placing matters in order for his master's toilet. He had drawn the
curtains to admit the day and closed the window to bar out its
morning freshness, and it was while he was clearing the pockets of
the dress clothes that he became aware that from the alcove at his
back, in which the bed stood, eyes were watching him. Without hurry,
he deposited a little pile of coins on the edge of the dressing-table
and laid the trousers aside; then, with his long thief's hands
hanging open in obvious innocence, he turned and saw that his
master had waked in his usual uncanny fashion, returning from
slumber to full consciousness with no interval of drowsiness and
half-wakefulness. It was as if he would take the fortunes of the day
by surprise. His wonderful white hair, which made him noticeable
without ever making him venerable, was tumbled on his head; he looked
from his pillow with the immobility and inexpressiveness of a wax
figure.
To his valet's murmured "good morning," he frowned slightly, as if in
some preoccupation of his thoughts.
"What sort of day is it?" he asked, without replying to the greeting.
"It is fine, M'sieur le Prince," answered the valet; "a beautiful
day."
"H'm!" The Prince de Monpavon lifted himself on one silk-sleeved
elbow to see for himself. The window was on the west side of the
building, so that from the bed one looked as through a tunnel of
shadow to a sunlight that hung aloof and distant. He surveyed it for
a space of minutes with a face of discontent, then fell back on his
pillows.
"Thought it was raining," he remarked. "Something feels wrong about
it. What time is it?"
"It is twenty minutes past eleven, M'sieur le Prince," replied the
servant. "I will fetch M'sieur le Prince's letters. And M. Dupontel
has telephoned."
"Eh?" The Prince's hard eyes came round to him swiftly, but not soon
enough to see that movement of his right hand that gave him the
appearance of deftly pocketing some small object concealed in the
palm of it. "What does he say?"
"He will be here at noon, and hopes that M'sieur le Prince will go to
take lunch with him."
The Prince nodded slowly, and the valet, treading always as if noise
were a sacrilege, passed out of the room to fetch the letters. The
Prince lifted his head to pack the pillow under it more conveniently,
and waited in an appearance of deep thought. Under the bedclothes the
contour of his body showed long, and slender, and his face, upturned
to the canopy of the bed, was one upon which the years of his age had
found slight foothold. It had the smooth pallor of a man whose chief
activities are indoors: it was wary, nervous, and faintly sinister,
with strong, dark eyebrows standing in picturesque contrast to the
white hair. The figure he was accustomed to present was that of a man
established in life as in a stronghold.
He was neither youthful nor elderly, but mature. Without fortune or
rich connections, he had contrived during nearly thirty years to live
as a man of wealth; he had seen the game ecarte go out and bridge
come in; and had so devised the effect he made that he was still more
eminent as a personality than as a gambler. Though he played in many
places, he was careful not to win too much in any of them, and rather
than press for a debt he would forgive it.
The rat-faced valet reappeared, carrying a salver on which were some
half dozen envelopes. The Prince took them, and proceeded to examine
them before opening them, while the valet, still with his uncanny
noiselessness, continued his interrupted preparations. Two of the
letters the Prince tossed to the floor forthwith; he knew them for
trifling bills. Of the others, there was one with the name of a Paris
hotel printed on the flap which appeared to interest him. He had that
common weakness for guessing at a letter before opening it which
princes share with scullions; and in the case of this one there was
something vaguely familiar in the handwriting to which he could not
put a name. He stared at it thoughtfully, and felt again a momentary
stirring within him of that ill ease with which he had waked from
sleep, which had made him doubt that the day was bright. Like all
gamblers, he found significance in things themselves insignificant.
Impatiently he abandoned his speculations and tore the envelope open;
then turned upon his elbow to look at the signature.
"Parbleu!" he exclaimed.
The valet turned at the sound, but his master had forgotten his
existence. The man, his hands still busy inserting studs in a shirt,
watched with sidelong glances how the Prince had thrown off his
languor and leaned above his letter, startled and absorbed.
"MY DEAR MONPAVON [read the Prince]: For the first time since our
parting, nearly a generation ago, I am once more in Paris, of which
the very speech has become strange in my mouth. I return as a citizen
of the United States, a foreigner; you will perhaps recognize me with
difficulty; and I would hardly give you that trouble were it not for
the engagement which is outstanding between us an engagement which
you will not fail to recall. It was concluded upon that evening on
which we saw each other last, when, having lost to you all that
remained to me to lose, you offered me my revenge whenever I should
choose to come for it. Well, I have come for it. I will call upon you
as soon as possible. I hope such visits are still as welcome to you
as once they were."
