Neither had Mr. Vest. He was used to playing with men who took the game seriously and who scorned the company of raw amateurs, but he had never played against such a one as Mr. Darcy. Mr. Vest was not so inexperienced as to think that the abominably cool man across the table was winning on luck alone. Nor was he so unobservant as not to recognize that Mr. Darcy would often sacrifice a score to spoil a pique that Mr. Vest thought should be his. Yet Mr. Darcy had anything but the look of a card-sharp, and Mr. Vest was not quite sure why he was losing so calamitously, and worse, why he was so doggedly pursuing the game in the face of those losses.
Mr. Darcy could have told Mr. Vest that he had been deeply bitten by the bug. It was no longer early, but Mr. Vest, instead of tiring of the game, had become excited by it, and he let every other consideration beyond his desire to score bigger and better points escape from his mind. Mr. Darcy knew how that could happen, too, and knew that when it did, the normally reasonable and cautious player would start chasing his own bad luck and throw good money after bad. He decided to call a halt to Mr. Vest’s frenzy.
“I count ten thousand,” Mr. Darcy said after a particularly devastating partie for Mr. Vest.
“Ten thousand,” Mr. Vest repeated in a hollow, disembodied voice. The long columns of figures swam before his disbelieving eyes. He had a nightmarish vision of selling his house and all his possessions, selling his wife and himself into slavery. Mechanically, he took another sip of brandy. “Ten thousand points. How many pounds does that make all together?”
Mr. Darcy returned no answer.
“I must have time,” Mr. Vest said at length, having some vague recollection that this was what one said when one was unable to extricate oneself from a debt of honour.
“By all means,” Mr. Darcy said. He had no desire to prolong Mr. Vest’s agony, and so he added, “Or you might prefer to do me a favour.”
“A favour in exchange for ten thousand points?” he exclaimed, bewildered. “At two shillings a point and God knows how many rubbers you won, that makes…” But his powers of computation failed him.
“The sum does not interest me,” Mr. Darcy replied coolly.
Mr. Vest stared at him for a long moment and then tried to pull himself together. “What is the favour?” he asked, with little hope of being able to grant it.
“Simply that you send Signore Bartolli on his way in the morning. Neither my wife nor I are in the least interested in his predicament, and we do not particularly welcome a visit from him or his sister.”
Mr. Vest had been through enough extraordinary experiences this evening to accept Mr. Darcy’s request with little more than a profound feeling of relief that it was within his power to grant this favour. Still, it was an exceedingly odd request. In his surprise, Mr. Vest was unable to suppress an exclamation. “So trifling a favour? But we must be talking about hundreds of pounds—even thousands—!”
“I do not think we are much above the thousand-pound mark,” Mr. Darcy said offhandedly.
Mr. Vest gasped.
“But do not value your services so low,” Mr. Darcy recommended to the beleaguered magistrate. “I am more than willing to forgo my winnings to be rid of unnecessary vexation.”
“Yes, but—” Mr. Vest began in protest, for some obscure precept occurred to him that debts of honour must be paid promptly with money or other tangible resources.
“Do you find yourself unable to perform this service for me?” Mr. Darcy asked with a pleasant smile.
“Oh, no, it is not that!” Mr. Vest reassured him hastily. “I am sure I could send him on his way without his troubling you. Though I am not precisely sure how I would go about that….”
Mr. Darcy said that he would leave the logistics to Mr. Vest’s ingenuity.
“I am sure I can contrive something,” Mr. Vest continued. “It’s just that— Well, it seems— That is—”
“Yes?” Mr. Darcy prodded helpfully.
Mr. Vest perceived that he was out of his depth. Something in Mr. Darcy’s amiable countenance forbade him from asking if this sort of exchange was acceptable in polite circles and made him conscious that in cavilling at Mr. Darcy’s offer, he had committed a social solecism. The brandy was still swirling in his brain, but Mr. Vest was not so foxed that he could not realize that there was a lot more to the business of the portmanteau than met the eye. Devilish smoky business, if he was any judge of things. However, Mr. Vest was in a position neither to investigate further nor to deny Mr. Darcy his request. Mr. Vest’s course of action was, in fact, eminently clear.
