IN MY DISGUISE I AM MISTAKEN FOR LORD B.—A CLUB ACQUAINTANCE—
TEDDY AT THE LAW COURTS—MRS. WINGHAM—THE DEFENCE AND THE
ACQUITTAL—WE BOLT
BEHOLD me, then, in sexagenarian disguise, trudging back into Monte
Carlo, with my mackintosh and umbrella. It was barely nine o’clock in
the morning when I started; and, soon after ten, there I was standing
once more in front of the Casino buildings, out of which, but a few
hours before, I had so triumphantly rushed.
Strange to say, there was no sign of anything extraordinary having
occurred; there were the usual people sitting about reading the papers
on the seats round the flower-beds, the usual attendants loafing on the
steps, guarding the entrance. Over the building flapped, as ever, the
dingy Monaco flag.
My first feeling was of intense annoyance and disgust that,
notwithstanding our complete success, the nefarious business was
apparently being carried on as usual. What on earth did it all mean?
Were sixty thousand pounds as naught to them? Were they placidly going
to put up with their loss, rather than advertise their misfortune? or,
under this apparent calm, were there really depths of trouble and
vengeance stirring—already rising—to ingulf poor Teddy, whom I never
doubted from the first was captured, and now shortly about to appear
before the Prince’s judges away up at Monaco, bent in painful submission
at the criminal bar!
I sat down for a few moments to consider what should be done, and look
about me for some one to whom I could apply for trustworthy information:
what was thought of us, and what steps the authorities proposed to take.
There was an old gentlemen, an Englishman, evidently, sitting on my
seat; and, as one garrulous old person to another might, I proceeded to
try him cautiously with a few questions. Did he know, could he tell me,
at what hour the rooms opened?
He looked at me over his pince-nez, and said at twelve. Then he flipped
his pince-nez off, smiled, and, giving me a friendly look, politely
observed he believed he and I were members of the same distinguished
club, the Mausolœum. He dared say I hadn’t forgotten dining next him
there in the autumn, and the interesting talk we had then had.
“Aye, aye, aye,” I mumbled, in my fright, a mixture of Punch and
Pantaloon.
He had seen me walking about before, he went on (what on earth did he
mean by that, I wondered), and had meant to take the liberty of speaking
to me. What I had said in the autumn had interested and impressed him
very much, and he had often thought over it. Then he folded up his
paper, and evidently began to lay himself out for a renewal of our
supposed conversation, a prospect which much alarmed and disconcerted
me.
I scarcely liked to exercise the complete vigor of my youth and make an
immediate bolt; for I had doddered up to the seat and, like an aged
pensioner, sat me down with a loud sigh of relief—rather overacting, in
fact; so, if I were to keep up the character, I must at least dodder
away again when I left. Yet, however complimentary to my make-up, it
was, just at present, a distinct nuisance to find myself mistaken for
somebody else, and likely to be detained over a conversation which,
under no circumstances, could ever have had the faintest interest for
me.
To prevent that, I cautiously began:
“My servant tells me there was a robbery, or something of that sort, in
the rooms last night.”
“Oh!” said my club comrade.
“Have you heard anything about it?”
“No, indeed.”
“The Casino authorities keep a thing of that sort pretty close, I
imagine,” I cautiously ventured.
“They’re quite right,” the old gentleman replied. “Quite right!” Then,
after a pause, he went on, “I suppose you never spoke to Markham on the
subject, after all?”
“No, indeed, I didn’t,” I mumbled, making the best reply I could under
the circumstances. “Fact is, I never saw him.”
“Why, didn’t he turn up?”
“I forget.” And then I uneasily added, “You know what a feather-headed
feller he is.”
The old gentleman laughed and said, “Somebody ought to speak to him,
though.”
“Well, what’s the matter with his wife?” I said, unconsciously, dropping
into one of Brentin’s phrases.
“That’s more than I can tell you,” the old gentleman replied. “She’s
looked like that for a long time now.”
I was so rapidly getting tired of this footling talk, not to mention the
fibs it entailed and the precious time being wasted, that, at any cost,
I determined to put a stop to it; so I rose with an effort, and saying,
vaguely, “Well, I’ve got to meet my wife; good-day to you! I dare say I
shall see you again somewhere about,” strolled off towards the Casino
steps.
