“Yes, Madame?” the chauffeur replied stolidly.
“If you should be asked by anyone, mind, what you have been doing to-day, you took Madame into Cannes to her dressmaker, she had tea with some friends and you left Madame at the Casino in Nice where she plays always on Saturday evenings.”
The chauffeur pointed to the bags.
“What about the luggage?” he enquired.
“They belong to a friend of Madame’s who is coming to visit her to-morrow. Keep the bags to yourself, Pierre. Take them into the house yourself. It is understood?”
The chauffeur, whose manners were not of the best, nodded and drove off. The woman clutched her companion by the arm. They entered the Casino together. They crossed the hall, rang for the lift, mounted to the first floor and made their way towards the Bureau. It was Madame who addressed the clerk.
“Monsieur will take a carte for the season,” she said. “Show them your passport, Paul. It will be one hundred francs.”
The very polite clerk studied the passport, bowed and smiled, wrote out the carte rapidly, accepted the hundred francs, handed the visitor the pen with which to sign his name, and the business was over. The latter was out of the Bureau and started for the gambling rooms before his companion could pick up her bag. With a hoarse laugh, which was not altogether mirthful, she pulled at his arm and restrained him.
“Paul,” she complained, “you have scarcely spoken to me. It is months since we met. I have sat and waited—”
“You have been playing here,” the man interrupted. “The clerk recognised you. He addressed you by name.”
“I play here two or three times a week,” she assented. “What would you have me do?”
“Oh, you look after yourself without a doubt,” he said. “Later we dine together. We go to the villa. Tomorrow night I shall not be so anxious. It is my one weakness, remember, Rosa. For the long months,” he went on, dropping his voice a little, “I carry such a weight on my shoulders as no other man breathing could support. Here I am free. God, if only I could be free forever!”
Madame was welcomed with a bow. No need for her to show her card. The man’s received a perfunctory examination at the door. They passed in. To the left were roulette and chemin-de-fer tables, a crowd of people round each. The stifling super-heated atmosphere of the room floated out to where they lingered.
“One drink first,” the man proposed after a moment’s hesitation. “That will show you that I am sane, Rosa. Come.”
He strode off towards the bar. She tugged at his coat and made him sit in an easy chair with a table before them. A waiter hurried up.
“Vodka—you have vodka?” the man asked.
“But certainly, sir.”
“A double vodka. For you, Rosa?”
“Un verre de champagne,” madame decided.
They raised their glasses, they toasted one another. She was a large woman with fine eyes and carnage, becarmined lips, touched-up eyebrows and lavishly powdered. She was without doubt a Jewess. The man was inclined to show signs of a paunch but his face was almost gaunt. He was clean-shaven but there was a faint bluish-black growth about his powerful chin and narrow lips. His hair was black, streaked with grey and badly needed trimming. His shirt was crumpled, a black wisp of tie was badly arranged and ill chosen. His clothes were probably new but they needed brushing and pressing. She sighed as she looked at him.
“You need care, Paul,” she said. “You should have had a wash before you came in to play.”
“Thirty or forty hours in planes,” he reminded her. “One wants something to make one forget the rocking.”
He lit a cigar and smoked feverishly, threw back his head and swallowed the vodka at a draught. Madame beckoned to one of the managers of the room, who came across to them.
“Monsieur would like a place for roulette,” she confided. “Two places if you can find them together. Monsieur has only just arrived from a long journey. Listen, Monsieur Raymond,” she went on, dropping her voice, “Monsieur plays high—not my poor little game.”
“In two minutes,” the man promised, hurrying away.
The prospective gambler, Monsieur Paul Agrestein—the name upon his passport—called for another vodka. He tossed it off.
“Come,” he said to the woman, “we have our places. The chef is beckoning us.”
She rose and followed him into the Salle des Jeux. Two places had been found. The man sank into the chair next the croupier. His face relaxed. There was something al most like a smile upon his lips.
