THE GREAT NIGHT—DINNER AT THE “HÔTEL DE PARIS”—A LAST LOOK ROUND
—THE SACK AND ITS INCIDENTS—FLIGHT
BY five o’clock of that same afternoon—Friday, January 17th—we and our
luggage were all safe on board the _Amaranth_.
Our luggage stowed away and our cabin arrangements made (rather a tight
fit we found it), I took Lucy on shore to show her round, or give her a
walk rather, as it was nearly dark; for now that Bailey Thompson was
well out at sea, there was no danger of her being met and recognized.
For the night, our plan of action briefly was, that at a quarter to
eight we were all to dine together at the “Hôtel de Paris,” the ladies
afterwards to return on board the yacht. At ten we gentlemen, with the
six sailors, were to be in the rooms; at half-past, precisely, the start
was to be made.
At ten-twenty the boats, two of them, were to leave the yacht and be
ready at the spot I have indicated. They were not to start a minute
earlier, for fear of exciting suspicions among any of the firemen or
police who might be about on the terrace. For them, on Brentin’s
suggestion, we had arranged a small pyrotechnic display—what he called
“fire-crackers”—on the terrace not far from the band-stand. Parsons had
purchased a “Devil among the Tailors” over at Mentone, and Jarvis, one
of the sailors—the same, by-the-way, who had first accosted us on the
pier at Ryde—was to light it one minute before the half-hour. We
calculated it would explode and draw the firemen away, just about the
time when they would otherwise be in demand to stop us in our rush down
the terrace steps, and through the rickety gate on to the railway line.
Our dinner at the “Hôtel de Paris” was a very expensive and merry one.
It was lucky, by-the-way, as it turned out, that I ate and drank a good
deal more than usual, for it was almost four-and-twenty hours before I
got anything approaching a proper meal again; through that idiot Teddy
Parsons’ fault, as presently will plainly enough appear.
Soon after half-past nine we sent the ladies off in a carriage down to
the Condamine to go on board the yacht. It was a solemn moment, for it
was quite on the cards I might never see any of them again, and one was
my sweetheart and one my sister. Indeed, so affected was I, that I bent
into the carriage and kissed Miss Rybot by mistake, which made everybody
but Arthur Masters laugh. I knew I had made the mistake directly my lips
touched her cheek, for hers was hard and cold as an apple off wet grass,
whereas dear Lucy’s was ever soft and warm as a sunny peach.
Then they drove away, laughing and kissing their hands; Lucy
particularly merry, for she still knew nothing of what we were almost
immediately going to do, and was quite gay at the thought of leaving
Monte Carlo so soon—to which unhallowed spot, as most good and
sensitive women, she had taken the supremest dislike.
We gentlemen sat a little time smoking, in somewhat perturbed silence,
and just before ten we had a glass of old brandy each, paid our bill,
and left. The others went on into the rooms, while Brentin and I walked
down on to the terrace to have a last look at the gate, and see it was
still open; or, rather, would open to a slight push.
The night was singularly mild, dark, and heavy; the terrace absolutely
deserted. There was not a star in the dense, low sky; they all seemed
fallen on shore, outlining the Condamine and heights of Monaco in the
many regular pin-pricks of the gas-lamps. From the “Café de Paris” came
the swirl of the Hungarian band; from the Casino concert-room, the high
notes of Madame Eames singing in the new opera; from the Condamine, the
jingle of the omnibus bells. Not another sound of life from earth or
heaven; but mainly the persistent jangle of those omnibus bells, as
though sadly shaken by some dyspeptic Folly. The Mediterranean, as ever,
was absolutely still.
I could have stayed there a long time, but—
“Come!” whispered Brentin, and taking my arm, walked me back up the
steps towards the rooms. As we passed the end of the concert-room, I
noticed that up against the outside balconies, at the back of the stage,
ladders were reared, so that, in case of fire, the artistes might have
some other chance of escape than the dubious one of fighting their way
through the _salle_. I found myself fitfully wondering whether those
ladders would be used.
“Come!” whispered Brentin, again, feeling, I dare say, the alarm in my
elbow. “Courage!”
