Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “What do you mean— ‘spent for the country’?”

  “For propaganda purposes. You know what political necessities are. I had to back up the cause — the cause of the great Hippothadee.... In short, pay for publicity. Do you see?”

  “Yes, I see. What then?”

  “Well, I gambled with the hundred and fifty thousand and lost them.”

  “That was an irreparable crime,” said Titin.

  “No not irreparable,” protested the Comte. “What has been lost on the tables can be won on the tables. I can therefore make good. I have tried to....”

  “Yes, I see that to-day.”

  “Oh, I have tried before to-day!... I had fifty thousand francs belonging to you left.”

  “What then?”

  “Well, I lost them too.... A run of bad luck....”

  “But you gave me twenty-five thousand francs.”

  “Oh, that’s another matter.... You must know that I had an old jewel in my possession — an old family jewel. I sold it for thirty-five thousand francs. The jeweler robbed me as though he were a highwayman. But of course I couldn’t allow you to be without money, and besides I had to take the flat for you. I had my mission — my sacred mission to fulfill. It was with this money that I bought the lease and furniture of the flat.”

  “But you told me you bought the furniture from a man at the club. Did you return to the club?”

  “Yes. I still had the idea of winning back the money intended for propaganda purposes, nor did I forget my instructions to find a flat for you and give you fifty thousand francs. What could I do with thirty-five thousand francs I ask you? So I began to play, and I had good luck. I won a hundred and seventy-five thousand francs.”

  “That was a pretty good win!”

  “Yes, I had the best of luck that evening. Seated next to me was a gentleman who had lost everything: ‘Do you want to buy a furnished flat?’ he asked. I said to myself: ‘He’s been sent to me by the saints.’ I took him away from the tables, bundled him into a car, and we drove to the flat. I examined the furniture.

  “‘It’s not worth more than forty thousand francs,’ I said.

  “‘That’s a bargain,’ he returned.

  “We signed an agreement and I paid him his forty thousand francs. He lost them right away as I told you. I had no end of luck that evening. Taking into account the thirty-five thousand francs received for the jewel and my winnings of one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs I had one hundred and seventy thousand francs left after paying him. Well, I lost the lot.”

  “The lot!” exclaimed Titin.

  “The lot,” returned the Comte calmly.

  “That’s what you call good luck!” said Titin beginning to see the humorous side of the story.

  “Great good luck. Had that gentleman not been sitting next to me, I shouldn’t have bought the flat from him, and I should have lost the money received for the family jewel, whereas though I hadn’t got the jewel I had the flat. Only you see I hadn’t a sou left to give you so what do you think I did the next day?”

  “You sold the furniture,” said Titin.

  “Ah, that’s very clever of you. What you say is wisdom itself. I did sell it for twenty-five thousand francs.”

  “But it cost you forty thousand.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t worth more than twenty-five thousand for it was awful stuff.... Once again I did a good stroke of business, particularly as we mustn’t forget the lease of the flat.... Moreover, I replaced that awful stuff with some splendid furniture, as you have seen.”

  “But you omitted to pay for it.”

  “One never pays cash down for furniture of that value. I suggested a little arrangement, but the dealer was not satisfied to take my word. So I signed bills.”

  “But suppose you can’t pay the bills,” said Titin, once more taking alarm.

  “You must understand that one never pays a bill when it’s presented for the first time, nor the second; that smacks too much of the small tradesman. You must get that into your head.”

  “But suppose they seize the furniture?”

  “Let them seize it. We will get still better stuff.”

  “What about the twenty-five thousand francs that you received for the furniture? Did you gamble with them, too?”

  “No. That confounded furniture had brought enough bad luck to my predecessors. And then I was only too pleased to hand them over to you as representing the first smile of the new fortune that I came here to tell you about. I was a wretch to borrow those fifteen hundred francs from you. Nothing good could come from playing on the tables with them. In fact, I only got what I deserved.... And it’s too kind of you to forgive me.”