“Come, come,” he said, “roulette in Nice! This is a wonderful thing to see. Attendez un petit moment, monsieur,” he begged, touching the chef who was seated on his high chair.
The hand of the jeweller from Warsaw went into his breast coat pocket. He brought out a bulging pocketbook. Slowly he began drawing out mille notes. The chef and the croupier both stared. He counted out twenty of them and passed them to the latter.
“Plaques et louis, monsieur?” the man demanded obsequiously.
“Plaques only,” was the gruff reply.
There was a low murmur round the table. A visitor who changed twenty mille for a commencement and asked for plaques only was a rarity these hard times. He sat there with three piles in front of him, looked at the table for a moment, leaned over, pushing the woman by his side, pushing the croupier, nearly upsetting a player without a seat who was struggling to put a humble five francs upon a transversale. He placed the maximum on two numbers, threw a mille on red, another mille on impair, then he leaned back in his chair. This was the lift…!
“Rien ne va plus!”
He watched the ball with eager eyes, pursed his lips as it fell and glanced back at the table. It was not so bad. He had a cheval and two carrés and one of his mille plaques had won at evens. He gathered in enough to repeat his stake, doubling the winners. The woman pushed a five franc piece on to an even chance…
The game proceeded. The whisper of heavy gambling soon brought a crowd round. The jeweller from Warsaw seemed indifferent as to their presence. He won at first, then lost steadily for nearly half-an-hour. His twenty mille had gone. He drew out once more the bulky pocketbook, changed more money. Almost immediately his luck changed. He began to win. At length the much desired coup came off. He won the maximum on a number en plein with the carrés, chevaux and transversales. There was a murmur of mingled envy and exasperation as the little crowd saw the piles of plaques pushed across the table. As is always the case amongst a French crowd, there was small sympathy with the winner. One or two of the women looked as though they hated him, others wondered how a man with such an appearance could have been permitted in the rooms. The woman who was seated by his side with her hands on the table in front of her leaned towards him.
“Give me a few chips,” she begged. “I have lost everything.”
He frowned, reluctantly seeking amongst the huge pile until he discovered two or three odd louis. He pushed these towards her.
“It is better for you to watch me,” he advised in his harsh unpleasant tone. “You have not the flair for this sort of thing. You lose all the time.”
“You had lost twenty mille yourself until that last coup,” she reminded him. “As for me, I play only in trifles. I amuse myself in my own way—as you do.”
The man made no reply. He was absorbed once more in the game. By degrees the people melted away. The woman rose to her feet. She stood behind his chair, her hips swaying slightly, her arms akimbo. She nodded to one or two acquaintances in the crowd. She was aware that the chefs were treating her with increased respect owing to the presence of her uncouth companion. She leaned down and touched him on the shoulder.
“The hour is late, mon ami,” she said. “It is time we dined. One can play afterwards.”
He was unexpectedly complaisant. He swept everything off the table in front of him, filled his pockets with the plaques and rose to his feet.
“It would be possible,” he asked of the chef, “that the sam
e seats be kept for me after dinner?”
“But certainly, monsieur,” the man acquiesced, his face wreathed in smiles. “C’est entendu. Dans une heure peut-être ou une heure-et-demie. Nous attendrons monsieur.”
Monsieur stalked down the room regardless of the bows on every side from the valets and waiters. He cashed his chips at one of the guichets. The woman stood by his side. She saw the crisp rolls of notes which he transferred to his pocketbook.
“You have won eighty mille,” she told him.
“Not so bad,” he grunted. “It took some doing. Meanwhile, I am hungry. What dishes have they, I wonder?”
“We shall soon see,” she answered, leading him towards a chair in a large bar and dining room combined. “We take our apéritif here—yes?—and we order dinner.”
The man assented without demur.
“I will take a double vodka,” he announced.
“And I a White Lady,” the woman decided. “Meanwhile, Paul, go to the lavatory and arrange your tie, brush your hair and wash. You have too much the air of one who has just completed a journey.”
