SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED
Franz Lindner! And how was Franz Lindner engaged during these stormy
days? He was working out by degrees his own scheme in life for making
himself rich, and so, as he thought, acceptable to Linnet.
With great difficulty, partly by saving and hoarding with Tyrolese
frugality, partly by rare good luck in following a fortunate tip for
last autumn’s Cesarewitch, Franz had scraped together at last the five
hundred pounds which he required for working his “system” at Monte
Carlo. The royal road to wealth now lay open before him. So he started
blithely from Victoria one bright spring morning, bound southward
straight through by the _rapide_ to Nice, with his heart on fire, and
his capital in good Bank of England notes in his pocket. He meant to
stop at Nice, not at Monte Carlo itself, because he was advised that
living was cheaper in the larger town; and Franz, being a Tyroler,
reflected with prudence that even when one’s going to win twenty
thousand pounds, it’s best to be careful in the matter of expenditure
till one’s sure one’s got them.
At Calais, he found a place in the through carriage for the Riviera.
With great presence of mind, indeed, he secured a corner seat by pushing
in hastily past a fumbling old lady with an invalid daughter. The
opposite corner was already occupied by a handsome man—tall, big-built,
rather dark, with brilliant black eyes, and abundant curly hair, of
somewhat southern aspect. As Franz entered the carriage, the stranger
scanned him, casually, with an observant glance. He had the air of a
gentleman this stranger, but he was affable for all that; he entered
into conversation very readily with Franz, first in English, then more
fully in German, which latter tongue he spoke quite fluently. Part of
his education had been acquired at Heidelberg, he said in explanation,
before he went to Oxford; ’twas there he had picked up his perfect
mastery of German idiom. As a matter of fact, he had picked it up rather
by mixing with Jewish shop-boys from Frankfort in Denver City, Colorado;
for the stranger was no other than Mr Joaquin Holmes, the
Psycho-physical Entertainer, flying southward to restore his fallen
fortunes at Monte Carlo.
Fate had used her Seer rather badly of late. His failure to sell
Andreas’s letter to Linnet was the last straw that broke the camel’s
back of Mr Holmes’s probity. Thought-reading had by this time gone quite
out of fashion; Theosophy and occult science were now all in the
ascendant. There were no more dollars to be made any longer out of odic
force; so Mr Holmes was compelled by adverse circumstances, very much
against his will, to take refuge at last in his alternative and less
reputable profession of card-sharper. With that end in view, he was now
on his way to the Capital of Chance in the Principality of Monaco. Where
gamblers most do congregate is naturally the place for a dexterous
manipulator of the pack to make his fortune. Mr Holmes was somewhat
changed in minor detail as to his outer man, in order to avoid too
general recognition. His hair was cut shorter; his beard was cut
sharper; his moustache—a hard wrench—was altogether shaved off; and
sundry alterations in his mode of dress, especially the addition of a
most unnecessary _pince-nez_, had transformed him, in part, from the
aspect of a keen and piercing Transatlantic thought-reader to that of a
guileless English mercantile gentleman. But his vivid black eyes were
still sharp and eager and shifty as ever; his denuded mouth, now
uncovered at the corners, showed still more of a cynical smile than
before; and his complete expression was one of mingled astuteness and
deferential benevolence—the former, native to his face, the latter, by
long use, diligently trained and cultivated.
Before they reached Paris, Seer and singer had put themselves on
excellent terms with one another. They had even exchanged names in a
friendly way, the Seer giving his, for obvious reasons, as plain Mr
Holmes, without the distinguishing Joaquin; it was safer so: there are
plenty of Holmeses scattered about through the world, and the name’s not
compromising; while, on the other hand, if any London acquaintance
chanced to come up and call him by it, such initial frankness avoided
complications. Franz Lindner, more cautious and less wise in his way,
gave his name unblushingly as Karl von Forstemann, a Vienna proprietor,
out of pure foolish secretiveness. He had no reason for changing his
ordinary style and title, except that he wished to be taken at Monte
Carlo for an Austrian gentleman, not a music-hall minstrel. The Seer
smiled blandly at the transparent lie; Franz’s accent and manner no more
resembled those of a Viennese Junker than his staring tweed suit and
sky-blue tie resembled the costume of an English gentleman.
However, the prudent Seer reflected immediately to himself that this
sort was created for his especial benefit. Behold, a pigeon! He was even
more affable than usual on that very account to Herr Karl von
Forstemann. He offered him brandy out of his Russia-leather covered
flask; he invited him to share his anchovy sandwiches; he regretted
there was no smoking compartment on the through carriage for Mentone, or
he might have introduced his new friend to a very choice brand of
fragrant Havana. Going to Cannes? or San Remo? Ah, Nice! that was
capital. They’d travel together all night then, without change of
companions, for he himself was going on straight through to Monte Carlo.