  “Tell me, Comte, when you telephoned at midday what had become of the fifteen hundred francs?”

  “They had become a thousand louis exactly.”

  “By Jove,” exclaimed Titin. “Why, a thousand louis is....”

  “Twenty thousand francs.”

  “That was splendid.”

  “No, it was not splendid. I played badly. There was a run of twenty-one on the black. I ought to have won at least a hundred thousand francs. But I was afraid of losing again. I was playing like an inexperienced youth; so during lunch at Monte Carlo I thought to myself: ‘If there is a run of only ten this afternoon I shall have my revenge.’”

  “But it didn’t come off,” said Titin.

  “No. All the afternoon and part of the evening, I defended myself like a lion. But I came upon nothing but intermittances. I didn’t win enough to pay the taxi which brought me back from Monte Carlo and those beggars at the hotel refused to pay the driver. It’s a shame. I shall complain to my consul.”

  “So the taxi is still waiting?” said Titin.

  “It’s very good of you to trouble about these details. Let the driver go to the devil. Do you think I’m worrying about him?”

  Just then there was a knock at the door and a servant entered.

  “The driver refuses to go away,” he told the Comte. “Tell him I shall want him to-morrow morning at ten o’clock punctually,” returned the Comte with complete indifference. “And whatever you do, don’t pay him, and then I shall be certain he’ll be here.”

  “Very good sir,” said the man, and left the room. “That’s one thing settled, you see. Everything in this life comes out all right.”

  “But what are you going to do to-morrow morning?”

  “To-morrow is also a day, and I shall sleep over it. I have a taxi for to-morrow which is something.”

  Titin went to bed early. He had nothing else to do. Before he fell asleep he reflected that whatever happened, as a result of this adventure, he had learnt a great deal in that school of experience in which the Comte was a past master.

  Next morning he remained late in bed and was not surprised that the Comte failed to pay him his usual morning visit. He assumed that the Comte, ashamed of his confession of the night before, would not dare to show his face again until he had received the long-expected remittance from Prince Marie Hippothadee. At eleven o’clock, after trying in vain to telephone to him, he went to the Comte’s room. He learnt that he had left about ten o’clock, but nothing was known of his movements....

  He walked along the Avenue de Verdun stopping now and then to gaze in the shop windows. As he was about to pass the jeweler’s shop at which he had bought his pearl shirt studs, he turned abruptly aside for he remembered that this man had not been paid and had shown some impatience. But he had gone only a few steps when he saw the jeweler bowing low before him.

  “Are you looking for the Comte?” he cried with his most ingratiating smile. “He has just left the shop. Oh, he was only here long enough to pay my little bill. Really, M. Titin, there was no hurry....”

  Titin went back to the hotel. There could be no doubt about it! The Comte must have received the letter from Transylvania, and was settling the accounts before doing anything else. A good mark to the Comte for that!

  Tit
in uttered a sigh of relief. He had lived the life of a Prince for far too short a time not to feel embarrassed by these worries with unpaid tradesmen, money lost, re-won, and lost again at the tables, and all the makeshifts which confounded the wildest imagination and from which the tables alone benefited.

  Titin assumed that the Comte would appear at lunch time. Nevertheless, he thought it surprising that his strange mentor, well knowing how anxiously he was awaiting news from Mostarajevo, had not sent him word before of the receipt of the precious missive.

  “He wishes to plant a surprise on me,” he thought.

  At two o’clock he could restrain himself no longer. He had lunched alone. Suddenly he said:

  “I bet he has gone back to the trente et quarante table with the rest of the money.”

  He jumped into a taxi, and was driven to Monte Carlo. Here, however, no one had seen the Comte. He went back to the hotel, and met a member of the Club who told him that the Comte was in the Club at Cannes playing for high stakes. He hurried to Cannes. Here he found the Comte penniless, but he came up to him with a smile.

