by M C Beaton
Heavy drops of rain began to thud down on the promenade and black-clad waiters dashed out to gather in chairs, tables, and umbrellas.
“You’ll be drowned if you leave now,” said Mr. Brent cheerfully, leading the unwilling couple to a nearby café. “Come … let me offer you a glass of wine.”
To run away through the rain would have seemed eccentric to say the least so the unwilling couple followed him into the café.
These cafés were only meant for the sun, thought Lucy. Bereft of its gay striped umbrellas, it seemed a dismal affair inside with flyblown mirrors, a sanded floor, and rickety wooden tables and chairs. A small brown-and-white dog of indeterminate breed urinated with Gallic indifference against the doorway.
Seemingly oblivious of his new friends’ stony faces, Jeremy Brent ordered champagne and then settled back comfortably in his chair.
“Well, sir, I must admit I was very impressed by the play of your daughter at the casino. Extraordinary luck. Yes. Wouldn’t think she was your sister, Miss Balfour-MacGregor. You aren’t very alike, you know.”
“Quite,” said Lucy.
The rain lashed down on the promenade as if trying to prove that winter could be just as nasty in Monte Carlo as anywhere else.
“Does she usually have that kind of luck, Mr. Balfour-MacGregor?”
“Beginner’s luck, that’s all. She is a very retiring sort of girl. Going into a convent next week,” said MacGregor, improvising wildly.
“Oh, I say, that is a shame. You don’t happen to share her luck, miss . . ?”
“No.”
“Oh, well, wish I had luck like that. But baccarat’s the very devil.”
“I’m afraid baccarat—in fact any kind of gambling—bores me,” said Lucy with a delicate yawn.
“I say, I am sorry. Are you staying in Monte for a while?”
“We are leaving tomorrow,” said MacGregor. “It seems as though the rain will never stop.”
“And then where do you plan to go?”
“To London eventually. My daughter is coming out next Season.”
“By George! I’m glad I met her first,” said Mr. Brent enthusiastically. “All the chaps will be at your feet, Miss Balfour-MacGregor. They’ll be lying outside your house in droves.”
Lucy smiled at his nonsense, liking his square tanned face.
“I shall be staying with a friend of mine in Stanhope Gate—Lady Hester Blendish? Perhaps you are acquainted with her. Friend of my mother.”
“I know her slightly,” said MacGregor who had once had the honor of serving Lady Hester tea.
“If I remember rightly, she detests foreigners.”
Jeremy Brent raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Then you do indeed know her better than most. That is a dislike which she is slightly ashamed of and only imparts to her closest friends. I say, it is jolly meeting you like this. May I leave my card with you when you are in London?”
“I am not quite sure where we shall be staying—” began MacGregor but Lucy interrupted with, “Oh, we shall let you know our address when we find a place.”
She ignored a glare from MacGregor. Lucy had taken a liking to this large, pleasant young man, especially since he had dropped the touchy subject of gambling.
A weak ray of watery sunlight crept into the dingy café and MacGregor almost leapt to his feet. “Come along, Lucy, we’ll be late for our next appointment.”
“Perhaps I may escort you—” began Mr. Brent but his offer was almost rudely brushed aside by MacGregor. “No, no,” he fussed. “No need for that.”
Lucy turned at the entrance to the café and bestowed her warmest smile on her new admirer. “Thank you for the champagne, Mr. Brent. I shall certainly look forward to seeing you in London.”
“Forward! You’re the one that’s forward!” muttered MacGregor a few minutes later. “You should not encourage any young man so boldly.”
“I thought he was rather nice,” said Lucy as they walked slowly along the rain-washed promenade.
“He reminded me a bit too much of myself,” said MacGregor obscurely, and would say no more.
“Why did you say we would leave tomorrow?” persisted Lucy, who was just beginning to enjoy the novelty of wearing a pretty dress and looking like herself.
“Well, well. I thought we might travel on. The weathers going to turn bad and we don’t want to be trapped here. There’s a small place in Germany that’s just become fashionable. Let me see … what’s it called? Ah, Herrenbad! That’s it! We’ll go to Herrenbad.”