And at the tail of the letter there sprawled the signature, bold and
black: "JULES CARIGNY."
"Tiens!" exclaimed the Prince.
The valet moved. "M'sieur le Prince spoke?" he queried.
"No!" said the Prince impatiently. He glanced up from his letter at
the man's sly, secret face. "But by the way have you ever heard of a
Monsieur Carigny?"
It was with something like the empty shell of a smile that the man
answered. "Everybody who knows M'sieur le Prince has heard of him,"
he said suavely.
"H'm!" the Prince grunted doubtfully, but he knew it was true.
Everybody had heard of Carigny and the revenge that was due to him;
impossible to refuse it to him now.
There are incidents in every man's life concerning which one can
never be sure that they are closed; in such a life as that of the
Prince de Monpavon there are many. The affair of Carigny, nearly
thirty years before, was one of them. While he stared again at the
letter, there rose before the Prince's eyes a vision of the evening
upon which they had parted in a great; over-ornate room with
card-tables in it, and a hanging chandelier of glass lusters that
shivered and made a tinkling bell-music whenever the door opened. It
had been a short game. It was a season of high stakes, and Carigny,
as a loser, had doubled and doubled till the last quick hand that
finished him. He was a slim youth, with a face smooth and pale. He
sat back in his chair, with his head hanging, staring with a look of
stupefaction at the cards that spelled his ruin, his finish, and his
exile. About him, some of the onlookers began to talk loudly to cover
his confusion, and their voices seemed to restore him. He blinked and
closed his mouth, and sat up. "Well," he said, then, "there's an end
of that!"
The Prince had answered with some conventional remark, the insincere
regrets of a winner for the loser's ill fortune, and had added
something about giving Carigny his revenge.
The other smiled a little and shook his head. "You are very good," he
had answered; "but at present that is impossible. Some day, perhaps."
He paused. He had risen from his chair, and, though the evening was
yet young, he had the look of a man wearied utterly. All the room was
watching him; it was known that he had lost all.
"Whenever you like," the Prince had replied.
Carigny nodded slowly. "It may be a long time," he said. "I can see
that it may be years. But, since you are so good, some day we will
play once more. It is agreed?"
"Certainly; it is agreed," said the Prince.
Carigny smiled once more. He had a queer, ironic little smile that
seemed to mock its own mirth. Then, nodding a good night here and
there, he had gone toward the door, tall and a little drooping,
between the men who stood aside to give him passage, strangely
significant and notable at that final moment. At the door he had
turned and looked toward the Prince.
"Au revoir!" he had said.
And the Prince, concerned not to fail in his attitude, not to make
the wrong impression upon those who watched, had matched his tone
carefully to Carigny's as he replied: "Au revoir!"
The thing had touched men's imaginations. The drama of that promised
return, years ahead, had made a story; it had threatened the Prince
with notoriety. He had had to live dexterously to escape it to play
little and with restraint for many months afterward. It had had to be
suffered to exhaust itself, to die lingeringly. It had lain in its
grave for nearly thirty years; and now, like a hand reaching out from
a tomb, came this letter. The incident was not closed.
"No wonder," said the Prince to himself, as he knotted his necktie
before the mirror "no wonder the day felt wrong! There is bad luck in
the very air. I must be very careful today."
M. Dupontel, waiting for him in the salon, saw him enter between the
folding doors with a face upon which his distaste of the day had cast
a shadow. Dupontel was no more than twenty-five, and the Prince was
one of his admirations and his most expensive hobby. He rose from his
seat, smiling, surveying, the other's effect of immaculate clothing,
fine bearing, and striking looks, and marking the set of his
countenance.
"You look very correct today," he remarked pleasantly.
The Prince nodded without humor. "It is one of my days for being
correct," he answered. "I feel it in the air it is a day to be on my
guard. I have these sensations sometimes not often, mercifully! and I
have learned to pay attention to them."
Dupontel smiled again. "To me it seems a cheerful day," he said. "And
you begin it well, at any rate."
"How, then?" The Prince, coaxing on his grey gloves, turned narrowed
eyes upon him. "In what way do I begin it well?"