  “Cleaned out I suppose,” said Titin, boiling with rage. “Well, yes. But I made a good beginning....”

  “Shut up!” growled Titin fiercely. “You don’t know the sort of man I am. I’m going to show you....”

  “You are my Prince — my King’s son. My life belongs to him.”

  “Very likely,” said Titin, beside himself and pushing him before him with a violent gesture, “but my money doesn’t belong to you.”

  “What money?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “The money from Transylvania! But it hasn’t come yet. Oh, as to that money you can be easy in your mind — it is sacred. I should have brought it to you at once.

  You do not yet know Odon Odonovitch, Comte de Valdar, Lord of Vistritza, Metzoras, Trikala...

  “But in that case what money have you been playing with?” interrupted Titin, taken aback.

  “I will explain. You gave me an idea yesterday about that furniture which hasn’t been paid for. You said: ‘If you don’t pay for it they’ll seize it.’ I thought we ought not to wait until they seized it, so I sold it.”

  “But, wretched man, it doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Allow me. It does belong to me. I paid for it — with bills, but I paid for it. Every business man will tell you: ‘He who has credit owes nothing’ — owes nothing while his credit lasts of course. Therefore I owe nothing. And you may rely on Odon Odonovitch to make his credit last, as I ventured to explain to you yesterday.... Therefore, I sold this furniture to another trader who, of course, robbed me. He gave me a mere trifle — sixty thousand francs for furniture which cost me one hundred and twenty thousand francs — not a penny less.”

  “In paper,” said Titin.

  “That paper bears the signature of Odon Odonvitch, Comte de Valdar, Lord of Vistritza....”

  “Yes, yes, Metzoras and other places.... Go on.”

  “And that signature is worth a great deal of money.”

  “So I perceive and so others will perceive,” said Titin recovering his good humor on reflecting that the money due from Transylvania was untouched.

  “I was saying that this thief bought the furniture from me for sixty thousand francs. But I made one stipulation — you will see how careful I am in business matters — namely, if within a fortnight I pay him seventy-five thousand francs, I am to remain the owner of the furniture.”

  “Ah yes, seventy-five thousand francs. But you lose fifteen thousand francs on the transaction.”

  “You don’t follow me. It’s the trader who will lose forty-five thousand francs, since the furniture is worth one hundred and twenty thousand.”

  “Yes, yes. Oh, that’s very clever. A very fine transaction! Congratulations!”

  “Isn’t that so? Particularly as my buyer can’t, during the next fortnight, touch the furniture which belongs to me but which also remains the security of the first seller. That may involve us in some little unpleasantness. Before the fortnight is up we shall have received the money, and then we shall be masters of the situation.”

  “Yes, the masters who pay.”

  “We shall pay it if it suits us, for, as I have already said, we can always let the furniture go, and buy other and still finer furniture.”

  “Listen to me, Comte,” said Titin. “If you don’t mind, I will attend to my own business in future.”

  “As you please. You are at liberty to put money into tradesmen’s pockets and ruin yourself.”

  “Still you made a good move this morning when you began by paying the jeweler.”

  “Ah, you know that! I’m not surprised. That man is a great gossip. I reckoned on that. I thought to myself: ‘Here’s a chatterer who will say everywhere: The Prince pays up.’ So I paid him.”

  “But all the tradesmen will want to be paid now.”

  “You don’t know tradesmen! If I were to take money to them now they’d refuse it. When you can pay these infernal tradesmen they will never accept it. It’s only when you can’t pay them that they clamor for their money.”

  “Do you know, Comte, you would make a wonderful Chancellor of the Exchequer.... You have a real understanding of credit! But meanwhile we are once more without a sou. What are we going to do to-night?”

  “To-night we shall dine in Monte Carlo. It’s some time since you’ve been seen there. That has a bad effect. I have invited a few Club friends, including the great Tchertschanowska, the dancer, to dinner at the Hotel de Paris. It’s going to be a little gala, and will be talked about. And we need it! When I think of those miserable flunkeys at the Palace Hotel refusing to pay the taxi — the taxi of Comte de Valdar, Lord of..