For I do not mind confessing here in print that, as the hour approached,
I began to feel frightened at the audacity of what we were going to do,
and, if only I could—consistently with my honor—would willingly have
withdrawn; nay, to put it plainly, turned tail and bolted. My revolver,
loaded with blank cartridge only, in the pocket of my smoking-jacket
beat remindfully against my hip as I walked up the Casino steps. Even
now as I write, months after the occurrence, the tremor of that hour
seizes me and my hand shakes so I can scarcely guide the pen.
Another moment, and we had walked through the hall, and passed the
swing-doors into the stifling gambling-rooms.
It is extremely unlikely I ever visit Monte Carlo again; indeed, my
conduct, on this the last occasion I entered the rooms, rather precludes
me from ever even making the attempt; but if ever I do, they will never
make the same impression on me as they did that warm January evening
when Brentin and I strolled into them arm in arm.
Every incident of that memorable evening, every face I then saw, is
photographed into my memory, still remains there distinct and indelible.
The rooms, either because of the attraction of a new opera or because
the night was so warm, were somewhat empty. The crowds were only round
the table, and the parquet flooring between looked more than usually
vacant and dull.
Dimmer they looked, too, and more than ever badly lit; and the air
seemed even heavier charged with gamblers’ exasperation.
Now, in some slight particulars, we had modified our original plan. We
had long given over all attempt to turn the light out, for one thing,
since we had never been able to discover where the mains were; probably
somewhere well out of sight, down below among the vaults, which also we
had decided not to attempt. Nor did we intend to do anything towards
securing the gamblers’ valuables, as at one time we had projected. It
was very like vulgar robbery, to begin with, and next, as Thompson had
pointed out, it would take too much time.
Directly we got inside, Brentin looked up at the clock over the door and
set his watch by it; then we strolled off to find the rest, and, showing
each of them the watch, saw that each had the precise time. Our six
sailors were wandering about genteelly in pairs; to each Brentin
whispered, “Got your bag all right?” and each nodded a reply. Each had a
linen bag buttoned inside his short, respectable reefer jacket. One who,
I fear, was not quite sober, a man named Barker, took his bag out with a
stupid laugh to show us; whereupon his companion (Frank Joyce, from
Sandown, in the Isle of Wight, who had him by the arm) said, “Now then,
Barker, don’t be a fool, it ain’t time yet.”
It was then between the ten minutes and the quarter past ten.
When we had visited the rooms with Bailey Thompson the night before, and
explained our plan in detail on the spot, we had, by his advice, and
very wisely, reversed it. Previously, we had designed to begin at the
first, the _roulette_ tables, and drive the people gradually before us
into the last room, towards the _trente-et-quarante_; but that, as he
pointed out, would force us to work with our backs to the exit and bring
us between two fires as it were; whereas, if we began in the farthest
rooms and cleared the _trente-et-quarante_ tables first, we should have
our faces to the doors, and, by driving everybody before us, secure the
further advantage of increasing the confusion that would arise from the
people rushing in to see what was wrong and meeting the people rushing
out. And through that surging, terrified mass we ought to have no
difficulty in forcing a passage, if only we kept our unloaded revolvers
up to the mark and frowned unflinchingly.
As for masking ourselves, which we had also at first designed, Thompson
was strongly against it; it would all take time, and might only obscure
our vision; for, as he truly pointed out, that sort of thing scarcely
ever fits properly.... I gave a nervous glance at my watch, and found it
nearly ten-twenty.
I was standing just by the last _roulette_ table, and saw one or two
little things that, as I have said, are still distinctly photographed in
my memory. There were two young men standing behind me, and one said,
“I’ll just chuck a louis on the table and see where it will fall.” It
fell on the number eighteen, and eighteen actually turned up! He laughed
excitedly as the croupier pushed him thirty-five times his stake.
“That’s not bad for my one gentle little louis, eh?” he giggled.
Opposite, a brown-faced English yachtsman, over from Mentone, was
steadily backing the colors with notes of five hundred francs. He was
always right; he changed from side to side, and always hit the right red
or black. He was watched by two common Englishmen, with long upper lips
and ridiculous pantaloon beards, dressed in shiny broadcloth. “That
feller’s won another twenty-pound,” said one of them, gaping. “We must
bring Louisa in to see this.”