The old gentleman, who had evidently looked forward to a long
conversation, answered me rather gruffly, “Good-day!”—while straight up
to one of the attendants at the head of the steps I walked.
“Yes, _monsieur_,” the man politely said, “the rooms are open for play
at twelve.”
“As usual?” I pointedly observed.
“Altogether as usual.”
“Notwithstanding the robbery?”
“Oh, as for that,” the man replied, shrugging his shoulders, “it was a
very small affair. The miserable was caught and would be punished.”
An Englishman, I understood.
Yes, an Englishman. No doubt at this moment he was being tried, and
already safe in prison. “_Au revoir, monsieur! à votre service,
monsieur!_”
My legs felt fully their assumed age as I turned and faltered down the
steps. So all hope was over; poor Teddy was really caught, and the
regiment would know him no more. Unless!—why, what could I do?—good
gracious!—
I was so deep in my own troubled thoughts and plans, I scarcely noticed
my supposed old club friend on the seat; should not have noticed him at
all, in fact, had I not just at this moment, when I was calling a
carriage to drive up to the “Monopôle,” come plump on the other highly
respectable elderly gentleman I evidently so closely resembled.
Face to face we met, and naturally stared at each other. Will it be
believed we were absolutely exactly alike, down even to the cut and
color of our clothes? For the first and only time in my life I saw
myself at full length, myself as I should be at sixty (if I only took
care of myself), sedate, healthy, a county magistrate, member of
Brooke’s, with my youngest boy just leaving Eton. I hurried into the
carriage and told the man to drive up to the “Monopôle” as fast as he
could go, just giving a look round at my friend on the seat as I got in.
He had turned, and, with his hands on his knees, was staring after me,
dumbfounded. My double had turned and was staring after me too.
To both those gentlemen, if they should ever chance to read this work, I
offer my sincere apology; they will understand now the reason of my
accidental resemblance, and, as between men of the world, will no doubt
forgive it. I can assure them both it will not occur again; how can it,
seeing that wig and whiskers are buried under an olive-tree on the
Mentone road?
At the “Monopôle”—having, of course, no notion who I really was—they
were very polite. No, Madame Wingham was not in; they couldn’t say where
she was; a letter had come for her early and she had gone out.
Instinctively, I felt the letter was from Teddy, imploring succor.
I left the hotel at once and drove straight up to Monaco. At the
cathedral I dismissed the carriage and walked on to the law courts. What
to do I had no idea; watch the proceedings, at any rate, _incognito_
from the back, and, at the worst, hear with my own sad ears how much
poor Teddy got. Any thought of rescue was, of course, out of the
question. What could a poor old person of sixty do against soldiers and
gendarmes?
The criminal court of Monaco sits in a bare upper room, close to the
cathedral. Outside, steep steps of the usual _Palais de Justice_
inverted V-shape lead up to it, with, at their head, a bare flag-pole,
like a barber’s sign. Up the steps I walked, and with beating heart (for
my own sake, I confess, as much as for poor Teddy’s) entered the fatal,
the lethal chamber. It was very full and stuffy. News of our victory and
the capture of one of the band no doubt had spread, for the public part
was crammed, tightly as sardines and garlic. Facing, under a crucifix,
from over which the dingy green curtain was drawn, sat three judges;
three real judges, in their bands and toques and ermine! Common white
bedroom blinds scarcely kept the sun out, streaming in mistily on the
members of the bar in beards and gowns, on the _greffier_ busily
writing, and the usher waiting to summon the luckless Parsons to the
dock. Just at present the judges were bending the weight of their
intellects on a couple of market-women charged with fighting; and there,
tightly wedged against the partition, stood the forlorn Mrs. Wingham, a
handkerchief in her black kid grasp, bending and talking tearfully to
the barrister seated below, whom she apparently had engaged for the
defence.
I made my way to her and pulled her sleeve.
“Come outside,” I whispered; “it’s I—hush!—Vincent Blacker.”
She stared at me, and then at last followed obediently to the door. We
stood outside at the head of the steps.