  “That’ll do. What rot you talk! We haven’t a sou.”

  “I am sorry....”

  “And so you ought to be.”

  “I am sorry because you no longer have faith in your servant.”

  The conversation was continued in the taxi which brought them back to Nice.

  “Is this the taxi you engaged yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you paid for it?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you propose to pay for it when you get there? I warn you that I wont have any scandal when I’m about,” said Titin frowning.

  “I haven’t paid for it because we are keeping it.”

  “Keeping it?”

  “Certainly — so as to get to Monte Carlo.... Besides, we’ve arrived. Please go up to your room and dress. I shall be with you in half an hour.”

  Titin sprang from the taxi, and without waiting to see what would happen, hurried into the hotel and made for the elevator. Half an hour later the Comte, as good as his word, came in and spread before his astonished eyes nine thousand five hundred and twenty-five francs, fifty centimes.”

  “Where did you get that money from?” asked Titin, taken aback.

  “Odon Odonovitch always keeps something up his sleeve. To-day the ‘something’ was the jeweler whom I paid this morning. I called on him just now. He almost forced into my pocket a case containing a very fine scarf pin — a diamond almost the size of a nut. I took it, without losing a moment, to the National pawnshop, and they lent me on it this money which I have brought to you.”

  “Odon Odonovitch you are a genius — a dangerous genius, but a genius,” said Titin as he swept up the banknotes. “This money shall not go to the tables I promise you. It will enable us to live until we hear from Transylvania.”

  “That’s what I thought. The money will be safer in your pocket than mine,” returned Odonovitch with a loud laugh.

  His good humor infected Titin who went off to dress. That evening they created a sensation in the great dining room of the Hotel de Paris by a regal dinner presided over by Tchertschanowska clad in a robe of incomparable audacity. A number of well-known persons came to renew acquaintance with Titin and the Comte, and Tchertschanowska was more than gracious t
o her host. It was an elegant party and cost Titin a considerable sum.... Next day he made up his mind to live economically in spite of the Comte who assured him that after the magnificence of the night before he could give himself free rein, at least for the next fortnight, without putting down a sou. But Titin was not yet quite up to the mark.

  The next week passed without further incident. But the life of a prince, in such circumstances, had no attraction for him, accustomed as he was to take the lead, and more than once he looked back with regret to the time when he was satisfied to be the chief figure in La Fourca. Had he not been restrained by his native honesty, inherited certainly from his second father, the worthy Papajeudi, who would have died rather than dishonor his signature, he would gladly have said good-bye to the luxury of hotel life now become hateful to him since he was no longer in a position to take advantage of it. And since he had to show himself so far sensible as to wait for money intended above all to satisfy his creditors, he became miserable, pale, restless.... The thought of Toinetta alone buoyed him up. It was for her that he suffered; for her that he had become a prince; for her that he still endured the sight of Odon Odonovitch who, for his part, wore his gloomiest air, stopped short, as he had been in his illusive expedients.

  At last the letter arrived from Transylvania. It contained a check for a considerable amount. But, as ill-luck would have it, the money was dissipated while Titin, in an increasing state of depression, had gone for a walk in the country.

  The letter was of course addressed to the Comte, who had taken great care to leave Prince Marie Hippothadee in ignorance of what had befallen the money “for propaganda purposes.” All the same the Prince must have suspected something, or if he suspected nothing, thought it wise to take certain precautions. Thus he threatened Odonovitch with the worst penalties if he omitted to carry out his instructions to the letter. These threats doubtless alarmed him for he decided without further ado to win back with the new money all that he had previously lost.

  The result of his operations was soon apparent. When Titin got back to the hotel at five o’clock that afternoon, a taxi had arrived from Monte Carlo. The driver handed him a letter: