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Read books online » Fiction » A Mysterious Disappearance by Louis Tracy (read a book .txt) 📖

Book online «A Mysterious Disappearance by Louis Tracy (read a book .txt) 📖». Author Louis Tracy



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I can’t help saying that I am obliged to you. But it won’t do any good. I am absolutely dead broke.”

“Now listen to me. I will pay your fare back to London and give you something to live on until I return a week hence. Then you must come to see me, and I will help you into some sort of situation. But you must once and for all abandon this notion of suicide.”

“What about my debts?”

“Confound your debts. Tell people to wait until you are able to pay them.”

“And—and the girl?”

“If she is worth having she will give you a chance of making a living sufficient to enable you to marry her. She is of age, I suppose, and can marry any one she likes.”

Mensmore puffed his cigarette in silence for fully a minute. Then he said:

“You are a very decent sort, Mr.—”

“Bruce—Claude Bruce is my name.”

“Well, Mr. Bruce, you propose to hand me £10 for my railway fare, and, say, £5 for my existence, until we meet again in London, in exchange for which you purchase the rights in my life indefinitely, accidents and reasonable wear and tear excepted.”

“Exactly!”

“Make it £20, with five louis down, and I accept.”

“Why the stipulation?”

“I want to back my dream. The number is twenty-three. It evidently was not thirteen. I want to see that thing through. I will back the red after twenty-three turns up, and if I lose I shall be quite satisfied.”

“What if I refuse?”

“Then I don’t care a bit what happens during the next seven days. After that, au revoir, should we happen to meet across the divide. Please make up your mind quickly. That run on the red may come and go while we are sitting here.”

Bruce opened his pocket-book. “Here,” he said with a smile, “I will give you four hundred francs. You will reach the maximum more quickly if you are right.”

Mensmore’s face lit up with excitement. “By Jove, you are a brick,” he said. “So you really trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me back my revolver.”

Without a word, Bruce handed him the weapon.

Mensmore extracted the cartridges and threw them into a clump of shrubs.

“Come,” he cried; “come with me to the Casino. You will see something. This is not my own luck; it is borrowed. Come, quick!”

They raced off, Bruce himself being more fired with the zest of the thing than he cared to admit. Within the Casino all the tables were now crowded, but Mensmore hurried to that at which he sat during his earlier visit.

“It was here that I played in my dream,” he whispered, “soon after I came to it.”

He edged through the onlookers, closely followed by Bruce. Neither cared for the scowls and injured looks cast at them by the people whom they forced out of the way.

The Italian, the winner of half an hour ago, had come back like a moth to the candle. Now he was getting his wings singed. At last, with a groan, he hastily rose, but as a final effort flung the maximum, six thousand francs, on the black.

The disc whirled and slowly slackened pace, the ball rested in one of the little squares, and the croupier’s monotonous words came:

Vingt-trois, rouge, impair, et passe!”

Out bounced the Italian, and Mensmore seized his chair, turning to Bruce with white face as he murmured:

“You hear! Twenty-three!”

The barrister nodded, and placed his hands on Mensmore’s shoulders as though to steady him.

Mensmore staked his ten louis on the red. They became twenty, then forty. Another whirl and they were eighty. A fourth made them one hundred and sixty.

Mensmore was now so agitated that the table and the players swam before his eyes. But Bruce, under the stress of exciting circumstances, had the gift of remaining preternaturally cool.

At the fifth coup the sum to Mensmore’s credit was £256. He would have left it all on the table had not Bruce withdrawn £16 in notes, as the maximum is £240.

When Mensmore won the sixth and seventh coups a buzz of animated interest passed around the board. People began to note the run on the red, together with the fact that a man was staking the maximum each time. Even the croupiers cast fleeting glances at the new-comer, when, several times in succession, the long rake pushed across the table the little pile of money and notes.

Thenceforth Mensmore sat in a state of stupor more pronounced now that he was playing and awake than when he dreamt he was playing.

Each time he mechanically staked the maximum and received back twice as much, while the eager onlookers now burst into cries of wonder that brought others running from all parts of the room.

But Bruce did not lose count.

When the red had turned up seventeen times, and the amount to Mensmore’s credit was £3,128, he shook the latter violently as he was about to shove forward another maximum, and, of his own volition, placed the money on the black.

Douze, noir, pair et manque,” sang out the croupier, and Bruce hissed into Mensmore’s ear:

“Get up at once.”

His strangely made acquaintance obeyed, gathered up his gold and notes, fastened them securely in an inner pocket, and the pair quitted the Casino amid extravagant protestations of good-will and friendship from all the voluble foreigners present, having attracted not a little attention from the less demonstrative Americans and English in the room.

It was some time before the roulette tables began their orderly round again, for Mensmore’s sensational performance was in everybody’s mouth.

The highest recorded sum is twenty-three on the black, but a run of eighteen on the red is sufficiently remarkable to keep Monte Carlo in talk for a week.