At that charmed name, which the Seer pronounced with a keenly cautious
side-glance, Franz pricked up his ears. Monte Carlo! _ach, so?_ really?
Did he play, then? The cautious Seer smiled a deep and wary smile of
consummate self-restraint. Play? no, not he; the Casino was rubbish: he
went there for the scenery, the music, the attractions. Occasionally of
an evening, to be sure, he might just drop into the Rooms to observe
what was happening. If a run of luck came on any particular colour—or
number, or series, as the case might be—now and again he would back
it—once in a week or a blue moon—for pure amusement. But as to making
_money_ at it—bah, bah, what puerile nonsense! With odds on the
bank—one chance in thirty-six—no scientific player could regard it in
that light for one moment. As excitement—“I grant you,” yes, all very
well; one got one’s fun for one’s louis: but as speculation, investment,
trial for luck—if it came to that—why, everybody knew it was all pure
moonshine.
Franz listened with a smile, and looked preternaturally cunning. That
was all very well in its way, _he_ said, with a sphinx-like face—for
the general public; but he had a System.
The Seer’s eye was grave; the Seer’s face was solemn; only about the
corners of his imperturbable mouth could a faint curl have betrayed his
inner feelings to the keenest observer. A System! oh, well, of course,
that was altogether different. No one knew what a clever and competent
mathematician might do with a System. Though, mark you, mathematicians
had devised the tables, too; they had carefully arranged so that no
possible combination could avoid the extra chances which the bank
reserved to itself. However, experience—experience is the only solid
guide in these matters. Let him try his System, by all means; and _if_
it worked—with stress on that _if_—Mr Holmes would be glad for his own
part to adopt it. If it didn’t, he could show him a trick worth two of
that—a game where the players stood at even chances, with no rapacious
bank to earn a splendid dividend and pay royally for the maintenance of
a palatial establishment. And with that, he tucked himself up and
subsided into his corner.
All night through, on their way to Marseilles, they slept or dozed at
intervals—and then woke up once more to discuss by fits and starts that
enthralling subject of winning at Monte Carlo. The fumbling old lady and
her invalid daughter, propped upright in the middle seats, got no sleep
to speak of, with their perpetual chatter. Before morning, the two men
were excellent friends with one another. Franz liked Mr Holmes. He was a
jolly, outspoken, good-natured gentleman, very kindly and well-disposed,
and he recommended him to a good cheap hotel at Nice, lying handy to the
station, for a man who wanted to run over pretty often to Monte Carlo.
Franz went there as he was bid, and found it not amiss; ’twas pleasant,
after so long a stay in England, to discover himself once more amongst
compatriots, or next door—to talk in his native tongue with Swiss
porters, Swiss waiters, Swiss boots, and Swiss chambermaids. With the
great bare mountains rising abruptly in the rear, Nice almost seemed to
him like his beloved Fatherland. The strange longing for home which is
peculiar to mountaineers came over him with a rush at sight of their
lonely summits. _Ach, Gott_,—if it weren’t that he had his fortune to
make at Monte Carlo, he’d have gone on, then and there, straight through
to St Valentin!
That first evening, he rested after the fatigues of the journey. He
merely strolled about on the Promenade des Anglais, in the cool of the
evening, and lounged along the Quays or through the Public Garden. It
was a fine town, Nice, and Franz was very much pleased with it. He had
given his name at the hotel as Herr Karl von Forstemann, a gentleman
from Vienna; and as he sauntered along now through that gay little city,
with five hundred pounds sterling in his trousers pocket, and twenty
thousand awaiting him in the bank at Monte Carlo, he felt for the moment
like the person he called himself. His strut was still prouder and more
jaunty than ever; he stared at the pretty girls under the palm-trees of
the parade as if they all belonged to him; he twirled his short cane by
the arcades of the Place Masséna with a millionaire swagger. After all,
it’s easy as dirt to win thousands at roulette—if only you have a
System. Strange how people will toil, and moil, and slave, and save, at
a desk in London, when, here by this basking tideless Southern sea, this
Tom Tiddler’s ground of fortune, they might pick up coin at will just as
one picks up pebbles!
Franz broke a bottle of champagne at ten o’clock, discounting his
success, with two awfully jolly fellows he’d come across in the
smoking-room. Nice seemed to be just cram-full of awfully jolly fellows!
Then he went to bed early, and slept the sleep of the just till morning.