“I shall see to it that you receive no harassment from anyone tomorrow or any time during your visit to Igglesthorpe, and I have the law on my side,” he said with dignity. “Queer set of fish, those Italians! Always thought so!”
Mr. Darcy smiled and bowed. “Then I shall await your pleasure tomorrow after you have satisfactorily expedited the matter.”
It was as good as settled. There was nothing more for Mr. Vest to do than to take himself off. “I bid you good-night. Your servant, sir, madam!”
When the echo of Mr. Vest’s footsteps had died, Helen went over to the table and disposed herself in the chair lately vacated by the magistrate. “I suppose that I now have a fair idea of your tactics, sir, and your skill,” she said slowly, her tone mixing reproof with reluctant admiration.
“I suppose you do,” Mr. Darcy replied, sitting back down to face her, “and I have some idea of yours. My compliments, my dear. You were quite as convincing as Vincenzo!”
Helen was not going to let Mr. Darcy throw her off the subject so easily. “You treated Mr. Vest most shamefully!” she said.
“How so?” Mr. Darcy asked with mild surprise. “You perceive that I did not take so much as a penny from him.”
“No, but to have driven him on the way you did and to have made him suffer so! The poor man was in agony!”
“It was very brief, and I accomplished my aim with the minimum of suffering on his part. It would have been far more painful to him to have parted with well over a thousand pounds,” he pointed out. “I would not have you think me completely ruthless. I win only from people who can afford it.”
“Much you care for my opinion!”
“Unjust, my dear! But in this instance I am inclined to think that Mr. Vest’s experience did him no harm. In fact, I think it might have done him a great deal of good.”
“Next you will be telling me that he stood in need of a lesson and that you performed the kind office of being his teacher.”
“Tonight was not a night for half measures,” Mr. Darcy said calmly, “and as for lessons, people learn them where they will. I have never been afflicted with any Messianic drives.”
“Well,” she relented, “you are a very fine card player, sir.”
He smiled faintly. “I think I told you once that I win more than I lose.”
“That I can readily believe! I had the feeling that you knew every card that Mr. Vest held and manipulated every hand to your satisfaction.”
“You flatter me. I am not omniscient. I merely play the odds and pay attention. I also enjoyed a run of luck tonight.”
Helen believed he could have beaten Mr. Vest by five times as much if he had wished. She regarded the enigmatic gamester measuringly. “Luck, indeed! I cannot imagine that you have ever lost so much as tuppence at piquet.”
“Many is the time,” Mr. Darcy informed her, “that I have found my luck out.”
“And what do you do in such circumstances?”
“I excuse myself from the play and come back the next day. There are other diversions in life besides gambling!” he said.
“So I should suppose, but I hope you do not propose to tell me about them!” she replied.
“Naturally not.”
“But are you not an unwelcome sight in gambling houses? I can well imagine the tremors you must cause when you come into a house.”
“No,” he said. “I am most welcome if I make it clear that I shall not endeavo
ur to break the bank that day. There is something about fine card players, to use your words, that draws others. I am, er, good for business, and it would hardly look well for the reputation of a house to refuse my custom. They cannot prevent me from playing, but I have been, on occasion, discouraged.”
“Yet, I must think that there is some kind of unwritten law against people like you. You cannot be well received at the piquet table.”
“I am generally free to play piquet where I like,” he responded. Then, with a glint, “You see, my game is Hazard!”
“Oh! Are you discouraged from the Hazard table, then?”
“Sometimes, but I do not win as consistently there. I call it my game not because I have a mastery of it, but because it still masters me. There is an incalculable element in the throw of the dice that attracts me, I fear. One hopes that it will never prove a fatal attraction.”
“Am I to collect that piquet holds no more attraction for you, that you are too accomplished at it?”
“Spare my blushes, ma’am. I mean only that understanding the secret of Hazard presents an alluring challenge to me. That is all. As for piquet, I thoroughly enjoy the game. Take this evening, for instance.”
