Linnet: A Romance
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!