After a cup of fragrant coffee and a fresh French roll—so unlike that
bad bread man gets in London—he lounged over to the station, and took a
first-class return to Monte Carlo. Oh, that exquisite journey! How
bright it was, how sweet, how fairy-fair, how beautiful! Like all
Tyrolese, Franz Lindner was by no means insensible to the charms of
Nature; and that man must be blind and seared and dull indeed who
wouldn’t gaze with hushed delight, the first time he saw them, on those
endless blue bays, those craggy cliffs, those towering heights, those
jagged precipices. Villefranche, with its two promontories and its
quaint white town; the Cap Ferrat and its twin lighthouses; the
peninsula of St Jean, with its indented outline; the great bluffs of
Beaulieu; the tunnelled headlands of the coast; green water breaking
white on tumbled masses in the sea; Eza, perched high on its pinnacle of
rearing rock; the bastions of Monaco, rising sheer like some basking
whale from the purple waves beneath; the hanging gardens of La
Condamine, the bare mountains in the background: Franz drank them all in
with delight and enthusiasm. But all only sharpened his zest for the
game he had in view; what an enchanted tract of coast it was, to be
sure, this land that led him up to the Palace of Luck, where he was to
woo and win his twenty thousand pounds sterling!
He wouldn’t leave off till he had won it, every penny; on that he was
determined. None of your beggarly ten or fifteen thousands for him!
Twenty thousand pounds down was the goal he set before him. After
that—well, who knows? He might perhaps stop . . . or—why this
moderation?—he might perhaps go on, if he chose, and double it.
In such heroic mood, like a winner already, Franz mounted the broad
steps of the great white Casino. Its magnificence for a moment abashed
and daunted him. He had never yet entered so splendid a building; never
trod so fine a room as that gorgeous atrium. However, he reflected next
instant that he came there that day armed with the passport which makes
a man welcome wherever he may go the wide world over—the talismanic
passport of money in his pocket. Regaining his usual swagger as he
mounted the steps, he followed the crowd into the office where cards of
admission were issued, and gave his name boldly once more, in a very
firm voice, as Herr von Forstemann of Vienna. Then, provided with the
necessary pasteboard which ensures admission to the rooms, he still
followed the stream into the vast, garish hall which contains the gaming
tables. Its size and its gorgeousness fairly took the man’s breath away.
Though the hour was still early, as Franz now reckoned time in his
cosmopolitanised avatar, he was surprised to find so immense a crowd of
players gathered in deep rows round table after table, opening into long
perspective of saloon after saloon in the farther distance. He drew up
to the first roulette-board, and watched the play carefully for several
minutes. Though he had studied the subject beforehand with books and
diagrams, and had made sure, as he thought, of the truth of his System
by frequent imaginary trials, it interested him immensely to see at last
in real life, and with tangible actors, the scene he had so long
contemplated in his feverish day-dreams.
The result was in some ways distinctly disappointing. He hadn’t allowed
to himself for so much bustle, so much noise, so many other players. In
his mental picture, he had seen his own money only; he had staked and
won, staked and lost, staked and won again incessantly, while croupiers
and bank existed, as it were, for his sole use and benefit. But here in
concrete reality, many complicating circumstances arose to distract him.
Other people crowded round, row after row in serried order, to put on
their own money without regard to his presence; and they put it all on
in so many incomprehensible and ridiculous ways—backing dozens, or
fours, or pairs, or columns, according to _their_ Systems, which he had
never thought of—that Franz for a stray minute or two felt thoroughly
bewildered. He almost lost his head. The sweet simplicity of the little
game he had played by himself on paper, against a bank which took no
heed of any stake but his, now vanished utterly; in its place came
chaos—a complex and distracting phantasmagoria of men and women
flinging down gold pieces at cross-purposes on numbers and colours;
sticking about their louis hap-hazard in reckless confusion on first or
last dozens; raking in and grabbing up, with eager hands, in hot haste;
till Franz’s brain began to reel, and he wondered to himself, amid so
many rolling coins, how each could tell at each turn what had happened
to his own money. In idea, he had confined himself to the System alone;
in practice, he found all the rest of the world engaged in playing ten
different games at once—_rouge-et-noir_, _passe-et-manque_,
_pair-et-impair_, and the rest of it—with distracting rapidity, at a
single table.
For a minute or two, he watched, with cat-like eyes, before venturing to
risk one of his hard-saved louis. But presently the sequence of numbers
and colours on the board reached a point which appeared to him specially
favourable for his System. Trembling greatly within, but swaggering
outwardly still, Franz leaned over between two stout players who sat
close by in front of him, and, edging himself sideways, passed through
the jostling crowd, till he had deposited twenty francs on _rouge_, with
a beating heart. For a minute he waited. Other people put their stakes
unpleasantly close to his; coins rolled in casually, here and there, and
were fixed by the croupier with his stick as voices behind directed. But
Franz kept his eyes fixed fast on his own good louis. Whr’r’r, rang the
roulette; “Rien ne va plus!” cried the croupier. For a second or two, as
the thing spun, Franz felt his heart come up in his mouth with anxiety.
