The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery Volume 3 (of 3) Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  AT MONTE CARLO.

  Mr. Maurice Capt, though an ambitious man and a clever one withal, hadrisen no higher in the world since we saw him last; he was stillReginald Haggard's valet, but his wages were good and he had a littleden of his own where his meals were served to him from the housekeeper'stable in solitary state. The valet was by this time a man of property;his wants were few and his little economies, as he called them, werelarge. Nobody but his banker was aware of the extent of hisaccumulations; he couldn't have saved it all out of his pay, but he hadmanaged to amass a comparatively large sum which stood to his credit infour figures. Was Mr. Capt a gambler, a backer of horses, or a dabblerin stocks and shares? Not a bit of it. Mr. Maurice Capt was theproprietor of a secret. For seventeen years Mr. Capt had drawn from thisqueer property of his a varying but comfortable income. When LucyWarrender first came into her eight hundred a year, Mr. Capt's incomehad very sensibly increased. It wasn't paid quarterly or half-yearly;the manner in which it was drawn was sufficiently original. The billswhich Mr. Capt drew whenever he thought fit upon Miss Lucy Warrenderwere always honoured. Mr. Capt was in the habit of writing to the ladyin the humble tone of a suppliant. The letters always stated withpraiseworthy clearness what was the sum required, and the demand wasalways met with business-like promptitude. How Miss Warrender managed tosatisfy this insatiable bloodsucker I cannot tell, for though she hadeight hundred a year of her own, she certainly lived up to it, perhapsbeyond it. But Miss Warrender gambled in many ways; she speculated andhad quite a large account which she had opened with a very old friendof former years, Mr. Dabbler, once of the firm of Sleek and Dabbler, butnow trading by himself, and though dropping his h's as freely as ever,one of the biggest brokers on the Stock Exchange and an alderman of theCity of London. I suppose Alderman Dabbler must have been very much inlove with Miss Warrender, though he never actually had the impertinenceto propose to her. Her transactions with him were numerous, and did notpass through his books. Most of her speculations were made upon hisadvice, and many a handsome cheque testified either to the astuteness ofMiss Lucy Warrender, or to the generosity of Mr. Alderman Dabbler. PoorDabbler, he was but one of the many irons in Miss Warrender's fire. MissWarrender betted; it was even said that she ran horses as "Mr. Simpson."She would stand upon the _plateau_ at Monaco at the shooting matches,and in an entrancing costume and a pair of ten-button gloves, her facecarefully shaded from the blazing sun by an enormous parasol, she wouldwatch the birds fall right and left and die in agony, or drop woundedinto the sea, and still continue to back the bird or the gun, as seemedto her good, with the cosmopolitan _habitues_ of the rather Bohemian butmoney-spending set in which she moved. It was a very miscellaneous set:peers, members of parliament, journalists, jockeys, people who lived bytheir wits but who somehow always managed to wear new garments offashionable cut, actresses, singers, dancers, of European reputation,and some of them with no reputations at all, fashionables of enviablenotoriety or the reverse; all these various sorts of people werehail-fellow-well-met with Miss Warrender upon the _Plateau_ at MonteCarlo, or within the walls of the great gambling house.

  Lucy Warrender had kept her good looks; I expect if she hadn't she wouldhave gone under long before. She enjoyed herself in a sort of feverishway; she was a notoriously lucky woman when she gambled, and she gambledhabitually and heavily. But just on the particular day we meet MissWarrender again, Fortune had been unkind. The lady was sitting gazingout from her window on the second floor of the Hotel de Russie upon thesunlit tranquil turquoise sea. I don't think that she saw much beauty inthe scene, for though she stared at the blue sea and the bluer sky, sheappeared to be rapt in thought.

  There are some women who are always well dressed, whose flounces andwhose furbelows are ever fresh and crisp; Lucy Warrender was one ofthese. It would be very easy to extract from _The Queen_ a poeticdescription of the pretty pale blue tea-gown that Lucy Warrender wore,but I must leave it to your imagination, reader. The pale blue and theprofusion of delicate filmy lace suited Lucy Warrender's dreamy blondebeauty. Seventeen years had passed lightly over her head; perhaps thegolden locks were a trifle more golden than of old, and if theirluxuriance was due a little to art, the secret was only known to Lucyand her maid. Her foot, thrust into a heel-less Tunisian slipper of bluevelvet embroidered with seed pearls, beat the floor impatiently. Thestrong sunlight showed that there really were a few tiny wrinkles,faintest lines on the ivory forehead and at the corners of the prettymouth, whose ruddy lips were arched like Cupid's bow. But though thelips were arched, the mouth was determined, almost cruel; but thecruelty of the mouth suddenly disappeared as the door opened, and thewhole face was instantly illuminated by the smile that men termedinfantine and angelic, but which rivals of her own sex styled affectedlysentimental.

