EARLY DIFFICULTIES—I FAIL TO PERSUADE THE HONORABLE EDGAR
FANSHAWE, THE REVEREND PERCY BLYTH, AND MR. PARKER WHITE, M. P.,
TO JOIN OUR MONTE CARLO PARTY
LUCY declares I have written enough about her, and now had better get on
to the Monte Carlo part—who went with me, and why they went, and so on.
I dare say she’s right; for though we neither of us know anything
whatever about writing, she says she represents the average reader, and,
having been told (as well as I could do it) something about “The French
Horn” and my love-affair there, is, as an average reader, growing
anxious to learn how I got the party together for so apparently
hazardous, not to say hopeless, an enterprise.
I must just mention, however, that, after my sad interview with her in
Kensington Gardens, I at once wrote to Mr. Thatcher and told him exactly
what had occurred, informing him of my intention to come down at
Christmas and try and settle matters with his daughter. At the same time
I begged him to send me up the clothes and portmanteaus I had left
behind me at “The French Horn.” They arrived, accompanied by a scrawl
from Mr. Thatcher, urging me to be a man and bear up and all would come
right, and enclosing a rather larger bill than I fancied I owed, but
which I thought it politic to pay without protest of any kind.
Even the old lady, his mother, sent me a line, in a very upright fist,
kindly informing me “brighter days were in store.” A simple prophecy,
that long has ceased to interest me; since I have invariably had it from
the innumerable fortunetellers, by cards and tea-leaves and the crystal,
whom for years past I have rather foolishly been in the habit of
consulting, but never derived any real benefit from.
As for my great idea to sack Monte Carlo, it came to me one morning
(quite unexpectedly, as I have said) when I was lying in bed, trying to
summon up resolution to rise for another dull and irksome day. It was
still a long time off Christmas, and life was lying on me with extreme
heaviness; for, as I think I have explained, I am in the militia, and
when once my month’s training is over have nothing to do with myself
except live on my eight hundred a year and amuse myself as best I can;
and my idleness was rendered further indigestible at this period by the
unhappy state of my relations with dear Lucy, whom I could neither see
nor write to.
But the idea that I should get a small, resolute party together, and
raid the tables at Monte Carlo, brought a new interest into my life; and
after making a few quiet and judicious inquiries (for I had never been
there), I determined to set about the affair in earnest and see if I
could get any one to join me.
My first efforts in that direction, as is generally the case with
anything new and startling, were not at all successful; but the more
opposition and ridicule I met with, the more obstinate and determined I
became. As for the morality of the affair, that, as I have said, has
never troubled me from first to last. Does any one think of calling the
police immoral when they go and raid a silver gambling-hell in Soho? For
the life of me I have never been able to see the difference between us,
except that _in our case_ there was needed a greater nerve and address.
Now my sister, Mrs. Rivers, the wife of the publisher, lives in Medworth
Square, S. W., and, on considering her intimates, I made up my mind to
approach the Honorable Edgar Fanshawe first. He has a brother in the
Foreign Office, and relations scattered about everywhere in government
employ, so I decided he would be a good man to have with us in case the
affair proved a _fiasco_ and we all got into trouble, a chance that
naturally had to be provided for.
Fanshawe, I should explain, was at one time in the Guards, but now
writes the most dreadfully dull historical novels, which my
brother-in-law publishes, and no one that I have ever met reads. Every
autumn, sure as fate, among the firm’s list of new books you see
announced, _Something or Other, a Tale of the Young Pretender_; or,
_Something or Other Else, an Episode of the Reign of Terror_; with
quotations from the _Scots Herald_, “this enthralling story”; or, from
the _Dissenters’ Times_, “no more powerful and picturesque romance has
at present issued,” etc. Or _The Leeds Commercial Gazette_ would declare
it “the best historical novel since Scott,” which I seem to have heard
before of many other dull works.
Fanshawe is a purring, mild, genteel, rather elderly person, who listens
to everything you are good enough to say most attentively and politely,
with his head on one side, and never will be parted from his opera-hat.
When I attacked him one night after dinner in Medworth Square he was in
his usual autumnal condition of beatitude at the excellence of the
reviews of his latest historical composition (which, as usual, scarcely
sold), and beamed on me with delighted condescension, stuffing
quantities of raisins.
“What shall you be doing in January?” I cautiously began. “Would you be
free for a little run over to Monte Carlo?”
Unfortunately, the Honorable Edgar is the sort of person who, half an
hour after dinner, will undertake to do anything with anybody, and then
write and get out of it immediately after breakfast next morning, when
he’s cold; so I quite expected the reply that Monte Carlo in January
would suit him exactly, and what hotel did I propose to stay at?
“Now I’ve an idea,” I went on, drawing a little closer. “You’ve been to
Monte Carlo, of course, and know what a quantity of money there is in
the place.”
“Some of it mine,” smiled Fanshawe. “I beg your pardon for interrupting
you.”
“Well,” I said, “how would you like to join a little party of us for the
purpose of getting it back?”
“A syndicate to work a system?”
“Nothing so unprofitable.”
“I don’t know of any other way.”
“My idea,” I went on, sinking my voice, “is shortly this: that half a
dozen of us should join and take a yacht—a fast steam-yacht—”
“Rather an expensive way of doing it, isn’t it?” objected Fanshawe, in
alarm. He doesn’t mind what he pays to have his books published, but is
otherwise mean.
“Not when you consider the magnitude of the stakes.”
“Why, the most you can win, even if you break the bank, is only a
hundred thousand francs!”
“But consider the number of the tables, to say nothing of the reserve in
the vaults, and the money lying about already staked!”