Now it was past the ten-twenty, and I moved off into the
_trente-et-quarante_ rooms.
Every one who has been to Monte Carlo knows that the four
_trente-et-quarante_ tables are in the two end rooms, two in each.
In the right-hand room were to be stationed Brentin, Parsons, and I,
with three of the sailors; in the left, Forsyth, Masters, and Hines,
with the other three. Brentin was to give the signal in our
room—“_Levez les mains!_”—and Hines in the other, while the immediate
discharge of the “Devil among the Tailors” outside on the terrace would,
we hoped, increase the confusion and alarm within. It was rather awkward
that we were forced to go to work a little out of sight of each other;
for, though there is an opening between the rooms, we meant to begin
well at the back, and the opening did not so far reach as to bring us in
sight of each other.
It was close on the twenty-five minutes past ten, and so alarmed was I
at the difficulties which, now we were actually on the spot ready to
overcome them, loomed so desperately large, that I would willingly have
sacrificed half my income to be allowed to leave without even making the
attempt.
On one side of me was Brentin; on the other a very pretty, smart young
Englishwoman, standing with a purse in her hand, watching the run on
black. As in a dream, I noticed all the details of her dress, the white
facings of her dark jacket on the cuffs and pockets, the piquant spots
on her veil. Quietly, as though she were paying for a pair of gloves,
she staked all the gold she had left, about twenty pounds, and lost
that. She searched her purse, found it quite empty, snapped it
leisurely, and sauntered away. Brentin whispered me he had seen her
stake roll after roll of notes, and lose them all. Beautifully dressed,
with a hanging, jewelled little watch and many neat gold bracelets, I
had often seen her strolling about the gardens, neither speaking to nor
looking at any one; now I found myself stupidly wondering who she was,
even envying her, notwithstanding her totally cleaned-out condition.
The relentless minutes stole on. I looked piteously at Brentin, glaring
with resolution straight in front of him, his hand in his pocket
fingering his revolver; at Parsons, white as this paper, his legs
bending under him.
Piteously I looked at the table in front of me; at the croupiers, with
their cropped black heads and emotionless faces; at the _chef_ sitting
above them, his bored, round back towards me; at the delicately pretty,
demure Italian, olive-skinned and colorless, leaning her arm, in its
long white glove, over the back of his chair; at the young Frenchman
staking his thousand-franc notes, his forehead and eyes twitching with
excitement, or some nervous complaint; at the gaunt English girl—
_Bang!_ from the terrace outside. _Bang! bang!_
I gave a jump like a terrified horse. It was the “Devil among the
Tailors,” set off a minute or two too soon by our friend and accomplice,
the sailor.
The confusion and alarm it caused was nothing compared to what followed.
I had just time to see the Italian lady’s frightened profile, as she
turned and put her white glove up to her smooth cheek, when the bold
Brentin gave a hoarse shout—“_Levez les mains!_”—and produced the
revolver. Then, indeed, a panic set in! comparable, I imagine, to
nothing but the sudden striking of a ship.
At first a dead pause, and then immediately a rushing to and fro, as of
rats in a pit, the haggard looking in each other’s fallen, discomposed
faces. And then the noise! the overthrow of chairs and the dragging of
them along the parquet floor, caught in screaming women’s dresses as
they scudded away like sea-shore birds, bent low, with their hands up to
their ears, while the shouting, swearing, groaning men clutched at their
money, and tried to thrust it in their pockets, as they leaped and
huddled themselves away, the louis falling and tinkling on the floor.
I saw before me a hideous, moving frieze of terror, of distorted
faces—Russian, French, German, Italian, English, American, Greek—all
reduced to the same monotony of look under the overmastering influence
of the same passion—abject fear. The English were no better than the
rest; they were a little quicker in getting away, perhaps, and that was
all. The confusion of tongues was as complete as though, on the Tower of
Babel, some one had screamed the foundations were giving way, and all
must save themselves as best they could.
As in a battle the soldier knows only incidents, the faces he sees as
frightened or determined as his own, the eyes peering into his through
smoke he mostly himself seems to make; so, out of this action—so famous
and yet so little known—can I only report the events that met me in my
narrow section of the struggle, a section drawn almost in parallel
straight lines from the point I started at to the point of exit at the
farther end of the rooms.
