression of
parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening
upheaval. He saw it all, the whole mocking drama....
He, Aristide Pujol, was the most sweetly, the most completely swindled
man in France.
The Comte de Lussigny, the mild Mrs. Errington and the beautiful Betty
were in league together and had exquisitely plotted. They had conspired,
as soon as he had accused the Count of cheating. The rascal must have
gone straight to them from Miller's room. No wonder that Lussigny, when
insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in
the garden. No wonder he had accepted the accusation of adventurer. No
wonder he had refused to play for the cheque which he knew to be
valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell
the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide
found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the
use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying
for success on his manipulation of the cards. Finally he had desired to
get hold of a dangerous cheque. In that he had been foiled. But the trio
has got away with his thousand pounds, his wonderful thousand pounds. He
reflected, still keeping an attentive eye on young Eugene Miller and
interjecting a sympathetic word, that after he had paid his hotel bill,
he would be as poor on quitting Aix-les-Bains as he was when he had
entered it. _Sic transit_.... As it was in the beginning with Aristide
Pujol, is now and ever shall be....
"But I have my clothes--such clothes as I've never had in my life,"
thought Aristide. "And a diamond and sapphire tie-pin and a gold watch,
and all sorts of other things. _Tron de l'air_, I'm still rich."
"Who would have thought she was like that?" said he. "And a hundred
pounds, too. A lot of money."
For nothing in the world would he have confessed himself a
fellow-victim.
"I don't care a cent for the hundred pounds," cried the young man. "Our
factory turns out seven hundred and sixty-seven million pairs of boots
per annum." (Aristide, not I, is responsible for the statistics.) "But I
have a feeling that in this hoary country I'm just a little toddling
child. And I hate it. I do, sir. I want a nurse to take me round."
Aristide flashed the lightning of his wit upon the young man from
Atlanta, Georgia.
"You do, my dear young friend. I'll be your nurse, at a weekly
salary--say a hundred francs--it doesn't matter. We will not quarrel."
Eugene Miller was startled. "Yes," said Aristide, with a convincing
flourish. "I'll clear robbers and sirens and harpies from your path.
I'll show you things in Europe--from Tromsoe to Cap Spartivento that you
never dreamed of. I'll lead you to every stained glass window in the
world. I know them all."
"I particularly want to see those in the church of St. Sebald in
Nuremberg."
"I know them like my pocket," said Aristide. "I will take you there. We
start to-day."
"But, Mr. Pujol," said the somewhat bewildered Georgian. "I thought you
were a man of fortune."
"I am more than a man. I am a soldier. I am a soldier of Fortune. The
fickle goddess has for the moment deserted me. But I am loyal. I have
for all worldly goods, two hundred and fifty dollars, with which I shall
honorably pay my hotel bill. I say I am a soldier of Fortune. But," he
slapped his chest, "I am the only honorable one on the Continent of
Europe."
The young man fixed upon him the hard blue eyes, not of the enthusiast
for stained glass windows, but of the senior partner in the boot factory
of Atlanta, Georgia.
"I believe you," said he. "It's a deal. Shake."
"And now," said Aristide, after having shaken hands, "come and lunch
with me at Nikola's for the last time."
He rose, stretched out both arms in a wide gesture and smiled with his
irresistible Ancient Mariner's eyes at the young man.
"We lunch. We eat ambrosia. Then we go out together and see the
wonderful world through the glass-blood of saints and martyrs and
apostles and the good Father Abraham and Louis Quatorze. _Viens, mon
cher ami._ It is the dream of my life."
Practically penniless and absolutely disillusioned, the amazing man was
radiantly happy.