Dupontel produced a pocket-book from the breast of his coat. "I have
to settle with you over last evening," he said. "Two thousand, wasn't
it? I call that beginning any day well."
He dropped the notes upon the little table where the Prince's hat and
cane lay.
The Prince picked up the notes.
"Thanks!" he said. He looked at the young man almost with curiosity.
"Sure it's convenient?"
For answer, Dupontel showed him his pocketbook, with still half a
dozen thousand-franc notes in it.
"I see," said the Prince.
He still hesitated for a moment or two, as if touched by some
compunction, before he put the notes into his pocket. It had occurred
to him vaguely that he might propitiate his fortune by sacrificing
this money make himself, as it were, by a timely generosity, the
creditor of good luck. But it was not the kind of thing he was used
to do.
"Eh bien!" he said, and put the notes out of sight.
"And now," said Dupontel, "let us eat."
"Yes," said the Prince slowly. "That is the next thing, I suppose.
And presently I will tell you a reason why this is a day to be
careful of."
In the elevator that bore them toward the street, he began of a
sudden to search his pockets. Dupontel, watching, him in surprise,
saw a real worry replace the customary lofty impassivity of his face.
"You have lost something?" he asked.
"Yes," answered the Prince shortly. "Take us up again at once," he
ordered the attendant.
"I will not keep you a moment," he said to Dupontel, when the
elevator had reached his own floor again, and he entered his
apartment quickly.
He found his valet still in the bedroom, putting it deftly in order,
always with that secret and furtive quality of look and movement. The
Prince, tall, notably splendid in person, halted in the doorway; the
man, mean, little, shaped by servile and menial uses, stopped in the
middle of the room and returned his gaze warily. There was an instant
of silence.
"I had a coin," began the Prince. "A gold coin, not a French one! I
had it in my pocket last night. Where is it?"
Never was anything so shallow as the other's pretence of distressed
ignorance. It was as if he scarcely troubled to dissemble his
amusement and malice.
"But I have not seen it, M'sieur le Prince," he said. "If M'sieur le
Prince wishes, I will search. Doubtless."
"I am in a hurry," interrupted the Prince. "It is a Mexican coin
worth ten francs only." He held out a coin. "Here is a ten-franc
piece. Be quick."
They were equals for the moment; the relationship was plain to both
of them. With no failing of his countenance, the valet drew the
missing, piece from his pocket.
"Mexican?" he said. "I thought it was Spanish."
The coins changed hands. Neither of them failed in his attitude; they
were well matched.
The Prince rejoined Dupontel with his Mexican gold piece still in his
hand.
"It was this I had left behind," he said, showing the thin-worn gold
disc. "It is well, a talisman of mine, a sort of mascot. I was nearly
going without it. Rather than do that I would stay at home."
Dupontel laughed. "You are superstitious, then?" he said lightly. "It
is not much to look at, your talisman."
The Prince shook his head; it seemed impossible to make him smile
that morning.
"That is true," he agreed, "but a man must put faith in something.
When you have heard what I have to tell you, you will understand
that."
The streets, those lively streets of Paris that mask the keenness of
their commerce with so festive a face, were sunlit as they passed on
their way, and along the boulevards the trees were gracious with
young green. They went at the even and leisurely pace which is
natural in that city of many halting-places two men worth turning to
look at, so perfectly did each, in his particular way, typify his
world. Both were tall, easy-moving, sure and restrained in every
gesture. Dupontel at twenty-five, for all the boyishness that
sometimes showed in him, had already his finished personal effect;
and the Prince, white-haired, dark-browed, with a certain austerity
of expression, was as complete a thing as a work of art.
"Then what is it, exactly, that you fear from this Carigny?" asked
Dupontel, when the Prince had told him of the letter. "I have heard
the story, of course; but I never heard he was dangerous."
"It is not he that is dangerous," said the Prince.
"What, then?"
The Prince shook his head doubtfully. Such men as he seldom have a
confidant, but he was used to speak to Dupontel with more freedom
than to any other.
"Things are dangerous," he answered. "There is bad luck about; I tell
you, I feel it. And now, this business of Carigny cropping up, rising
like a ghost of the past to demand a reckoning!" He shuddered; it was
like the shudder of a man who feels a sudden chill. "A reckoning!" he
repeated. "At this rate, one is never quit of anything."