  It was Lucy's maid who entered the room, a big burly woman, still thefine animal of yore, Fanchette--the Fanchette who had succeeded theunhappy Hepzibah, and who had nursed the boys Lucius and George.

  "I have got them, mademoiselle," she said in French, as she smoothed outa little heap of blue bank notes; "seven thousand francs as usual; and abrave pair of earrings too, to produce that from the harpies of the_Mont de Piete_ at Nice. The employe made me the usual compliment,mademoiselle, and as he paid me the money he declared that the pair ofsingle stones were the most beautiful he had ever seen. The rascal tookcare not to say it till we had made our bargain. _Ciel_, I trustmademoiselle will be _en veine_ to-night, for I shan't feel easy till Isee the stones sparkling again in mademoiselle's ears."

  Lucy counted the notes, she dismissed the _bonne_, and then shesoliloquized; not in so many words, as do heroines of melodrama, butthis is what she said to herself, at all events the substance of it:

  "I am sick of life, I am sick of planning and plotting and being lookedupon as an adventuress. I am sick of being bowed to and spoken to bypeople who in the old time would not have presumed to beg for anintroduction. I am getting _declassee_. Perhaps one doesn't feel it somuch here, for we are pretty well all adventurers more or less, here inthe gambler's paradise, though some of us have plenty of money." MissWarrender stood before the smouldering hearth and gazed with sternscrutiny at her own features in the mirror. "Yes," she soliloquized,"Georgie, though she is two years older than I am, has certainly wornthe better of the two; she is lovely Mrs. Haggard still. And what am I?A hag, a dreadful grinning hag, a woman to be flirted with, danced withand supped with, a woman who has ceased to be respected. Why, thatdreadful old Baron Teufelsdroch called me his _belle petite_ the otherday, and I have no champion now to take the old sinner by the throat andshake the life out of him."

  Lucy sank into the only comfortable chair in the room, and then she dida dreadful thing. Dreadful to our minds, dear reader, for we arerespectable and insular and we have our prejudices, our glorious insularprejudices. We can sympathize with "The Sorrows of Werther," we can evenshed tears perhaps over the bread-and-butter cutting Charlotte, but wereCharlotte to light a cigarette! Oh horror--fie--for shame--pschutt: thelady would at once be outside the pale of respectability, totallyunworthy of our love and sympathy; worse still, to our minds she wouldcease to be even good-looking or to deserve the lovely and romantic nameof Charlotte at all. One can't tell why it is so: the preternaturallyhideous heroes of our fashionable lady novelists seek consolation in thestrongest and most expensive cigars or in rough cut cavendish. DirkHatteraick even places a quid of pigtail in his mouth, and that boldbuccaneer and the heroes of the lady novelists still remain deardelightful darlings, and bright eyes grow dim over their hairbreadthescapes, their struggles and their woes. Spare then a little of yoursympathy for poor Lucy Warrender, that bankrupt rake, as she coiledherself up in the big easy chair and took from her pocket a tiny silvercase and extracted a _Laferme_ cigarette. Remember, reader, thatFanchette, you, and I, are the only accomplices of her guilty weakness.She took an ember from the fire with the tongs and lighted the littlecylinder, and as she did so her features once
more, as of old, becamelighted up with the soft placid smile of girlish enjoyment, as the angelface became surrounded by a halo of tobacco smoke. Why shouldn't poorLucy seek consolation as did the other villains and heroes of romance?It evidently wasn't the first cigarette by many that Lucy had smoked,for she inhaled the smoke scientifically and ejected it from hernostrils like an _habituee_.

  Nemesis sooner or later finds the sinner out, and when we called LucyWarrender a bankrupt rake it was done advisedly, for Miss Warrender hadcome to the end of her tether. The earrings which she had pawned--asordid act, for they had been a love-token, the souvenir of a reckless,wicked and unhappy attachment--were literally the lady's last stake. Shetook the little roll of notes from her pocket and methodically countedthem once more.