The man looked longingly towards the counter but the vodka was not yet forthcoming. He did as he was told.
In five minutes he was back again. He had straightened his tie, washed his hands and brushed his hair but his appearance was not greatly improved. She looked at him critically.
“To-morrow,” she confided, “I must buy you a necktie.”
“With your own winnings, then, not mine,” he stipulated. “I am not a fop.”
“Neither am I a coquette,” the woman rejoined. “Nevertheless I do not go about in rags.”
A waiter brought the menu. The man ordered lavishly, not once consulting the woman by his side. He turned over the leaves of the wine carte and pointed to the most expensive champagne.
“Two bottles,” he ordered. “Well iced. I like the wine cold, you understand.”
The meal was well and quickly served. Agrestein ate vociferously and greedily. His eyes never left his own plate. He showed signs of impatience when the woman was served first. He sent away his champagne glass and demanded a tumbler. He drank not as a wine lover but as a man dying of thirst. Again and again he set his glass down empty with a little gurgle of satisfaction. As to his eating, the waiters in the background whispered amongst themselves.
“No wonder these French are a puny race,” he observed to the woman by his side. “They eat nothing. Look at these helpings on one’s plate.”
“They will always give you more.”
“They have to,” he answered, “and after all,” he admitted reluctantly, “the meat is better cooked than ours. It has more flavour.”
When the meal was over, for the first time he leaned back in his chair and seemed to take an interest in his surroundings. His eyes were very bright. Notwithstanding his voracious appetite his complexion remained sallow, his skin hard. His gaze wandered restlessly round the room. He summoned a waiter and ordered coffee and double brandies.
“I have seen nothing of those men,” he muttered. “As a rule in a strange place they present themselves, even though we do not speak. Once I fancied I saw Hanson in the crowd.”
“They have never failed you,” she reminded him. “I expect they are in the background somewhere. A Casino like this is one of the safest places. There is the business of cartes and passports. Every chef and manager who walks the room is in a way a spy. You have always been safe, my brave man, with Rosa. For your sake,” she went on, watching for the effect of her words, “I have been content to live in that wretched little villa, I have lived without servants, without luxuries. It is, after all, a folly. Who in the world has a right to spend money more than you?”
“I know what I am doing,” he answered hoarsely. “If at any time there was a rumour at home where would they search? At the best hotels, the most luxurious villas. At home they know I have a taste for luxury and the last place they would look for me would be in your wretched little shanty with a single servant to wait upon us both.”
“It is safety for you perhaps,” she conceded, “but it means great discomfort for me.”
His eyes flashed.
“You are like the rest of the battening crowd,” he complained. “You talk of love and you hate to coarsen your hands. You would risk your man’s life to live in ease and comfort. No more of that, Rosa.”
“All the same,” she persisted, “I hope that this time you will leave me more money. The hundred thousand francs are gone—rates and taxes, living is dear, all these people are greedy.”
“Yes—and the tables,” he muttered.
“I amuse myself with five-franc pieces,” she answered. “You amuse yourself with mille plaques.”
“You would compare us?” he sneered.
The woman was full of pent up anger. Some instinct prompted her and she stifled it. She kept her eyes averted from his, though. They were dark and full of expression and just now the expression was better hidden. She looked down into her plate. A chef, his face as usual wreathed in smiles, came up to the table and bowed.
“Le jeu commence, monsieur,” he announced. “The places for monsieur and madame are reserved. We await only your coming.”
The man rose to his feet immediately, brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat and pulled it down over his slightly distended paunch. He took a cigar from his pocket and lit it, a cigar of undoubted quality which the chef sniffed enviously.
“We are coming. The bill can follow—yes?”
“The management desire me to say, monsieur, that they trust you will accept their hospitality for dinner,” the chef confided.
Paul Agrestein smiled. He turned to Rosa.