They were nearing the restaurant at which they were to lunch.
Dupontel touched his companion lightly on the arm.
"You are depressed," he said. "You must gather your forces, Monpavon.
You mustn't let Carigny find you in a state like this; it would make
things easy for him."
The Prince made a weary little gesture of assent. "I shall be ready
for him," he said. "If only-"
"If only what?"
They were at the door of the restaurant. A page like a scarlet doll
held open the door for them; a Swiss, ornately uniformed, stood
frozen at the salute. The Prince's somber eyes passed unseeing over
these articles of human furniture.
"If only I don't get a sign," he said; "like going out without my
Mexican coin, you know that would be a sign. If only I can avoid that
and a couple of other things I'll be ready enough for Monsieur
Carigny when he comes."
"Tiens!" said Dupontel. "You and your signs, c'est epatant!"
He was amused, and even a little contemptuous. He had not yet been
long enough at play to reach that stage when the gambler is the
servant of small private fetishes when an incident at the beginning
of the day can fill him with fears or hopes, and all life has a
meaning which expresses itself in the run of the cards.
They took their places at the table reserved for them. Waiters stood
aloof, effacing themselves, prepared to pounce upon their smallest
need and annihilate it. Dupontel breathed a number as he sat down,
and the rotund and reverend wine-waiter, wearing a chain of office,
tried to express in his face respectful esteem for a man who could
give such an order.
"You need a stimulant, an encouragement," said Dupontel, leaning
across to the Prince. "Therefore I have ordered for us."
He had his hands joined under his chin and his elbows on the table.
The Prince, with something like a crisp oath, snatched at the
salt-cellar which his movement would have overset, and saved it saved
it with grains of salt sliding on the very rim, but none fallen to
the table. He made sure of this fact anxiously.
"That was a near thing," he said, looking up at Dupontel. There was
actually color in his face.
"Another fraction of a second and" His gesture completed the
sentence.
"My dear fellow!" remonstrated Dupontel.
"That was the second," said the Prince. "First I nearly left my coin
at home that was my servant's doing. Then the salt is all but spilled
my friend does that. If I had a wife, I should expect to owe the
third danger to her. Who will bring it to me, I wonder?"
"You are extraordinary, with your signs and dangers," said Dupontel.
"I never heard you speak like this before. And, in any case, you have
averted two perils."
"I have averted two," agreed the Prince. "You are right; that in
itself is almost a sign. It it gives me hope for the third the blind
man."
"Eh? The blind man? What blind man?"
The Prince took a spoonful of soup.
"Sometimes I forget how young you are," he said. "A blind man, of
course, is nothing to you. You give him an alms, touching his hand
when you put the money into it, and go on to the club to play bridge.
But if I, by any chance of the street, were to touch a blind man, I
should go home and go to bed. I have my share of prudence me! and
that is a risk I do not take. No!"
He interrupted himself to drink from his glass, while Dupontel sat
back and prepared, with a gesture of utter impatience, to be
contemptuous and argumentative.
"Carigny," said the Prince, setting his glass down, "Carigny, in the
old days, believed that too. But he was not prudent. That night we
played, that last night of which he writes in his letter, there was a
blind man who begged of him. And when he would have dropped a franc
in his hand, the creature groped suddenly for the coin. We were
walking to the club together, and I saw it, standing aside meanwhile.
It was an old debris of a man, who begged in a voice that whispered
and croaked, and his hand was shriveled and purple, and it wavered
and trembled as he held it out. Because he was blind, with eyelids
swollen and discolored, Carigny said, as he drew the money from his
pocket: 'Here is a franc, my friend!' Then the old creature groped,
as I have said, with a jerk of his inhuman claw, and grabbed the
money from Carigny before he could let it fall, and I saw their hands
touch. Carigny would not have played that night but that we had
appointed to play."
"You could have let him off till next day," said Dupontel.
The Prince shook his head. "In those times," he said, "it was not the
custom to break one's engagements neither to break them nor to allow
them to be broken."
"I should like to see this Carigny of yours," said Dupontel
thoughtfully. "When do you expect him to call on you?"
"His letter says 'as soon as possible,'" answered the Prince. "That
constitutes in itself an engagement which Carigny will not fail to
keep. He will come this afternoon."