  "So this is the end of it all," said Lucy to herself; "a few dirtypieces of paper and that is all. And if I lose them all to-night assomething tells me is but too likely, then I must be a beggar, and muststretch out my hands for alms--or bid good-bye to all the brightsunshine and the happy, pleasant memories," and she laughed a hardbitter little laugh. "But why should I be sorry to go? Happiness is notfor such girls as I have been. My secret has been well kept, so far, butwill it be a secret long? For I can't afford to pay for silence now. IfI land a heavy stake, or break the bank, all will be well: if not, Imust go where I hope to find forgetfulness. But what if there should beno forgetfulness beyond the grave?" As her thoughts dwelt on the wordsshe shuddered. "The cold, cruel, silent grave. Silent! Yes, that wassomething--and after--if there be an after." And then the thought of thehappy girlish days at The Warren came back to her. The remembrance ofthe stupid faithful people she had known, and liked, and laughed at, andthen the dreadful time at the Villa Lambert and what followed; and thenher own triumphantly-successful trick--successful, perhaps, from thevery simplicity of its audacity; and then her weary worthlessafter-life, with its sickening treadmill round of so-called gaiety andamusement. And then the child; why had he not died? It was for no loveof her child that, by her agency, young Lucius had been foisted into theposition of Haggard's heir. She had thought no further than to hide hershame, and in doing it she had unwittingly disinherited her owncousin's child. Why had Lucius not died?

  Lucy's melancholy meditations were disturbed by the entrance ofFanchette, who handed her mistress a letter and left the room assilently as she had entered it. Lucy recognized the hand, and knew fullwell what the letter would certainly contain. She had guessed aright.Another demand for money from the man Capt. The words were respectfulenough, there was no threat, but Lucy Warrender understood what itmeant--the money or exposure.

  A thousand pounds! As well might the daughters of Danaus try to filltheir sieves with water, as Lucy Warrender attempt to satisfy theinsatiable greed of the remorseless Capt. Miss Warrender placed theletter in the fire, and saw it consumed to ashes.

  "Unless I win heavily," she thought, "you will not be gratified, MauriceCapt. Then, I suppose, you will try your master, but I fancy you willhave a bad quarter of an hour with him." The thought gave her evidentpleasure; it even made her smile.

  And then she darkened the room, and flinging herself upon the sofa laydown to sleep away the hot afternoon till it should be time for dinnerand the subsequent roulette.

  Eight o'clock saw Miss Warrender in a charming toilette of electricblue. The little bonnet with its short curling feathers did not hide thegreat wavy masses of golden hair; the little cape with its fur trimming,and the tiny muff, even the gloves and the boots, were of the samecolour. As Lucy Warrender entered the Rooms she smiled, and she talkedwith several of her acquaintances. That hoary old sinner, GeneralPepper, C.B., bowed profoundly to her, and paid her his old-fashionedcompliment.

  "Dayvilish pretty little woman," he remarked to his friend ColonelSpurbox, late of the Carabineers; "knew her years ago in Rome. Wearswell and don't look her age. Those little plump fair women never do.Gad, she's not got her earrings on; sent them to her uncle's, I suppose.She'll go for the bank, Spurbox, to-night. Plucky little devil. I hopeshe'll win."

  The eyes of the two warriors gazed after the retreating maid withsympathetic admiration.

  "Crisp little thing, eh?" continued the general.

  "Monstrous," echoed his comrade, with ready acquiescence. "Let's go anddrink her health, and then we'll go into the thick of it and see how shegets on."

  The two old bucks ambled off to drink Lucy Warrender's health; theywished her well. Much good may it do her.

  As Miss Warrender walked towards the great room where the worshippers ofthe Goddess Fortune most do congregate, the big _suisses_, in theirhandsome liveries and chains of office, bowed obsequiously; they allknew her as an _habituee_ and a constant customer of the tables. Whenshe reached the roulette table itself, that veteran diplomatist, one ofthe oldest and most faithful of her admirers, the Duc de laHouspignolle, offered to vacate his chair, with many a protestation anda succession of courteous bows.

  "I have been unlucky, dear Mademoiselle Warrender; Fortune has frownedon me, but now I am far happier, for I exchange her frowns for thesmiles of Venus."

  "I won't take your chair, duke," said Lucy. "I may lean upon it, and tryto be your Mascotte and to bring you luck."