“They’ve got him, I suppose?” I asked.
“Oh, you cowards!” she gasped, “to run away and leave him.”
“Never mind that now,” I answered; “_I_ have come back, at any rate. Let
us consider what can be done. You’ve got some one to defend him?”
“But the man talks such horrible French, I can’t understand a word he
says,” she moaned, “and he reeks of garlic. And where’s my brother,
James Thompson?”
“He’s all right,” I evasively replied. “Never mind him just now. We must
really concentrate ourselves on doing something for poor Teddy.”
“Oh, I dare say! Now you mind this, young man!” cried Mrs. Wingham, with
sudden vindictiveness. “If he goes to prison you go, too! I won’t ’ear
of his going alone. I’ll shout to the police! I’ll ’ave you arrested! He
sha’n’t be the only one to suffer, poor young lamb!”
The hair under my wig stood up on end, and even my false whiskers
stiffened. The old woman was quite capable of executing her threat, and
for a moment I felt, not sixty, but a hundred.
Outwardly, however, I was calm.
“Desperate cases require desperate remedies,” I judicially observed.
“Take my arm and let us return to court. We’ll adopt our own line of
defence. Come along, ma’am, and for the present kindly remember I am
your husband and my name is Wingham.”
The vicious old woman held me so tightly, I knew that if Teddy went
under and were condemned she meant me to go under, too. Together we
wedged our way to the partition, just above our odoriferous barrister. I
was bending to speak to him when suddenly a bell was rung and Teddy was
immediately ushered, nay, thrust, in, between a couple of gendarmes.
Poor chap, he was almost unrecognizable, he had been so roughly handled.
His smoking-suit was torn, and round his neck, in place of collar and
tie, he had knotted a handkerchief, coster fashion; but what mostly
disguised and disfigured him was his gashed and puffed face; for in
falling down the steps he had fallen plump on a bunch of cactus, scoring
him as though he had been mauled by an angry tigress. He never had been
pretty, but now he looked exactly like the malefactor that, in the eye
of the law, at any rate, I suppose he really was.
“Oh, just look at his face!” gasped Mrs. Wingham. “Oh, the poor
creature!”
“Hush!” I whispered; “for goodness’ sake keep calm. And kindly remember
he’s our nephew.”
I judged it wisest to hear the evidence against him before considering
the line we should take in his defence. I contented myself for the
present with whispering to our counsel that the prisoner was our nephew,
his arrest a complete mistake, and he himself as innocent of any attempt
at robbery as the newly born.
Meantime, in French fashion, the President of the Court—a robust old
man with a white beard and a red face, like a neatly trimmed Father
Christmas—after reading the act of accusation, was the first to tackle
and brow-beat our unfortunate friend. To do him justice, Teddy kept
beautifully cool (he says now he recognized me and my wink through the
disguise, and knew he was safe) and answered nothing through his puffed
mouth but _Nong!_ and _Jammy!_ Every now and then the President, in the
politest manner in the world, observed, “_Vous mentez, jeune homme!_” or
“_C’est faux!_” while the judge on his right, a battered little man with
blue glasses and his mouth all fallen in, ejaculated “_Quelle
effronterie!_” or “_C’est abominable!_” at intervals.
As a matter of fact, the evidence against him (according to our English
notions, at any rate) was far from strong. There were croupiers present
ready to swear to having seen him in the rooms, charging down on the
tables with a revolver; there were the men from the door to swear they
had noticed him rush past; and there were the firemen who had found him
crawling away behind the signal-box, down on the line, after we had got
clear away. Very good. But the cactus had, for the present, so
disfigured him, that an adroit cross-examination could not fail very
much to shake them, and that, no doubt, the President felt; for, after
wrangling with Teddy for some time, and receiving nothing but an
eruption of _Nongs_ and _Jammys_ for his pains, he ill-temperedly cried
identification would be useless and unfair with the accused’s face in
its present condition, and that, until the swelling disappeared, he
should remand him; by which time, he sardonically added, he had no doubt
the other malefactors would be before him in a row.
Teddy gave me a piteous glance, and, nerving myself, I nudged our
barrister, whom all along I had been coaching, and up he got.