“An enjoyment entirely at poor Mr. Vest’s expense!” she said. “And you need not remind me that it did not cost him so much as a pound! Here I was thinking that you needed my help, but I find now that you could have done very well for yourself without my intervention.”
He smiled at that. “I cannot agree with you,” he said. “You added the decisive presence on our little stage and carried off the whole to perfection. I was lost in admiration of your acting skills. And such forthright views!”
A wash of colour spread across Helen’s cheeks. “I suppose I became a little carried away with myself. I felt like someone in a bad play, or a commedia, although I have never seen one and so do not know what they are like. But the worst of it was preserving my countenance. I should think that it must take an actor much practice to learn not to laugh when the most amusing things are taking place before his eyes!”
“Ah! I suspected that you were several times on the verge of exposing us with some untimely, and unwifely, laughter!”
Helen now gave vent to that laughter. “How could I not laugh? Tokens of your affection to Graziella, indeed! I dared not catch your eye for fear of going off into the whoops, which would have been fatal!”
“Laughing at such an indelicate reference, my dear?” he said in mock surprise. “Where are those morally uplifting principles that plagued you until so recently?”
“Fustian! They were left behind at the Brigstone Arms, I imagine,” she retorted, but then became serious. “What can Vincenzo’s object have been in laying this before Mr. Vest, I wonder? Was it to embarrass you into handing over the portmanteau?”
“Perhaps, and it was a bold move, I admit. One that could have been very clever, reckoning without Mr. Vest’s disaster at piquet. All Vincenzo apparently needs to do is to get into the portmanteau for a few moments and take whatever it is that is so cleverly hidden. I imagine that he was going to try to manipulate Mr. Vest into allowing him the privacy to do so, and then to make off with it, leaving me none the wiser, and empty-handed, to boot!”
“You do not know what it is that you are looking for?” Helen asked in some amazement.
“I am not precisely certain, but I have an idea,” was all Mr. Darcy would say.
“And you went through the portmanteau with care this afternoon? Could something not be concealed somewhere in its lining or even in the casement itself?”
“I thought of that, too, but there is nothing there.”
“I see,” Helen said at length. “You are very determined to get it back?”
“lam.”
“Would you go to any length to get it?”
“No,” he said calmly. “I would stop short of murder.”
Helen was surprised into a chuckle. “That is reassuring, in any event! At least we can hang on to the portmanteau for another while yet before Vincenzo comes calling again. Maybe we can find whatever it is together.” Just then an amusing idea danced into her head. “But, more important, I wonder how Mr. Vest is going to get rid of Vincenzo on the morrow. What stratagem would you, excellent gambler that you are, bet he will employ?”
“I am a gamester, never a gambling man,” Mr. Darcy said, refining a point, “and I think it entirely possible that our geographical friend might go on at boring length about the map of Italy so that Vincenzo finds himself forced to flee the country for the sake of his sanity!”
Just then, as if conjured out of the woodwork, Mr. Vest reappeared at the door of the back parlour, profusely excusing himself for intruding. He explained that he had left his hat upon a chair. He had regained his usually buoyant spirits, in part from the fresh air that had cleared his swimming head, in part from a native resilience, and in part from having suppressed the tiniest twinge of conscience at the idea that Mrs. Darcy just might have Signore Bartolli’s portmanteau. Mr. Vest took a practical view of justice: what he did not know could not trouble him.
He did not pause to chat, but confined himself to one observation. “That Italian fellow’s story—I daresay it’s all a hum! But stands to reason the fellow’s all confused. He has mixed blood, you know. He was telling me on the way over here, when I asked him a few, discreet questions, that his mother comes from Berlin. Now, of course, everyone has heard of Berlin, but I looked that up on the map, just to make sure, and discovered that it’s in the German states! Nowhere near Padua! An Italian fellow with a German mother! No wonder he is mixed up!”
Having imparted that juicy bit of information, Mr. Vest left the room.