  But somehow or other, whether the pretty Englishwoman's presence upsetthe old gambler's calculations or not I cannot tell, but he lost, and ina quarter of an hour rose from his seat.

  "Revenge me on the Philistine, dear lady, if you can," said the old man,"for I am _decave_--but don't take my unlucky chair, I pray you. Youwill?" he continued in astonishment. "Well, if you will you must; atall events take my card, it may help you," and he handed her the littlecard with the big black-headed pin, by means of which the experiencedplayers mark and register the exact result of each successive _coup_.

  Lucy Warrender took the chair with a smile, and laughed gaily, as withthe card she received a little tender squeeze from the wicked old hand,and then she sat down with a full determination, as the Americans putit, "to plank down her bottom dollar." Lucy Warrender was sitting nextto the croupier. She handed him one of her thousand-franc notes and hegave her in exchange a little _rouleau_, neatly sealed at both ends,containing the equivalent in gold. For nearly three-quarters of an hourMiss Warrender confined herself to stakes of one or two Napoleons at atime, which she pushed out before the little glittering pile in front ofher, and which were placed upon the desired square with wonderfulrapidity by the obsequious croupier. It is a curious fact that yourcroupier, that well-paid but honest official, for some mysterious reasonor other always mentally identifies himself with the bank; it gives himabsolute pleasure to rake in the winnings, and he feels some strangevicarious twinge of agony when he commences the process of paying out.But whenever Miss Warrender won, this particular croupier pushed hergains towards her with a little smile, and strange to say didn't seem tofeel it in the least. And now Lucy looked at her card. For twenty-seven_coups_ she had placed a single Napoleon upon the number twenty-seven.Of course, at roulette, some number or zero itself is bound to come upevery time, but number twenty-seven was invariably unlucky. LucyWarrender's left hand was thrust into the pocket of her dress; itclutched, as an Ashantee warrior clutches his fetish, the key of herroom at the Hotel de Russie, and from the key hung its little brasslabel--it was number twenty-seven. For three-quarters of an hour then,and for twenty-seven _coups_, Miss Warrender had pursued herWill-o'-the-Wisp; the one or two Napoleons that she staked each time wasmere child's play to her, for as we know she was in the habit ofgambling heavily. At the twenty-eighth _coup_ Miss Warrender changed theamount of her stake upon the unfortunate number; for the twenty-francpiece she substituted a hundred-franc note and handed it to thecroupier; he thrust it into the great glass and metal cash-box at hisside and pushed five Napoleons on to the square marked twenty-seven."_Messieurs, le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus_," said the bald-headedhigh priest of the table, who sat exactly opposite the gentleman withthe rake, who had so deftly carried out Miss Warrender's directions. He
seized the big plated handle, gave it the necessary twirl as he saidthe words, and tossed the little ball of fate, with the usualprofessional spin, upon the rapidly-revolving disc. Round flew the wheelof fortune, and round flew the ball, making little irregular jumps. Asthe whirling disc revolves less rapidly, every eye is fixed upon theball. The wheel is about to stop. The ball jumps into 15, thence into17. The wheel has almost stopped; the ball will surely rest in No. 23.No, it has not quite stopped, it goes a little further yet. Heads arecraned forward. Lucy Warrender clutches the key of her bedroom tighterthan ever. And then the bald-headed high priest of Baal calls out in theregulation monotone, "_Vingt-sept. Rouge Impair et Passe!_"Rhadamanthus, Minos and Aeacus stretch out their rakes, and gold, notes,and fat five-franc pieces, which have been staked by the unhappy backersof black, even, the zero and the various numbers (all but twenty-seven,lucky twenty-seven) are swept away in an instant. Then the croupierscover the stakes of the lucky backers of odd and red with theirequivalents; nothing remains on the table now but fortunate Lucy's fiveNapoleons. The croupier at her side gives it the little professionalknock with his rake, sweeps the five Napoleons back towards MissWarrender, and counts out to her from his cash-box, with unerringrapidity, the sum of three thousand five hundred francs in notes. Thereis a little hum of applause. "_Faites vos jeux, messieurs."_ Down rainedthe notes, the Napoleons, the British sovereigns and the five-francpieces, and the game continues with monotonous regularity.