The old boy looked puzzled, but nodded his head politely all the same.
“That’s true,” he said, vaguely.
“The place is not in any sense guarded, as no doubt you remember.”
“No, I don’t know that I ever saw a soldier about, except one or two,
very bored, on sentry go, up at Monaco. But what has that to do with
it?”
“Why, half a dozen resolute men with revolvers could clear the whole
place out in five minutes,” I murmured, seductively. “The steam-yacht
lies in the harbor, we collect the money, or as much of it as half a
dozen of us can carry away, and, once on board the lugger—”
Fanshawe pushed his chair back and stared at me.
“—We go full-steam ahead to one of the Greek islands, divide the swag,
scuttle the steamer, make our way to the Piræus, inspect the Acropolis,
and come home, _viâ_ Corfu, as Cook’s tourists. Or go to the Holy Land,
eh, by way of completely averting suspicion?” And I winked and nudged
him, nearly falling over in my effort to get at his frail old ribs.
“My dear friend!” gasped the startled Fanshawe; “why propose such an
elaborate pleasantry? It’s like school-boy’s talk in a dormitory.”
“I never felt further from my school-days in my life,” I answered with
determination. “The affair is perfectly easy—easier than you think. All
it wants is a little resolution, and the money’s ours.”
“But it’s simple robbery.”
“Oh, don’t imagine,” I at once replied, “I propose anything so coarse as
burglary and the melting-pot. No; I say to myself, here is the most
iniquitous establishment in Europe, simply reeking with gold, of which
an enormous surplus remains at the end of the year to be divided,
principally among Semitic Parisians, who lavish it on their miserable
pleasures. Here, on the other hand, are numerous deserving
establishments in London—hospitals and so on—with boards out, closing
their wards and imploring subscriptions. The flow of gold has evidently
got into the wrong channels, as it always will if not sharply looked
after. Be ours the glorious enterprise to divert it anew—”
“My good friend,” interrupted Fanshawe, “if I thought you serious—”
“Never was more serious in my life!”
“But, gracious me, suppose you’re all caught?”
“Oh, there is a prison up at Monaco, I believe,” I answered, lightly;
“but they tell me prisoners come and go just as they please. That
doesn’t in the least alarm me. Besides, Europe would be on our side—at
all events, the respectable portion of it—and would hail our _coup_
with rapture, even if it ended in failure. And with your brother in the
Foreign Office, they’d soon have you back. Now what do you say? Will you
make one?”
“My dear Blacker, you really must be crazy!”
“At a given signal, when the rooms are fullest, some of us—two would be
enough—drive the gamblers into a corner and make them hold up their
hands. The others loot the tables and the vaults. Then we turn out the
electric light—”
“Any more wine, Fanshawe?” called out my brother-in-law.
Fanshawe rose, and I saw at once by the limp way he pulled his waistcoat
down he was no good.
“Well,” I said, as I followed him into the drawing-room, “if you won’t
join us, you must give me your word not to breathe a syllable of what we
are going to do. It’s an immense idea, and I don’t want any one to get
hold of it first, and find the place gutted by some one else before we
can get a look in.”
Fanshawe’s only reply was that if I got into trouble he would thank me
not to apply to him to bail me out; so we mutually promised.
I don’t know that, on the whole, I very much regretted him; he is, after
all, a very muddle-headed, nervous old creature; but my hopes were for a
time a good deal dashed by the refusal of the Reverend Percy Blyth to
join us (much as he approved of the scheme), though I did my best to
tempt him with the offer of new stops for his organ out of the boodle.
He is the clergyman of St. Blaise’s, Medworth Square, and intimate with
all the theatrical set, for whom he holds services at all sorts of odd
hours; the natural result of which is he is on the free list of nearly
every theatre, and has given me many a box.
Now every school-boy knows how priceless the presence of a parson is to
all human undertakings—on a race-course, for instance, for
thimble-rigging, the three-card trick, and other devices. They call him
the _bonnet_, and if you have any trifling dispute about there being no
pea, or the corner of the card being turned down, you are likely to be
very much astonished to find the clergyman (who, of course, is only a
cove dressed up) take the proprietor’s part and, at a pinch, offer to
fight you, or any other dissatisfied bystander.
So I naturally thought it would be a good thing for us if we had a real
parson in the party, if only as a most superior _bonnet_, to avert
suspicion; though, if I had only thought a little, I might have known
the idea wouldn’t work, since Blyth couldn’t very well have gone into
the Casino rooms in parson’s rig, and I didn’t really want him for
anything else.
There was only one other of my sister’s friends I approached on the
subject before I had recourse to my own—Parker White, a bouncing sort
of young man who had just got into the House of Commons, and who, I
thought, might possibly be useful. But, as I cautiously felt my way with
him, he looked so frightened, and talked such balderdash about his
position and filibustering and European complications (complications
with Monaco, if you please, with an army of seventy men!) that I
pretended it was all a joke and turned the conversation.
To tell the truth, I was not much disappointed in Parker White, since I
know very well how most of those younger men in the House are all gas
and no performance; but, all the same, he was pretty cunning; for, to
put it vulgarly, he lay low and waited, and when talk began to get about
of what we had done, and the Casino Company’s shares fell immediately in
consequence of our success, he bought them up like ripe cherries; and
then, when it was all contradicted by a subsidized press (which made me
wild and drove me to writing this work in self-defence), and the shares
jumped up again, he promptly sold and made a good thing out of it.
But he has never had the grace to thank me for putting the opportunity
in his way; which is so like those men in the House who speculate on
their information on the sly and then blush to find it fame.