They walked slowly off to look for a fiacre, their figures silhouetted against a primrose-yellow sunset.
Jeremy Brent eased himself out from his hiding place behind a clump of palms.
“I might just travel to Herrenbad myself,” he murmured, and stood watching the two retreating figures until they were out of sight.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lucy looked around the table at the players and prayed she was not going to faint.
The casino rooms were stifling, a hell of red Turkey carpets, red plush, and green baize. She wanted more than anything to leave. She seemed to have won an incredible sum of money but there was no sound of MacGregor’s cough from behind her—the signal to leave. The masklike faces of the other gamblers at the table had not betrayed, by so much as a flicker, their surprise at her extraordinary luck. But the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed excitement. Her wig was making her head ache and the pillows down her dress were making her sweat in a very unladylike way.
Gradually—as is the mysterious way in casinos— the news of her phenomenal luck began to spread through the rooms and soon a silent, avaricious audience was crowding around the table, their faces like the faces at a bullfight.
Lucy found herself suddenly praying for some bad luck, any bad luck. It was uncanny; it was frightening the way the right cards winked up at her from her hand. A world where people worked hard for their daily bread seemed infinitely far away and infinitely desirable. A new element had crept into the room, an element of danger. Lucy decided she must be overtired.
Bands of smoke snaked in front of her eyes. A woman in the watching crowd across the table made a sudden movement and her jewels blazed and flashed.
There was an infinitesimal signal between one of the players and the bank, and new packs of cards were produced. “She must have won about twenty thousand pounds,” said a high, silly voice somewhere behind Lucy. The player who had signaled toward the bank looked momentarily at Lucy. Something not quite human flickered in the back of his reptilian eyes and Lucy shuddered. She was now aware of the source of the feeling of danger. And still MacGregor was silent.
Sweat was now running down under her wig and making rivulets in the gray powder. The journey to Herrenbad had been exhausting. MacGregor had traveled on as if driven by demons. They had accumulated a fortune already, he had explained. Herrenbad would be their last killing and then Lucy could relax.
Desperately she twisted her head and looked back. She found herself looking up into the eyes of a stranger. Where, oh where, was MacGregor?
MacGregor was at the moment propping up the bar with his old acquaintance, Jeremy Brent, who, by some surprising coincidence, had happened to appear at the Herrenbad casino. MacGregor had been very wary and suspicious and had left the table where Lucy was playing to accompany Jeremy Brent to the bar to see if he could detect any sinister motives in the young man’s sudden reappearance.
But the young man had been disarming to say the least. He had remarked indifferently that Miss Balfour-MacGregor had obviously not yet entered the convent. She intended to give her winnings to the nuns, MacGregor had said, and Jeremy had received that whopper without so much as a bunk. As the whiskey sank in the glass MacGregor began to revise his opinion of Mr. Brent. He was a pleasant young fellow and obviously in funds. Perhaps he might even be a possible suitor for Lucy. He had never believed that anything would come of that Andrew Harvey business. Not that Lucy wasn’t an exceptio
nally pretty girl, but then the handsome viscount had already been pursued by a legion of very pretty girls.
Jeremy was beginning to wonder if Mr. Balfour-MacGregor had hollow legs or bottomless, elastic-sided boots. He had already consumed nearly a bottle of the best imported Scotch whiskey and seemed ready to consume another. Jeremy wondered if he should somehow manage to court Harriet Balfour-MacGregor (the fictitious name MacGregor had given to his “other daughter”), or simply follow them back to their hotel and take the money. He fingered the small pistol he had concealed inside his frock coat pocket. If Harriet had won enough, that might be the easiest way. But he didn’t believe the story about the convent for one minute.
Alarm bells were beginning to penetrate the pleasant fog in MacGregor’s brain. He had almost drunk himself sober, a state he knew, from long experience, that would not last very long.
“It’s getting late,” he said, getting to his feet. “No, no. Don’t ask me to take another one, Mr. Brent. It’s late and my poor little Harriet will be looking for me.”
