Part 22 (2/2)
Next instant she started, her lips held tight together as she drew herself up unsteadily with a sudden movement.
She knew that she had involuntarily betrayed herself to the man she loved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
LIP-SALVE.
In a room on the second floor of an old, high, dingy-looking house in one of the dingiest back streets near the flower-market in Nice sat a man and a woman. The room was lofty, with a ceiling which had once been painted but had now faded and fallen away in great flakes, while the furniture was frayed and shabby. The shutters of the two long windows were closed, and the place was lit by a cheap shaded lamp suspended in the centre, its light being too dim to sufficiently illuminate the whole apartment. Beneath the circle of light stood a table marked in squares, and in its centre a roulette-wheel.
The man, lying lazily back in an armchair, smoking a long cigar, was about thirty-five, dark, with well-cut aquiline features, in which craft and intelligence were combined, a small pointed moustache, and a pair of keen black eyes full of suspicion and cunning. His companion was old, perhaps sixty, lean, ill-attired and wizened, her face being almost brown as a toad's back, her body bent, and her voice weak and croaking.
They sat opposite to one another, talking. Around the walls there were tacked copies of a leaflet headed, in huge black capitals, ”The Agony of Monte Carlo,” which declared that the advertiser, an Englishman who offered his services to the public, had vanquished the hazard, and was the only person who could gain indefinitely at either roulette or trente-et-quarante. He had solved the puzzling problem of ”How to Win.”
The French in which the circular was printed was not remarkable for its grammar or diction, but it was certainly a brilliant specimen of advertis.e.m.e.nt, and well calculated to entrap the unwary. Copies of it had for several weeks been widely distributed in the streets of Nice, flung into pa.s.sing cabs, or handed to those who took their daily airing on the Promenade, and it had given rise to a good deal of comment.
Among many other remarkable statements, it was alleged that the discoverer of this infallible method had gained five hundred francs an hour upon an ordinary capital of five francs, and so successful had been his play that the Administration of the Casino, in order to avert their own ruin, had denied him any further card of admission. The remarkable person declared further that so certain was he of success that he was prepared to place any stake against that of any person who doubted, and to allow the player to turn the roulette himself. To those who arranged to play under his direction the circular promised the modest gain of one million two hundred thousand francs a month! Truly the remarkable circular was aptly headed ”The Agony of Monte Carlo.”
The inventor was the dark-eyed man with the cigar, and it was upon the table before him that he gave ill.u.s.trations of his marvellous discovery to his clients. All the systems of Jacquard, Yaucanson, Fulton, Descartes and Copernic were declared to be mere jumbles of false principles, and held up to derision. This was actually infallible.
Nice had heard of a good many methods of winning before, but never one put forward by an inventor sufficiently confident to offer to bear the losses; hence, from the hours of ten to twelve, and two to six, the foppishly-attired man who declared in his circular, ”_Je mis la force, parceque je suis la verite_,” was kept busy instructing amateur gamesters how to act when at Monte Carlo, and receiving substantial fees for so doing.
The clocks had chimed ten, and the street was quiet. The old woman, who with difficulty had been reading the feuilleton in the _Pet.i.t Nicois_ yawned, flung down her paper, and glanced over at the cosmopolitan adventurer who, with his head thrown back, was staring at the ceiling, humming in a not unmusical voice the catchy refrain of Varney's popular ”Serenade du Pave--”
”Sois bonne, O ma chere inconnue, Pour qui j'ai si souvent chante!
Ton offrande est la bienvenue, Fais-moi la charite!
Sois bonne, O ma chere inconnue, Pour qui j'ai souvent chante!
Devant moi, devant moi Sois la bienvenue?”
So light-hearted he seemed that possibly he had succeeded in inventing some other system whereby the pockets of the long-suffering public might be touched. Suddenly a footstep on the landing outside caused them both to start and exchange quick glances. Then the bell rang, and the conqueror of the hazard rose and opened the door.
Their visitor was Zertho. He was in evening clothes, having left the theatre early to stroll round there.
”Well, Mother Valentin,” he exclaimed in French, tossing his hat carelessly upon the table, and sinking into a chair. ”Rheumatism still bad--eh?”
”Ah, yes, m'sieur,” croaked the old woman in the Provencal patois, ”still very bad,” and grunting, she rose, and hobbled out of the room.
”And how's business?” Zertho inquired of the other.
”Pretty fair. Lots of mugs in the town just now,” he smiled, speaking in c.o.c.kney English.
”That handbill of yours is about the cheekiest bit of literature I've ever come across,” he said, nodding towards one of the remarkable doc.u.ments tacked upon the wall.
”It has drawn 'em like honey draws flies,” said the other, smiling and regarding it with pride. ”The offer to pay the losses does it. You can always make a lie truth by lying large enough.”
He had resumed his seat, and was puffing contentedly at his cigar.
”It's a really marvellous specimen of bluff,” Zertho observed, in a tone of admiration. ”When I first saw it I feared that you had been a bit too extravagant in your promises.”
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