  For three mortal hours Lucy Warrender clutched her hotel key, and playedwith varying success. At one time there was quite a little heap of notesand gold in front of her, upon which she discreetly laid her fan. Shehad steadily backed the number twenty-seven for varying but everincreasing amounts. The number twenty-seven had come up no less thaneight times and had been the cause of Miss Warrender's winning heavily.The keenest eye at that time could have detected no wrinkle on Lucy'slovely girlish face. But fortune after a while ceased to favour her; thecrowd of admiring onlookers, "the gallery," that had stood behind herchair attracted by her successes gradually dwindled, and the heap ofgold and notes in front of her slowly but surely took unto themselveswings and flew away. But the gouty old Frenchman, the Duc de laHouspignolle, faithful knight that he was, still stood behind her chair.Old Pepper and the veteran Colonel Spurbox, of the Carabineers, stillleered at her, in mingled pity and admiration, from the other side ofthe great roulette table. Lucy Warrender still clutched her key, andstill backed fatal number twenty-seven; her mouth was dry and parched asshe took out her last thousand-franc note, and, it not being permittedto stake that sum at roulette, she took it to the _Trente et Quarante_table, and lost it at a single _coup_.

  The lady had played her last stake and lost it. She rose to leave.

  "Let me be your banker, dear Miss Warrender," whispered the agedMephistopheles who stood behind her chair.

  "No, duke, not that. I haven't quite sunk to that yet, you know."

  "Always _farouche_, dear Miss Warrender, but I apologize," he continuedas he gave her his arm.

  Perhaps the little hand that rested on it trembled slightly, but Lucywas a Warrender, and plucky; she nodded and bowed in every direction;she smiled and simpered as sweetly as of yore; she sat in the greatrestaurant at one of the little marble tables and sucked an _orangeadeglacee_ through two straws, and then the Duc de la Houspignolle escortedher back to the Hotel de Russie with all respect, where Fanchetteanxiously awaited her arrival.

  Fanchette didn't ask her mistress how she had prospered, for her gestureas she flaccidly dropped into her lounge-chair told the woman all shewished to know.

  "You can go, Fanchette," said Lucy; "if I want anything I'll touch thehand-bell."

  The woman yawned, courtesied and departed.

  Lucy Warrender opened her writing-case and commenced an affectionateletter to her uncle. In it she said incidentally:

  "There are quite a number of people here that we know. The old Duc de laHouspignolle, still quite the old beau; and that dreadful old GeneralPepper, the man we met at Rome, and who was mixed up in Reginald'saffair with poor Barbiche, and Colonel Spurbox. They talk of making up aparty to run across to Nice. I think of joining them. If we go we shallleave the day after to-morrow; everything of course depends upon theweather. I----"

  Here Lucy Warrender deliberately let her pen fall upon the paper. Thenshe got up, looked at herself in the glass and frowned; and then she dida thing she hadn't done for years. She knelt down at her bed-side andsaid her prayer to heaven, the very prayer she had been accustomed tosay as a little child upon her nurse's lap. Then she took a printedreceipt of the _Mont de Piete_ for a pair of brilliant solitaireearrings, and burnt it in the flame of the candle.

  "No one will miss me," she muttered to herself, "no one, save MauriceCapt, for I have been an income to him, and Georgie, perhaps. PoorGeorgie!" she added with a sigh. She never even thought of Lucius; sheknew full well that even had the youth known she was his mother, _he_would assuredly not have missed her.

  "I wonder whether the old duke will be there," she continued toherself; "all the English are sure to come. We never miss a funeral;it's one of our sad pleasures," she added with a hollow laugh. Then shetook from her dressing-case a dark blue fluted medicine bottle; it waslabelled, "The sedative mixture, a teaspoonful for a dose at bedtime.POISON." The last word had a little special red label all to itself. Thebottle was nearly full. Miss Warrender deliberately poured outseven-eighths of its contents into a tumbler, then she recorked thebottle, replaced it in her dressing-case and swallowed the contents ofthe tumbler at a draught, and then carefully and deliberately washed theglass and dried it with the towel. Then she sat herself down in thelounge-chair. In ten minutes she dozed; she soon slept peacefully andcalmly. In half-an-hour she had ceased to exist.

  "On the 23rd inst., at the Hotel de Russie, Monte Carlo, Lucy, the onlydaughter of the late Colonel George Warrender, of the H. E. I. C.Service, aged 35, suddenly of heart-disease."

  This was the first intimation to Lucy Warrender's friends in London ofher sudden death.

  "Poor thing!" said Mrs. Charmington, now quite the old woman, "I wonderhow she managed that lovely-coloured hair."