Albert Mensmore certainly could not complain that the events of the particular evening were dull. For one hour at least he lived in the fire that consumes, for he stepped back from the porch of dishonored death to find himself the possessor of a sum more than sufficient for his reasonable requirements.

The pace was rapid and almost fatal.

CHAPTER X SOME GOOD RESOLUTIONS

Once safe in the seclusion of Claude’s sitting-room Mensmore almost collapsed. The strain had been a severe one, and now he had to pay the penalty by way of reaction.

The barrister forced him to swallow a stiff brandy and soda, and then wished him to retire to rest, but the other protested with some show of animation.

“Let me talk, for goodness’ sake!” he cried. “I cannot be alone. You have seen me through a lot of trouble to-night. Stick to me for another hour, there’s a good fellow.”

“With pleasure. Perhaps it is the best thing you can do, after all. Let us see how much you have won.”

Bruce made a calculation on a sheet of paper and said: “Exclusive of the original stake of ten louis you ought to have £3,128.”

Mensmore pulled out of his pocket the crumpled bundle of notes and bills. Claude’s notes were among them, and he tossed them across the table with a smile.

“There’s your capital. I will see if the total is all right before we go shares.”

Claude nodded, and Mensmore began to jot down the items of his valuable package. He bothered with the figures for some time but could not get them right. Finally he tossed everything over to the other, saying:

“No matter how I count, I can’t get this calculation straight. Seventeen coups, beginning with ten louis, work out at £3,128 all right enough. But in this lot there is £3,368, and they don’t pay twice at the Casino.”

The barrister thought for a moment, and then laughed heartily. “I remember now,” he said; “I kept careful count of the series of seventeen, or eighteen, to be exact. On my own account, as you were too dazed to notice anything, I put a maximum on the black. Your dream turned up trumps, as the series stopped and black won. Hence the odd £240.”

“Then that is yours,” said the other gravely. “I will take £1,128 to square all my debts, and we go shares in the balance, a thousand each, if you think that fair. If not I will gladly hand over the lot, after paying my debts, I mean.”

Mensmore’s seriousness impressed the barrister more than any other incident of that dramatic evening.

“You forget,” he replied, “that I told you I had money in plenty for my own needs. You must keep every farthing except my own £8, which you do not now need. No. Please do not argue. I will consent to no other course. This turn of Fortune’s wheel should provide you with sufficient capital to branch out earnestly in your career, whatever it be. I will ask my interest in different manner.”

“I can never repay you, in gratitude, at any rate. And there is another who will be thankful to you when she knows. Ask anything you like. Make any stipulation you please. I agree to it.”

“It is a bargain. Sign this.”

Bruce took a sheet of notepaper, bearing the crest of the Hotel du Cercle, dated it, and wrote:

“I promise that, for the space of twelve months, I will not make a bet of any sort, or gamble at any game of chance.”

When Mensmore read the document his face fell a little. “Won’t you except pigeon-shooting?” he said. “I am sure to beat that Russian next time.”

“I can allow no exceptions.”

“But why limit me for twelve months?”

“Because if in that time you do not gain sense enough to stop risking your happiness, even your life, upon the turn of a card or the flight of a bird, the sooner thereafter you shoot yourself the less trouble you will bring upon those connected with you.”

“You are a rum chap,” murmured Mensmore, “and you put matters pretty straight, too. However, here goes. You don’t bar me from entering for sweepstakes.”

He signed the paper, and tossed it over to Bruce, while the latter did not comment upon the limitation of his intentions imposed by Mensmore’s final sentence. The man undoubtedly was a good shot, and during his residence in the Riviera he might pick up some valuable prizes.

“And now,” said the barrister, “may I ask as a friend to what use you intend to put your newly found wealth?”

“Oh, that is simple enough. I have to pay £500 which I lost in bets over that beastly unlucky match. Then I have a splendid ‘spec,’ into which I will now be able to place about £2,000—a thing which I have good reason to believe will bring me in at least ten thou’ within the year, and there is nearly a thousand pounds to go on with. And all thanks to you.”

“Never mind thanking me. I am only too glad to have taken such a part in the affair. I will not forget this night as long as I live.”

“Nor I. Just think of it. I might be lying in the gardens now, or in some mortuary, with half my head blown off.”

“Tell me,” said Bruce, between the contemplative puffs of a cigar, “what induced you to think of suicide?”

“It was a combination of circumstances,” replied the other. “You must understand that I was somewhat worried about financial and family matters when I came to Monte Carlo. It was not to gamble, in a sense, that I remained here. I have loafed about the world a good deal, but I may honestly say I never made a fool of myself at cards or backing horses. At most kinds of sport I am fairly proficient, and in pigeon-shooting, which goes on here extensively, I am undoubtedly an expert. For instance, all this season I have kept myself in funds simply by means of these competitions.”

His hearer nodded approvingly.

“Well, in the midst of my minor troubles, I must needs go and fall over head and ears in love—a regular bad case. She is the first

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