Now, most fortunately, when poor Teddy was caught, neither revolver nor
spoil were found on him; spoil he had never had, and the revolver, after
the final discharge, he had hurled over the embankment into the sea. And
he had always told the same story: that he had truly enough been in the
rooms, but had nothing whatever to do with the robbery, having been
forced out in the disturbance, and run as the others had; running, in
his alarm, he knew not where, until he fell down the steps, lost his
senses, and, coming to, found himself in the hands of the police. He was
a quiet, respectable young Englishman, he declared, come to Monte Carlo
for his health, and staying with his aunt at the hotel “Monopôle,” to
whom (as I thought) he had early despatched a note, announcing himself
as her nephew and in trouble, and imploring help.
And here we were to claim him, after so unpleasant an experience, Milor
and Madame Ving-ham—so the barrister announced us!—persons of the
highest consideration and wealth, constant visitors on the shores of the
hospitable Riviera; in short, this, that, and the other, all couched in
the finest language, and none of it in the least true. And then, in a
final peroration, amid murmurs of sympathy, culminating in a burst of
applause, the barrister threw up his fat hands, and invoked justice,
mercy, and international law (not to mention the hospitality of old
Greece and Rome), and, sitting down, wiped his forehead with the sleeve
of his gown; while Madame Ving-ham judiciously lifted up her troubled
voice, and wept louder than ever.
When the emotion had subsided, the President called me forward, and for
the second time that morning my unlucky resemblance to another gentleman
(a nobleman, by-the-way, as it turned out) was likely to get me into
further trouble; for in me, Vincent Blacker, disguised as an old boy of
sixty, the President imagined he recognized, just as my club friend had
done an hour before, a distinguished guest he had met the previous
evening at the Prince’s table; with whom he had held an improving
discussion as to the present unsatisfactory condition of the British
House of Lords, and the best method of amending, without destroying it.
“_Comment, Milor!_” he cried, in astonishment, looking at me over his
glasses; “_c’est votre Seigneurie?_”
Good Lord, I said to myself, here we are again—giving the old man a
polite but alarmed bow and smile.
But the President knew me as Milor B., he ventured to observe (I really
don’t quite like to give the illustrious name), and here was our
advocate announcing me as some one else!
I hastened to explain, with perspiration on my brow, that Ving-ham was
my second title, and in an unfortunate affair of this kind—_Cour
d’Assises_, in short—I did not care for my first to be publicly mixed
up.
The President bowed and said that was well understood, and then he
proceeded to put me a few exceedingly polite and fatuous questions about
Teddy, who, as a contrite nephew cut to the heart at so unfortunately
dragging an old and honored name through the purlieus of the criminal
law, was acting his part to perfection.
Yes, monsieur was my nephew, of a character gentle and affectionate; of
retiring habits and delicate health, a little _poitrinaire_, in fact (at
which Teddy, comprehending, coughed with unnecessary violence), but all
that was of obedient, tractable, and good. He had gone down to the
Casino, while we, my wife and I—Madame Ving-ham still weeping—had gone
to bed, believing he was in his room; and the next we had heard was
early that morning, when we received a note from him announcing the
unfortunate capture and mistake. _Monsieur le Président_ would readily
understand what of grief and desolation?—my affectionate uncle’s voice,
with a touch of an only nephew in it, trembled, and madame shook
convulsively as, still grasping my arm tight, she moaned and sobbed.
That was more than enough. In a very few minutes, after a brief
consultation among the judges, Teddy was released and dramatically
embracing us in the body of the court—thereby nearly bringing off my
left whisker—and I was paying our eloquent counsel. Before I left the
yacht I had providentially provided myself with a bundle of notes from
the heap of spoil on the table, and one of them—for a thousand
francs—I presented to the astonished and gratified barrister. I
trembled to think how much more than ever for the next few days he would
reek of his favorite _ail_.
Out went Mrs. Wingham, arm in arm with Teddy, and I followed, after
declining the President’s kind invitation to breakfast with him, on the
score of my overwrought feelings.