First it was the _chef_, on his high chair facing me, who fell over
backwards, ridiculous enough at such a time of tragic import. One of the
croupiers, in jumping horrified to his feet, gave him a tilt and over he
went. He was a youngish man, with round, fat, clean-shaven cheeks, and a
small, bristling, black mustache. His arms and legs waved and kicked
like an impaled insect; his mouth opened with a stupendous screaming
oath, and as he fell—strange how at all times one notices details!—I
saw he wore half-shoes and blue socks.
In another minute we were at the vacant table, the _chef_ crawling away
under a sofa-seat against the wall, and two of our gallant sailors were
stuffing the notes and coins into their linen bags. The second table was
equally deserted, and there the not-quite-sober sailor, Barker, with
empty, delighted laughter, was already scratching the notes out of the
metal stand they are always kept in. Suddenly I saw he nearly fell; some
one under the table had him by the leg. He clutched the _chef’s_ empty
high chair, and, with a mighty oath and mighty random kick, released
himself.
“Hurry up, men! hurry up!” chanted Brentin, as we moved forward
irresistibly over the bare floor.
_Bang!_ suddenly went Teddy’s revolver off, in his nervousness, close to
my ear. It was a mistake, but not altogether a disastrous one; it showed
we were in earnest, and soon cleared some of the people away from the
space between the roulette rooms and the _trente-et-quarante_. Like a
wave that breaks against the shore and then returns, so these broken
people, spent against the struggling mass round the swing-doors, had
gushed back again and almost reached the point they started from.
From the room on the left, where Hines and his party were at work, I
suddenly heard Arthur Masters shout, “Look out, Forsyth!” At what, I
know not; I just gave a look in their direction, and their room seemed
as vacant of opposition as ours.
“Forward!” cried Brentin. “Hurry up! hurry up!”
The sailors, with their bags, fell behind us, and forward we three
charged. As we came through the sort of ante-chamber dividing the rooms,
there, through the other door, at the same moment, came Hines, Forsyth,
and Masters, hurrying.
“Bravo!” screamed to them the excited Brentin. “The left-hand table,
gentlemen!”
Right and left the tables were absolutely deserted. As the sailors
pounced on and proceeded to clear them, I had an unobstructed view down
the length of the remaining rooms right to the exit.
Such a scene of terrified, shouting, screaming confusion I never saw;
nor ever shall, unless my lurid evil star should one day carry me into
the hot heart of a theatre-panic, the uncontrollable frenzied meeting of
a fighting pit, gallery, dress circle, and stalls. They say a man will
give all he hath for his life, and here were innumerable men and women,
believing their precious lives in peril, giving all their fiery energies
play in their efforts to best their neighbor and reach the door. Often,
by-the-way, as I have heard of people wringing their hands, this was the
only occasion on which I ever really saw it done. One of the footmen, in
his absurd, ill-fitting livery, was standing on one of the side sofas, a
chap with laughable long whiskers, a discolored beak of a nose, and a
rabbit mouth; there he stood, dancing up and down, his face all puckered
with terror, actually wringing his hands in his misfitting long sleeves.
Then he suddenly fell over and crawled away, yelping like a frightened
lap-dog, and for the life of me I couldn’t help a spirit of laughter.
“Gracious!” yelled Brentin, above the indescribable din, “I hope no one
will be injured. Loose off your gun, friend Parsons.”
_Bang!_ went Teddy’s revolver. I looked at him; his face was still dead
white, while his mouth was working and distorted with a dreadful grin.
_Bang!_ it went again, while Teddy gave a silly laugh. Like a shot in a
mine that clears the air, or like the blowing out of a candle at ten
paces, the blank discharge had its due effect. The tortured mass heaved
and groaned, yielding irresistibly to the pressure of their terrors;
irresistibly they began to pour and gush out through the swing-doors at
the end. Every second, so fast they went, our road to safety was notably
being cleared for us.
“Forward! Forward!” Brentin sang.