With Jeremy close at his heels, MacGregor pushed through the press of people around the baccarat table and gave a loud cough. Lucy rose immediately to her feet and dizzily surveyed the pile of plaques beside her. She had no idea how much she had won. The crowd parted silently to let them through. She gave one startled look at Jeremy and immediately lowered her eyes. She walked to the caisse with MacGregor as if walking through a dream. Brightly painted faces seem to loom suddenly out of the crowd and stare at her own. And every stop of the way she had that brooding feeling of danger.
Dizzily she watched the cashier counting out the money. Dizzily she watched MacGregor pocketing a great sheaf of notes. Waves of faintness came roaring around her ears and the people in the casino seemed to bend and sway and shiver like so many demonic water sprites.
Lucy heard the murmur of Jeremy Brent’s voice and felt the reassuring pressure of his arm under her elbow. “Perhaps a brandy for Miss Balfour-MacGregor … ?” he asked and she heard MacGregor’s grunt of assent.
A glass of brandy was held to her lips and Mr. Brent urged, “Drink up, Miss Harriet!” (Harriet?) Lucy took a great gulp and the room took a few more turns and then settled down like a gaudy carousel coming to rest.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Brent. What are you doing here in Herrenbad?”
Mr. Brent looked at Lucy in surprise. Her voice was strangely muffled. He winced slightly. What an ugly, fat, almost deformed face she had!
“I came by chance, Miss Harriet. I had an opportunity to meet your beautiful sister in Monte. She does not visit the casinos like you.”
Lucy remembered her role of future nun. “Lucy is a good girl,” she said vehemently. “Not like me. I have sinned. I shall make reparation by donating my winnings to the convent.”
She spoke with such force that Mr. Brent blinked. Perhaps her father’s story had been true after all. Certainly such an ugly girl would probably wish to hide herself away from the world, although, in his experience, ugly girls, if they were rich, had an embarrassing habit of considering themselves irresistible. A film of gray sweat was forming on Miss Balfour-MacGregor’s upper lip and her bosom was like a great shapeless pillow. Courtship was definitely out. He fingered the pistol in his pocket.
The massed storm clouds of drunkenness were beginning to form on the perimeter of MacGregor’s brain. He abruptly got to his feet. “We must go L—Harriet. Be a good girl and finish your brandy.” Lucy obediently drank up and led the way through the entrance hall of the casino. The black feeling of menace closed in on her again.
Jeremy Brent was insisting on escorting them to their hotel. Lucy clutched MacGregor’s arm. “I have a feeling of danger,” she whispered.
“Nonsense,” MacGregor whispered back. “You’re just a bit overtired.”
But in the carriage ride back to the hotel, his brain seemed to have become unusually sharp. Lucy had won the vast sum of £35,000, a veritable fortune. He had been acquainted with enough Highland people in his lifetime to know that if they experienced feelings of danger there was bound to be danger about.
He walked thoughtfully into the hotel foyer, his mind still wrestling with the problem of incipient danger and fighting off the effects of nearly a bottle and a half of Scotch whiskey. He found to his annoyance that Jeremy Brent was still with them. The rules of Scottish hospitality must be obeyed. “Perhaps you would care to join us in our suite for a nightcap, Mr. Brent?”
“That’s very nice of you,” said Jeremy, accepting with alacrity.
They walked up the red-carpeted staircase under the flaring gas chandeliers. The air smelled of wine and garlic and incipient snow—as gusts of damp-laden air rushed in with every turn of the revolving doors.
Jeremy was impressed by the Balfour-MacGregor suite that seemed to take up the whole of the first floor. MacGregor fumbled for his key, swaying slightly as he inserted it in the lock.
He swayed even more as he crossed the drawing room to a small table laden with bottles which served as the bar.
“I say, you’ve got a ripping setup here,” Jeremy was saying enthusiastically. “Why, you should see my …
His voice trailed away and MacGregor suddenly sobered. Lucy’s menace was in the room behind him.
He slowly turned with a decanter in his hand.
Lucy’s opponent from the baccarat table—he who had signaled for a fresh pack of cards—was sitting in the corner of the room holding a heavy army revolver. It was pointed straight at Lucy’s head. The reptilian eyes did not waver from their target and, in heavily-accented English, he demanded, “The money, please.”