Their meal achieved itself perfectly, like a ritual There arrived the
time when the Prince set down his tiny coffee-cup and leaned back
detachedly, while the waiter with the bill went through his
celebrated impersonation of a man receiving a favor. Together they
passed out between the great glass doors to the street.
"You will walk?" inquired Dupontel.
"As usual," said the Prince. It was his custom to pass the time
between lunch and the hour when he was likely to find a game of
bridge in strolling; it served for exercise.
"But," suggested the young man, "you might meet a blind man! Wouldn't
it be better to go straight to the club?"
"And meet one on the way there?" The Prince shook his head. "No, my
friend. That is a chance one must take. One can, however, keep one's
eyes open."
In the Place de la Concorde they actually did meet a blind man a
lean, bowed man feeling his way along the curb with a stick deftly
enough, so that, as he was on the wrong side of the sidewalk, it
would have been easy enough to brush against him in passing. It was
the Prince who first perceived him approaching. He touched Dupontel
and pointed.
"Parbleu!" exclaimed Dupontel. He looked strangely at the blind
bearer of fate and then at his companion. The Prince was smiling now,
but not in mirth.
"Let us make room for him," he said; and they stepped into the
roadway to let him pass.
What was strange was that when he came abreast of them he paused,
with his face nosing and peering in his blindness, and felt before
him with an extended hand, as if he had expected to find something in
his way. The hand and the skinny wrist, protruding from the frayed
sleeve and searching the empty air, affected Dupontel unpleasantly;
they touched the fund of credulity in him which is at the root of all
men who believe in nothing. He watched the blind man like an actor in
a scene till he moved on again, with his stick tracing the edge of
the curb and his strained face unresponsive to the sunlight.
"What was he doing?" he asked, then.
The Prince's wry smile showed again. "Doing?" he repeated, "why, he
was feeling for me."
Dupontel shrugged, but not in disapproval this time. His imagination
was burdened with a new sense of his companion's life, complex with
difficulties, haunted by portents like specters of good and evil
fortune.
"But, at all events, he did not touch you!" he said at last.
"No!" The Prince swung his cane, drawing up his tall, trim figure,
and stepping out briskly. "No, he did not touch me. They dog me,
these, these tokens of the devil; but I am not caught. It is I that
save myself. After all, mon cher, it seems possible that this may be
Carigny's bad day not mine!"
Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day;
his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. But
it was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be something
which it would be well to have seen; and, besides, his affairs were
gaining a strange hue; glamour was in them. He felt a little thrill
when the massive club porter, approaching them in the hall, spoke
Carigny's name.
"Monsieur Carigny telephoned," said the porter. "He particularly
desired that Monsieur le Prince should be told, as soon as he
arrived, that Monsieur Carigny would call at half-past four."
The Prince nodded. "I shall be upstairs, in the card-room," he
answered, and passed on.
In the card-room were several men of the Prince's who had known
Carigny in his Paris days, while there was scarcely a man present who
had not heard some version of the Carigny story. To certain of them
the Prince spoke of the visit he was expecting. He had decided that,
since the meeting was not by any means to be avoided or hidden, it
would best serve him to announce it to take his part in the drama and
squeeze it of what credit he could. It spread through the room and
through the club like a scandal. There was a throng in the room,
expectant, hungry for the possibility of a scene. In the recess of a
tall window, the Prince, superb in his self-possession, a figure in a
world of players that was past, with his pale, severe face impassive
under his white hair, made the crowd of them seem vulgar and raucous
by contrast with him. Dupontel, watching him, had a moment of
consternation; the Prince seemed a thing too supremely complete, too
perfect as a product of his world, to risk upon the turn of the
cards.
A club servant entered, bearing a card on a salver, and the talk
stilled as he presented it to the Prince. He, in converse with a
veteran who had known Carigny, took the card and held it in his
fingers without looking at it while he finished what he was saying.
All eyes were on him; it was a neat piece of social bravado. He
glanced at the card at last.
"Announce Monsieur Carigny," he said to the servant, and went on
talking. Dupontel felt like cheering him. The talk resumed, in a
changed key.
The door opened, and the servant was once more visible, standing back
against it, not without a sense of his importance as, say, a
scene-shifter in the play. His voice, rolling the r, was a flat
bellow of ceremony.
"Monsieur Car-rigny," he announced, "and Monsieur Georges Car-rigny!"