To the right we went again into the next room, in the same
irreproachable order, with the same sublime results. Arthur Masters, in
all the energetic glory of battle, was waving his revolver, trying to
crack it, beating it against his thigh, as though it were a whip,
cheering on his men like hounds. He is master, as I have mentioned, of a
pack of harriers in Hertfordshire, and all the time he was at work in
the last two rooms he was musically crying, “Melody! Harmony! Trixie!
Hie over, lass, hie over!” And once, as one of his sailors bent on the
floor over a few scattered louis, he roared at him, “’Ware trash!” When
safe in England, I told him of it afterwards. He laughed and declared he
hadn’t the slightest recollection of doing anything of the sort.
Now will it be believed that, so universal was the panic, at one of the
tables only, at the bottom one in the room before the last, was there
anybody found to receive us! And that not so much, I fancy, in the
spirit of opposition as of curiosity, or perhaps inability to move.
For there we found an English lady tranquilly seated—elderly, perhaps
sixty, with a shrewd, not unpleasant face. To this day I don’t know her
name, but I know her quite well by sight, having often seen her driving
in Piccadilly and Bond Street. At the back of her chair her husband was
standing, eye-glass in eye; a tall man with a large head, rather of the
empty House of Commons air of importance, coolly watching us.
“You will be good enough not to touch this lady’s money,” he said, as
our men pounced on the table. Then, as a sort of after-thought, he
added, “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Write to the _Times_,” chuckled Brentin, impudently.
The old lady looked hard at me, as much as to say, “I’ve seen _you_
somewhere before, more respectably engaged than this.”
And, before I forget, it is an odd thing that, only a week or so ago, I
again met her driving in Piccadilly; I was in a cab with Lucy, and we
met her victoria face to face. We stood side by side for quite three
minutes in a block, and she recognized and stared at me in astonishment.
I returned her stare, not rudely, I hope, and then positively couldn’t
help beginning to laugh; she didn’t laugh back, but I could see quite
well she was very near it.
There still remained the end room of all and our exit through the doors.
Now was the time for all our nerve, all our resource.
Breathlessly, I glanced up at the clock, and saw it was just over the
twenty-five minutes to eleven. We had taken only some six or seven
minutes to clear eleven tables; there still remained the two last and
our rush for the yacht.
Our friends on the left hurried up to us, we having been slightly
quicker on the right; and then, strangely enough, there was a moment’s
dead silence, at any rate, in the rooms. In the pause we could hear the
dull, frightened roar from the hall outside, and then, suddenly and
faintly, the short, sharp, defiant call of a bugle.
The gamblers and croupiers, still massed struggling round the exit,
turned, many of them as though by an understanding, and faced us, some
of them even crying “_Silence!_” “_Silence!_” The valets, clambering on
the side seats, leaned towards us expectantly. It seemed as though they
were looking for us to make them a speech, some kind of an apology for
our inexplicable and outrageous conduct. It was a sort of “Gentlemen of
the French Guard, fire first!” and though I don’t suppose it lasted more
than a second, it seemed an age.
Then Brentin stepped forward, and sweeping his revolver along the line
of their expectant faces, said in his ordinary voice—and all the more
authoritative and effective it sounded—“_Retirez-vous!_”
My gaze was fixed on a tall croupier, a man I had often seen walking
about in a straw-hat with his little daughter; indeed, once I had
stopped and kissed the child, she was so pretty. Then he had been
delighted; now he was staring at me with hard, frightened eyes, grinding
his teeth.
As Brentin stepped forward, we stepped forward too.
“Close up behind us, you men!” Masters called to the sailors. “Use your
fists if they try to stop you!”
Instantly the screaming and shouting began again. As we moved briskly
and irresistibly forward, the seething crowd at the swing-doors melted
away before us like wax before the fire. Men and women began to steal
behind us and run back frantically into the vacant rooms we had just
stripped and left.
“_Retirez-vous!_” cried Brentin, in a higher key.
I kept my eye on the tall croupier, clearly meditating mischief, and
then suddenly covered him with my unloaded revolver. His face fell like
a shutter; all at once he seemed to be struck imbecile. Death was
staring at him, he fancied, down the stubborn, steel tube—death! and he
had never made his _salut_—would die in the gambling-rooms! He fell
back with the rest, using his elbows viciously, and out we went with a
rush, like uncorked soda-water opened by an unskilful hand at a picnic.