“Do you hear that?” he demanded. “A new game, eh? My compliments to the management and I accept with pleasure.”
He flung a note on the table for the pourboire, not too generous a one, and strode off towards the gambling room, leaving Rosa to follow. He sank into his chair with a sigh of anticipatory pleasure. He looked round at the smooth green cloth, at the clearly marked numbers and chuckled. He brought out a fat roll of bills and handed it to the croupier.
“Twenty plaques in milles, the rest in hundreds,” he directed.
“On peut commencer, monsieur?” the man asked as he pushed the pile towards him.
Agrestein did not trouble to answer. He was busy placing his stake. The ball was thrown in. It was already spinning round. The parrot-like announcement of the croupier followed.
“Sept, rouge, impair et manque.”
The jeweller from Warsaw glared maliciously at the ball. It had hovered over his favourite twenty-nine only to drop into the voisin. He pushed out his next stake. The fever of the happy gambler was in his blood. All the same, he liked to win.
CHAPTER XIX
Table of Contents
It was half-past one when the man and the woman left the Casino. Urged to it by his companion, Paul Agrestein distributed modest pourboires amongst the valets and waiters. He consumed a neat whisky at the bar, retrieved his hat and overcoat and followed the woman down the stairs and out on to the pavement. As though the touch of the night air had brought him a keener realisation of where he was, he became for a few moments a changed man. Stiff and straight, he stood looking up and down as though watching for someone. Rosa called to the commissionaire who saluted at once and blew his whistle. The crowds who passed, even to Agrestein’s suspicious gaze, seemed of a harmless pleasure-seeking class. The air of sombre mystery which he always associated with his own home cities was absent. The streets were brilliantly lit. There was nothing to be seen of the men and women shrinking back in the dark places. Everyone was out in the open. The supper places were busy, the brasseries full. It was the hour for gaiety.
“I do not understand,” he said suspiciously, “why I see nothing of Krakoff, of Jonson or of Hanson. They are skilled, I know, at keeping in the background. They have learnt their lesson and learnt it well, but never before have all three succeeded in re
maining entirely hidden. Krakoff was an artist at stumbling along the pavement humming a song without a glance towards me, and yet making himself seen, and the little man Jonson with his hat on one side, swinging his cane, asking his way perhaps of a gendarme or a bystander close to me that I might hear his voice. Or Hanson, shrinking through the crowd with a stealthy glance in my direction, his hand in his overcoat pocket stealing down towards his hip.”
“What do you want with all that business?” Rosa asked, passing her arm through his. “Yon know that they are somewhere about. You know that here with me you are as safe as in your bed.”
“That,” he answered grimly, “is not always the safest place. The time that they got Karptou and Crossens they were in the chamber below. I was in bed just above!”
“The car!” she pointed out. “Come.”
The commissionaire received his modest tip and bowed. Unnoticed and unaccosted the two stepped into the small vehicle and drew the rug over their knees. The attendant banged the door. He had not much use for people who drove in crazy hooded cars and offered two francs as pourboire.
“To the villa, Pierre,” Rosa ordered. “You have deposited the bags of monsieur?”
“It is done,” the man answered.
Rosa passed her arm through her companion’s.
“Drive on,” she directed.
They turned into the Promenade des Anglais, passed the Jetée Casino flaring with lights, passed the hotels still festive and the Palais de la Mediterranée floodlit. Their car rattled and swerved as it answered to the steering. Agrestein gave vent to an impatient exclamation.
“What a filthy automobile,” he muttered.
“Why do you not give me a better one?” she demanded. “Do you think I find pleasure in being seen in it? You should hear what they say, those people who think that I have a rich friend.”
He chuckled.
“That is good,” he said. “That shows how clever I am.” They passed the Maison Rouge, the lights from its rose-shaded lamps dimly visible, a small place but with a most alluring suggestion of impropriety. He chuckled again as he turned his head sideways to look at it.
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