Helen could not keep from gloating. “I knew it! I knew Vincenzo’s mother must be German! And you told me that we should never know! But now we do know, and I was right!”
Mr. Darcy regarded his exultant bride in silence.
“And we made a bet on it! Ten pounds, if I remember correctly. We did not shake on it, no, but you said ‘done,’ and you also said it was the safest bet you had ever made! I believe the wager stands, and you owe me ten pounds,” she stated, but held up her hand. “No, no! You need not pay me now. I shall understand if you need time.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Darcy said, deeply appreciative of his partner’s consideration, “and I am happy to have afforded you so much amusement.”
“Oh, you have!” she exclaimed most ungenerously with an irrepressible twinkle. “And I find my spirits entirely restored. I have not enjoyed myself so much since … well, since Mr. Vest last won at cards! I bid you good-night, Mr. Darcy!”
Without waiting for a reply, she left the room, and in this excellent humour, she retired to her bed.
CHAPTER TEN
THE NEXT DAY brought a third visitor to the George, but he was not another of Vincenzo’s personae.
Before the stranger’s unexpected entrance, however, Helen and Mr. Darcy received the expected visit from Mr. Vest. The magistrate came in the mid-afternoon, in the best of spirits and eager to recount his experiences with “that Italian fellow,” which had taken up the greater part of his day. He entered the back parlour with a speech he had been rehearsing mentally for the hour past.
“Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, I salute you, and I trust I find you in health,” he said with a half bow that was intended to indicate the greater degree of familiarity he now enjoyed with them.
Mr. Darcy returned the greeting in more conventional terms and came straight to the point. “Am I to infer from your presence that Igglesthorpe has been cleansed of all foreign elements?”
“I should think so, Mr. Darcy. Hieronymus Vest is a man of his word!”
Mr. Darcy pressed the point. “Signore Bartolli is no longer in our midst?”
“No, nor is he in anyone’s midst!” Mr. Vest affirmed. “That is, he must be in someone’s midst, but not in the near vicinity.”
“That is encouraging. Do explain yourself,” Mr. Darcy invited
.
Mr. Vest imparted with some relish the intelligence that he had got rid of “that Italian fellow” by serving him with a summons.
“A summons?”
“Why, yes! I like to serve them, you understand. Very official, and they carry a lot of weight. I have a stack of them in my secretary, already signed, in case the occasion arises, so you need not think there was anything illegal about it. Oh! But that’s not what you’re thinking. I have them in a secret compartment and keep the desk under lock and key.”
“I see perfectly. On what, er, charge did you serve Signore Bartolli the summons?”
“For disturbing the peace,” Mr. Vest replied, obviously pleased with himself.
“And did he heed the seriousness of this summons?”
“Not until I told him I’d throw him in the clapper unless he got out of town.”
“Subtle.”
“Well,” Mr. Vest said reasonably, “I wanted to avoid any misunderstandings.”
“I assume that he did not accept your ultimatum without a discussion.”
“Indeed not! And in a rare taking he was about it, too! Queer fellow! Always thought so! Couldn’t understand the half of what he said, though. But I began to suspect that he was a little touched in the upper works, if you know what I mean, so I offered to drive him and his sister as far as Hartstead in my own carriage, since he had no vehicle of his own. Thought it only fair after serving him such a turn!”
“And did you?”
“Yes! That is, no, not his sister. She had already gone ahead, he told me, because it pained her to stay on here. She is suffering, if you’ll pardon my repeating his words, from a broken heart.”
“Poor Miss Graziella!” Helen said soulfully.
“Eh? Oh, yes! Well, I should not worry my head about it, Mrs. Darcy. Smoky business. Devilish smoky! And if Mr. Darcy doesn’t remember anything about it, why, I see no reason why you should care a fig for what her brother says. Most likely he got his stories tangled. A confused sort, that Italian fellow, especially with a German mother. Miss Graziella must suffer from it, too. Now, there are those who say we English come from German ancestors, but I don’t hold much by that theory. I find it hard to believe, upon my soul, I do!”
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