Just as I was going down the steps a man I recognized as a croupier
touched me respectfully on the arm, with a crafty, meridional smile. I
stopped in some alarm, thinking it possible I was discovered. What did
he want? Why, Milor no doubt remembered that lady whom Milor had
commissioned the croupier to find out all about and let him know?
Perfectly, I replied, with stiff and aristocratic upper lip. What had he
discovered?
She was an Italian, one Madame Vagliano, and she lived at the Villa des
Genets, above the Condamine. He was proceeding with more information,
when I haughtily cut him short with “_C’est bien! assez! voici madame
qui nous observe_,” and handing him a note, which I afterwards
discovered was unfortunately one of a thousand francs instead of, as I
meant, a hundred, I hurried to the foot of the steps, where madame and
Teddy were awaiting me. _Ce scélèrat de Lord B.!_ I have really a good
mind to give his illustrious name, after all.
We walked on a little way in silence, and then Mrs. Wingham said, with
traces of tearfulness:
“What are you two villains going to do now?”
“Bolt!” I replied, laconically.
“And where’s my poor brother James all this time?”
“He’s all right, enjoying himself first-rate, sailing about somewhere in
the _Saratoga_.”
“What’s the _Saratoga_?”
“A well-appointed steam-yacht, belonging to a friend of ours.”
“You thieving wretches! You’ve been and decoyed him on board, you know
you ’ave.”
“Well, he’s perfectly safe, wherever he is. Come along, Teddy, there’s
no time to be lost.”
“But I can’t go like this,” cried Teddy. “I haven’t even got a hat, and
all my clothes are on the yacht.”
We bought him a dreadful French straw-hat up in Monaco, and then we
jumped into a carriage and drove down to the tailor’s, next the “Grand
Hotel.” As we drove, I questioned Mrs. Wingham as to what was known and
said in the town about our escapade.
“Why,” said Mrs. Wingham, “people have been terribly frightened, and are
beginning to leave the place.”
“Good! And what line are the authorities taking?”
“They are denying it all, right and left, but they are determined to
catch you, all the same.”
“They can’t do both!” I coldly replied. “They’d much better put up with
their loss; we shall put the money to much better use than they could
ever have done. If they are going to make themselves unpleasant over it,
you may tell them from me we’ll come back and do precisely the same
thing next year.”
“You impudent young feller!” cried the angry old woman, “you forget that
one of the sharpest detectives in England is after you.”
“He’s taking a mighty circuitous route!”
“But he’ll catch you, all the same, at last.”
“Will he?” I answered, eying her with cold amusement. “Now look here,
missus, if you say much more I’ll communicate with Van Ginkel, and
direct him to take the yacht across to Cuba and have James landed and
shot there as a filibuster.”
Whereupon the poor old soul fell to whimpering again, though at the same
time she couldn’t help laughing a little at my readiness.
Teddy was soon fitted out at the tailor’s, and a sight he looked in what
they called the _dernier cri_ of a French travelling costume; more like
a young man out of the _Petit Journal pour rire_ than anything.
“Adieu, Madame Ving-ham!” I laughed, as we got outside. “Your nephew and
I are going to get bicycles and be off down the Corniche, over the
Italian frontier. Say good-bye to him, and be off home to Brixton
yourself as soon as possible, or you may get into trouble with the
police here for using a false title of nobility. Now, you did, you know!
it’s no use your denying it. Take my advice; the quieter you keep for
the next few months the better.”
She was so angry she wouldn’t say good-bye to me, but she overwhelmed
poor Parsons. And she implored him as soon as possible to give up my
desperate bad company, which, sooner or later, could only bring him to
ruin—I, if you please, who at so much risk had just rescued him!—and
to write to her soon to Brixton, and come and see her directly he got
back.
She stood watching us as we went off to the bicycle man’s in the Arcade,
near Ciro’s, and kept on waving her handkerchief till we got into the
gardens across the road and were lost to view.
“Now let this be a lesson to you, my son,” I sagely observed, as we
hurried along, “always to make yourself pleasant and polite to old
ladies. But for Mrs. Wingham, you might have been dragging a cannon-ball
at your ankle for years.”
Teddy shuddered, and said:
“What a blessing I resembled her nephew!”
“And mine!” I added. “Don’t forget me.”