FIRST CHAPTER
“Yes! I’m not mistaken at all! It’s
the same woman!” whispered the tall, good-looking
young Englishman in a well-cut navy suit as he stood
with his friend, a man some ten years older than himself,
at one of the roulette tables at Monte Carlo, the
first on the right on entering the room—that
one known to habitual gamblers as “The Suicide’s
Table.”
“Are you quite certain?” asked his friend.
“Positive. I should know her again anywhere.”
“She’s very handsome. And look, too,
by Jove!—how she is winning!”
“Yes. But let’s get away. She
might recognize me,” exclaimed the younger man
anxiously. “Ah! If I could only induce
her to disclose what she knows about my poor father’s
mysterious end then we might clear up the mystery.”
“I’m afraid, if all we hear is true about
her, Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo will never do that,”
was the other’s reply as they moved away together
down the long saloon towards the trente-et-quarante
room.
“Messieurs! Faites vos jeux,”
the croupiers were crying in their strident, monotonous
voices, inviting players to stake their counters of
cent-sous, their louis, or their hundred or five hundred
franc notes upon the spin of the red and black wheel.
It was the month of March, the height of the Riviera
season, the fetes of Mi-Careme were in full swing.
That afternoon the rooms were overcrowded, and the
tense atmosphere of gambling was laden with the combined
odours of perspiration and perfume.
Around each table were crowds four or five deep behind
those fortunate enough to obtain seats, all eager
and anxious to try their fortune upon the rouge or
noir, or upon one of the thirty-six numbers, the columns,
or the transversales. There was but little chatter.
The hundreds of well-dressed idlers escaping the winter
were too intent upon the game. But above the
click of the plaques, blue and red of different sizes,
as they were raked into the bank by the croupiers,
and the clatter of counters as the lucky players were
paid with deft hands, there rose ever and anon:
“Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!”
Here English duchesses rubbed shoulders with the most
notorious women in Europe, and men who at home in
England were good churchmen and exemplary fathers
of families, laughed merrily with the most gorgeously
attired cocottes from Paris, or the stars of the film
world or the variety stage. Upon that wide polished
floor of the splendidly decorated Rooms, with their
beautiful mural paintings and heavy gilt ornamentation,
the world and the half-world were upon equal footing.