“Money? What money?” asked MacGregor stupidly, gazing at the robber with unfocused eyes and waving the decanter wildly in one hand.
The intruder gave a slow smile. He was a large, yellowish man, completely bald. His fat hands had done their best to make up for his lack of locks by being covered in thick ginger hair.
“I know I was cheated this evening,” he said. “Oh, the so-polite gentlemen of the casino assured me that it was definitely luck"—here he stood up and made Lucy a grotesque bow—"but I am convinced otherwise. No one but the devil himself has such luck and no one cheats Constantine Stathos.” The hand holding the revolver did not waver. “The money,” he snapped.
To Lucy, it was a fitting end to the nightmare of the evening. The close drawing room with its blazing coal fire, its heavy ormolu furniture, its masses of red velvet curtains draping the doorways and windows, seemed a suitable setting for this weird scene which could have come from a Victorian melodrama. She did not feel afraid. Only very, very ill. MacGregor must be very drunk, she realized. The man could hardly keep his balance and his long, gangling legs seemed to have taken on a life of their own.
“All right, you damned Greek,” said MacGregor lurching forward. He pulled a heavy Morocco leather wallet from his pocket and held it out to Constantine Stathos.
Jeremy stood trembling with fear. He wanted to pull out his own pistol but he was too afraid of being shot.
Mr. Stathos reached out his hand for the wallet. MacGregor swayed so that his face was very near the Greek’s own.
“Don’t shoot me,” whined MacGregor. “Don’t shoot, for God’s sake. I’m afraid to die.”
“So the British are cowards after all,” sneered Stathos. He flicked a glance of contempt toward the shivering Jeremy and then back to MacGregor’s pleading, drunken eyes.
Before Lucy had quite managed to grasp what had happened, there was a tremendous crack and the next minute the Greek was lying unconscious on the floor with blood streaming down his face.
MacGregor calmly pocketed the money again and picked up the revolver. “Never underestimate the British, laddie,” he laughed. “Well, this calls for a wee bit of a celebration.”
“How did you manage it?” gasped Jeremy Brent. He was very white under his tan and his hands were shaking.
“It’s a trade secret,” MacGregor said smiling, opening
the decanter. “Sit down L—Harriet. You’ve got nothing to worry about any more.”
“I say, old man, hadn’t we better call the Polizei or something?” said Jeremy, beginning to recover from his fear and noticing vaguely that Miss Balfour-MacGregor’s figure seemed to have slipped completely to one side.
“We’re leaving for London tomorrow,” said MacGregor. “We cannot wait around for law courts or magistrates or whatever they have here.”
Jeremy had stopped fingering his pistol. The Balfour-MacGregors seemed to be quite a formidable pair. Father was in the process of getting drunk all over again and that peculiar daughter sat staring at the window as if she were in a dream. And what on earth had happened to her figure?
“Must you go to London?” he babbled. “Practically everybody is abroad or in Scotland. You’ll find it very thin of company. Let me see …” He began to recite names and titles of the eminent who were not to be found in London at this unfashionable part of the year. “… except for Andrew Harvey who’s wintering in Brittany. Can you imagine? Brittany, this time of year!” He stopped and stared at Miss Balfour-MacGregor. Her face was illuminated with a sudden radiance, making her fat features almost beautiful. And that figure! It looked as if she had a pillow stuffed under her dress.
MacGregor noticed him staring at Lucy and put down his glass with a click. “You really must excuse us, Mr. Brent. We have had an exhausting evening.”
“But what about him?” asked Jeremy, staring at Mr. Stathos, who was beginning to show signs of life.
“Oh, just leave him to us,” said MacGregor, piloting Jeremy firmly toward the door.
“Well, toodle-pip, and all that,” said Jeremy, trying to crane his head over MacGregor’s shoulder for a last look at the peculiar Harriet. “See you in London, Miss Harriet,” he called. “I think I’ll journey on there myself. Which boat were you … ?”
“Call on us tomorrow,” said MacGregor, pushing him out into the corridor and firmly shutting the door.
He cursed under his breath and jerked it open again. “Call on us about ten,” he shouted.