The ball jumped out; his quick eyes couldn’t follow it. Instinctively,
he kept them fixed on his louis still. “Dix-sept gagne; impair, rouge,
manque,” cried the croupier. A flush of triumph rose up all unbidden on
Franz’s face. The System was justified then! he had won a louis!
By his side, the croupier raked in whole heaps of gold and silver. Then
he began to pay out; here a beggarly five francs; there, ten broad
yellow pieces. At last he came to Franz, and flung a louis carelessly by
the side of the Tyroler’s stake. Franz picked it up with a sense of
ineffable triumph. A louis all at once! If he went on like this, he
would soon grow rich! Twenty francs for a turn of the wheel! it was
splendid, splendid!
He played again, and played on. Fortune favoured the beginner. They say
’tis a trick of hers. The siren lures you. Time and again, he staked and
won; lost a little; won it back again. He was five louis to the good
now—eight—six—four—eleven again. Then, for awhile, he went up
steadily—twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and so on to twenty. By
that time, he grew elated. Why, the System was sure a royal road to
riches. Lieber Gott, what fortune! He’d begun by thinking of
twenty-franc stakes alone; he doubled them now, putting down at each
time two napoleons together. Whr’r’r went the roulette afresh; black
won; the inexorable valet raked in his two louis. Eighteen to the good
now! never mind; try your luck again! Bravely he adventured another
forty francs, this time on _passe_—so the System would have it.
Twenty-two came out as the winning number! With joy and delight he saw
his stake doubled; twenty to the good once more! Hurrah! this was
splendid!
Stop now! The next _coup_ demanded (by the System) that he should back a
number—either twelve or twenty-four, as fancy dictated. With trembling
fingers he laid down two louis on twelve. Once more, fortune favoured
him. When he saw the croupier pay out seventy-two good gold coins on top
of his own piece, Franz was almost beside himself. He clutched them up
hurriedly, lest some grabber should snatch them, as often happens at the
tables. While he did so, he felt a friendly tap on his shoulder from
behind. He looked round suddenly. “So your System works well!” a cheery
voice exclaimed, congratulatory. Franz nodded and smiled; ’twas his
friend, Mr Holmes, that despiser of all Systems.
For the rest of that day, Mr Holmes hovered near, and kept an eye on
Franz quietly. From time to time, to be sure, he followed some loser
outside, and disappeared for half-an-hour in a mysterious way, after
which little interval he somehow always turned up smiling. But whenever
he came back it was to Franz’s side; and he reappeared each time with
the self-same question, “How much to the good now? been winning or
losing?” And each time Franz was able, on the whole, in spite of
fluctuations, to report progress;—seventy louis, ninety three, a
hundred and one, a hundred and twenty! People about began to mark
Franz’s play by now. ’Twas another Mr Wells, they said; one would do
wisely to follow him.
He played till evening. About seven o’clock, Holmes invited him to
dinner at the Hotel de Paris. Franz strolled off, well content; why
shouldn’t he dine in peace? A hundred and thirty-four louis to the good
was now the reckoning.
The affable stranger wished to stand champagne. But no Viennese
gentleman with a Von to his name could permit such a reversal of the
rules of politeness, when he was winning heavily. Franz ordered it
himself—Dry Monopole of the best brand—and drank the larger half of
it. After dinner, they hurried back to the tables once more. Franz soon
got a seat; he was playing high enough now for Monte Carlo to respect
him. For in the _salles de jeu_ you are respected in precise proportion
to your stakes. Mr Holmes, too, put down a quiet five-franc piece now
and again on colour. “Just like my luck!” he exclaimed, as black turned
up each time. “I’m the unluckiest dog at games of chance, I declare,
that ever was born. I never touch them, somehow, but I burn my fingers.
There’s a fate in it, I think!” And so indeed it seemed. He lost every
single silver piece he adventured.
But as for Franz, he won steadily. He had advanced his stake, now, with
his advancing fortunes, to five louis a turn! When he saw five louis go,
he hardly even noticed it. They came back again so soon—five, ten,
fifteen, twenty. Oh, oh, but this was royal sport indeed! Three hundred
louis one minute, then down again the next to two hundred and seventy,
and up once more with a bound to two-eighty-five, two-ninety, three
hundred. Coins became as counters to him: gold seemed to flow in and
flow out like water. It was five louis lost, five won, five lost again.
But as the rising tide first advances, then recedes, then once more
advances, so, in spite of occasional temporary reverses, the tide of
Franz’s fortune rose steadily, steadily. He played on till the croupiers
were clearing the tables for the night. When he left off at last,
perforce, at the final spin, he reckoned to the good three hundred and
twenty-seven bright French gold pieces.