An arm reached out at me from behind the door as I darted through, and
caught my coat. I gave myself a vigorous wrench and swore (the first and
only time that night), while my pocket came tearing off in the villain’s
grasp. He was very welcome to it, if only as a souvenir.
The hall was pretty empty, for most people who had escaped from the
rooms had rushed wildly out into the night, in their terror. When the
“Devil among the Tailors” first went off on the terrace, there had been
shouts and cries of “_Les Anarchistes!_” and all who heard it thought
the building was about to be blown to atoms with a bomb, and flew, like
sand before the wind.
Still, numbers were beginning to pour into the far end of the hall out
from the concert-room, where the alarm was just spreading and playing
the deuce with the new opera. As we ran through and down the steps to
the right, I could hear the band still playing and some one singing.
Then, evidently, the alarm reached the instrumentalists, for they
stopped suddenly with a wheeze, like a musical box run down.
Down the steps we rushed, knocking some few of both sexes, I am ashamed
to say, over and aside in our stride. Out of the watchful corner of my
right eye I saw the waiters come running out of the “Café de Paris,” in
their white aprons.
Outside, as we turned the corner of the building, to the left down on to
the terrace, one or two firemen came bounding up the steps to meet us.
One of them faced us, holding out his arms and saying something in
French I didn’t catch.
It was addressed to Barker, whose only reply was to grunt and knock the
man head over heels into a heap of cactus. Hating violence as I do, I am
pleased to report it was absolutely the only blow struck the whole time,
and was a singularly efficient one.
At the bottom of the steps to the right we darted, so close together we
might have been almost covered with a pocket-handkerchief, of the larger
Derby-winner type.
“Get in front, you men!” panted Brentin, in a sibilant whisper. “Take
the first boat, this way!”
The sailors plunged in front as Brentin pulled the gate open. Down the
steps they clattered. One of them, as he passed me, I saw was trying to
tie the tape round the neck of his linen bag with his teeth.
And now furious steps were rushing after us over the gravel of the
terrace; menacing dark figures, many of them, were making for our gate.
“Give ’em a fusillade!” hissed Hines, and turning we fired, each of us,
pretty nearly the whole of our six blank barrels.
From that moment our retreat, which had hitherto been conducted in such
beautiful order, became as loose and streaming as the tail of a comet.
As for me, I fired most of my six barrels as I ran down the steps,
straight over my head, anywhere. I can feel now the soft kick of my
revolver as I held it loosely in my left hand.
Now I don’t know it is exactly to my credit, but it certainly says
something for my physical condition, that I was first down. I plunged
panting across the railway lines, and simply hurled myself down the
embankment, on to the shore.
The first boat with the sailors already in it, the boodle in its linen
bags gleaming ghostily in a tumbled heap at the bottom, was just pushing
off. I tore through the water up to my waist, and they soon had me on
board, pulling me in excitedly by the arms. The night was so dark that,
a dozen strokes from the shore, there was nothing to be seen but the
yacht’s lights, fifty yards ahead. We flew over the water, the men
talking, swearing, panting, and helping one another push at the oars. We
were alongside almost immediately, and I was the first up on deck.
“All safe, sir?” cried the captain, as I swung myself up.
“Get her ready,” I panted, “the others will be here in a minute.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
My sister ran up and kissed me. Miss Rybot was standing at the taffrail,
glaring like a young eagle over the black water, and drumming her
fingers on the rail. A few heavy raindrops were beginning to fall.
“Where’s Lucy?”
“We sent her below; she’s reading a book.”
I paused to listen for the other boat, and could hear the tearing of the
oars, the thud of the rowlocks. Away down from Monaco came the stern and
menacing beat of a drum. Through the open lighted windows of the Casino
concert-room I could see dark figures preparing to descend the ladders I
had noticed considerately placed there against the balconies.
And then, suddenly, for the first time since we had been aboard, just as
the other boat came tearing alongside and I stumbled off breathlessly
below, it began to rain in earnest, a seething, hissing downpour; what
my old Derbyshire nurse used picturesquely to call, _whole water_.
By the time I reached Lucy’s cabin door we were well under weigh,
shouldering our way swiftly and sturdily through the still, wet night.