"Oh, yes, that's right enough," Lord Logan said, when we questioned him.
"I saw her the night before I left. She was playing
trente-et-quarante--and winning a bit, too, by Gad!"
He was an ordinary type of the modern young peer--well-set-up,
unemotional, faultlessly groomed. He produced a gold cigarette case as
he spoke, and held it out to me. I noticed that the cigarettes it
contained bore his coat of arms.
"These cigarettes are not likely to be stolen from you," I said lightly,
indicating the coat of arms.
He smiled.
"You are right. I was the first to start the fashion--get 'em from
Cairo every week--and now everybody's doin' it, haw, haw! I've got my
cartridges done the same way. At some places where one shoots the
beater fellers rob one right and left--the devils. I said to one of my
hosts the other day, I said: `Your cartridge carriers are a lot of bally
rogues.' `What do you mean?' he asked, bristlin' up like a well-bred
bull-dog. `Well,' I said, `you make 'em all turn out their pockets, and
you'll see,' I said. And he did!"
"And what was in them?"
"In them? Damme, what wasn't in them? My dear feller, every beater who
had carried cartridges had a dozen or two cartridges in his pockets
then--it's a fact. And we'd done shootin', and the beaters were goin'
home, so they couldn't pretend they were just carryin' the bally
cartridges in their pockets to have 'em handy. But there wasn't a
cartridge of mine missing among the lot. They knew only too well they
wouldn't be able to sell to the local ironmonger cartridges with a coat
of arms on 'em--eh what? And that's why I now have my cigarettes
tattooed in the same way. I believe my servants used to rob them by the
hundred. They don't now, except perhaps a handful to smoke themselves,
and of course that's only natural. What was it you were askin' me just
now? Ah, yes, about Vera Thorold. She seems to be a flyer."
"Did you speak to her?"
"Oh, yes, I talked to her right enough. She did look well. Simply
lovely. White cloth frock, you know. She's all alone at Monte, stayin'
at the _Anglais_."
"Did she say how long she'd be there?"
"No. I didn't ask her. She was winnin' the night I saw her. I never
saw such devil's luck--never. I lost over a thousand on the week, so I
thought it time to pay my hotel bill--what?"
The three of us made the tour of Tattersall's together, admiring,
criticising, fault-finding. Among Thorold's horses was the mare I had
ridden on that last day I had been at Houghton. What a long time ago
that seemed! I felt tempted to make a bid for her next day, she had
carried me so well.
Then I thought again of my well-beloved. What an extraordinary girl she
was! Ah! how I loved her. Why had she not told me that she meant to go
to the Riviera? Why--
An idea flashed in upon me. I was getting bored with the mad hurry of
London. This would be a good excuse for running out to the Cote d'Azur.
Indeed, my chief reason for remaining in town had been that I believed
Vera to be there still, either in hiding for some reason of her own, or,
what I had thought far more likely, forced against her will by that
blackguard Paulton to remain in concealment and keep me in ignorance of
her whereabouts.
Instead of that she was "on her own"--how I hate that slang phrase--at
Monte Carlo `winnin' a fortune,' as Lord Logan had put it.
"A strange world, my masters!" Never were truer words spoken. The
longer I live the more I realise its strangeness. When I arrived at
Monte Carlo by the day rapide from Paris, rain was pelting down in
torrents, and a fierce storm was raging. Wind shrieked along the
streets. Out at sea, lightning flashed in the bay, while the thunder
rattled like artillery fire. I was glad to find myself in the warm,
brilliantly-lit _Hotel de Paris_, and when, after dinner, I strolled
into the fumoir, it was so crowded that I had difficulty in finding any
place to sit.
Among the group of men close to whom I presently found myself,
conversation had turned upon the pigeon-shooting at Monte. From their
remarks I gathered that an important event had been decided that day,
the Prix de--I forget what, but the prize appeared to be a much coveted
cup, with a considerable sum in added money. This had been won, it
seemed, by a Belgian Count, who had killed twenty-seven pigeons without
a miss.
"_Mais c'est epatant--vraiment epatant_!" declared an excitable little
Frenchman, as he pulled forward his chair. He went on to explain, with
great volubility and much gesticulation, the difficulties that some of
the shots had presented. This Frenchman, I gathered further, had backed
the Belgian Count every time from his first shot to the last, and had in
consequence won a lot of money.
Time was when trap-shooting appealed to me. I have shot pigeons at
Monte, at Ostend, and here in England at Hurlingham at the Gun Club,
also at Hendon, but it has always struck me as being a cold-blooded form
of amusement--its warmest supporters can hardly call it sport. Not that
there is more cruelty connected with pigeon-shooting than with
game-shooting, as some would have us believe. Indeed, I have always
contended that trap-shooting is less cruel than game-shooting, for
pigeon-shooters are one and all first-rate shots--if they were not they
would lose heavily and soon give up the game--with the result that the
greater proportion of the birds shot at are killed outright, a thing
that cannot be said of game, where one's tailor sometimes takes out a
licence.
But why is it, I wonder, that pigeon-shooters, considered collectively,
are such dreadful-looking men? I have often wondered, and I am by no
means the only man who has noticed this feature of pigeon-shooters.
Glancing carelessly at the crowd seated near me now, it struck me
forcibly that I had rarely set eyes on such a dissipated-looking set.
Men of middle age, most of them, obese, fat-faced, with puffy eyes and
sagging skin, they looked capable of any villainy, and might well have
been addicted to every known vice.
One man in particular arrested my attention. His age was difficult to
place. Lying, rather than sitting, back in a softly-padded leather
chair, with crossed legs, and with one arm hanging loosely over the arm
of the chair, he talked in a singularly ugly voice between his yellow
teeth, which clenched a long cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.
"Another twist, and he would have cleared the boundary," he was saying
to his companion, a good-looking English lad of five-or-six-and-twenty.
"The second barrel cut him to pieces; it's extraordinary what a lot of
shot a blue-rock can carry away. How did you come out on the day?"
"Badly--shocking," answered the young man. "I backed the guns to start
with, and you know how badly the whole lot of you shot. Then I started
backing the bird, and you began to kill every time. My luck was out
to-day--dead out."