The valet presented no very extraordinary appearance, except that he seemed markedly intelligent and alert. His black hair was closely cropped to a large and well-shaped head. His complexion was of the true Southern swarthy tint, glowing out below the skin, as it were. He wore a small black moustache, and the long first finger of his right hand was deeply stained with the juice of cigarettes.

Once, about an hour after the start, the valet went to the restaurant car, and brought back two bowls of soup, and a bottle of Pomard, explaining to the waiter who gave them that his master was very hungry and one tureen would be insufficient. But when the door of the sleeping-car was locked, the blinds looking on the corridor drawn down, the table set, and all the electric lights switched on, a spectator--had there been one there--would have seen with some surprise that master and man shared the meal equally. And perhaps he would have thought it a touching testimony of the theoretical equality of Republican France that master and man addressed each other by their Christian names.

In short, the great enterprise was begun, Basil and Emile, their apparatus made, their plan of campaign concluded, were roaring and crashing through France to the fairy-like sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

It was now close upon nine o'clock in the morning. The blinds of the sleeping-car were still drawn upon the corridor side, but the two men were dressed. Their hand luggage was strapped and they were smoking cigarettes.

"In a moment more, Basil," said Emile, his voice trembling with excitement, "in a moment more you shall have your first vision of the South! I would not let you look before and, indeed, as we went through Avignon it was too dark to see much, but Ma.r.s.eilles--my beloved native city--is the Gate of the South. You will see little of it, as within an hour we shall be pulling out again for the Cote d'Azur, but you will see something; you will at least breathe the enchanted air!"

Deschamps' voice was most powerfully affected. For a moment he had forgotten the enterprise entirely. He was only consumed with an over-mastering eagerness that his dearest friend and partner should breathe with him that subtle, intoxicating air, and realise for the first time in his life what the South means.

There was a long grinding of the brakes, and the train stood still.

Emile drew up the blinds, opened the door into the corridor, and led Basil to the end of the car. Then they stepped down to the low platform.

They had left Paris in sullen bitter winter weather. Here, early as it was, the sun was shining brilliantly in the cool, quiet station. Exactly facing them was a huge stall of flowers, ma.s.ses of purple violets, delicate ivory-coloured roses from Gra.s.se, the pale golden plumes of the mimosa.

But the air! the air was the thing! So warm and sweet it was, it came upon them with such a veritable caress, it so bathed them with golden light and sweet odours, that tears started into Deschamps' eyes, and Basil forgot his disguise.

"How wonderful! how wonderful!" he said in English, breathing like a man who had been stifled all his life.

And that was their first glimpse of the enchanted country to which they had come.

Through all the morning until mid-afternoon the train moved, slowly and sleepily now, through scenes of loveliness such as the Englishman, at any rate, had never dreamed of. Everywhere the Mediterranean gleamed like an immense sapphire, flecked here and there with white fire. The low cliffs of sandstone were crimson. The sky was an inverted bowl of glowing turquoise, and everywhere tall, feathery palms were silhouetted against it in brilliant green. And there were flowers, flowers everywhere! Every station with its familiar name was full of flowers--Gra.s.se, Cannes, Nice, Villefranche--there were flowers everywhere; flowers, exotic trees, and great white hotels that gleamed jewel-like in terrace after terrace from the sea till they were lost in the high places of the Maritime Alps.

And then--at last--Monaco, a few tunnels cut in the cliffs, and the long, low station of Monte Carlo at last!

During the whole period of the slower journey along the seash.o.r.e Basil Gregory's excitement had been gradually growing. He and Deschamps had talked but little, but both of them had been obsessed by the great idea that they were getting nearer and nearer to the world-famous theatre of their colossal enterprise.

Monte Carlo! Monte Carlo! The words had beaten themselves into a rythm in Basil's brain, a rythm in tune with the regular pulsing of the engine.

They were to stay at the Hotel Malmaison, for the brothers Carnet had insisted that the two young men should lack nothing, and that Basil should appear to be a person of great wealth and consequence. There was to be no hole-and-corner business about the great coup. Suspicion was to be averted by every possible means. "_Il fait aller en regal_," Brother Charles had insisted, and so it was to be. Rooms had been engaged in advance, a sitting-room and bedroom for Monsieur Charles Edouard Montoyer, and a bedroom for his valet. It had been stipulated, however, that the valet's bedroom should be at the very top storey of the hotel, as that personage suffered from asthma.

The Malmaison was only some four hundred yards from the station, and in consequence some three hundred from the Casino. They drove there in the waiting omnibus, however, and at five o'clock were installed in their rooms.

It was a little difficult to account for two large boxes among the luggage, of extraordinary heaviness, which were placed in the sitting-room of Monsieur Montoyer. But the ready Deschamps in his role of valet explained that monsieur was a great student, and always travelled with many books.

"I go now, _mon ami_" Emile said, "to my own room. All your clothes are unpacked. I must not stay here too long at present. I shall have to meet all the other servants and gossip with them, but I will come at seven to a.s.sist you to dress, and then we can make our plans."

Basil was left alone in the brightly furnished sitting-room. He looked down into a terraced garden, brilliant still with the declining rays of the sun. Somewhere near by a band of guitars was playing accompanied by voices as sweet and pa.s.sionate as they.

He strolled up and down the room thinking deeply. But it was not of the fairyland in which he found himself, it was not of the glories he was soon to witness, it was not even of the great hazard he was to try--the bold and reckless bid for fortune. It was of Ethel he was thinking.

CHAPTER VII

About ten o'clock in the morning of the day on which Basil Gregory and Emile Deschamps had arrived at Monte Carlo, another train had pulled into the long low station on the Mediterranean sh.o.r.e.

This train was very different from the huge, luxurious machine that brought the adventurers to the City of Fortune earlier in the day. It was the ordinary slow train, the third cla.s.s, not even a _rapide_, and only a few second-cla.s.s carriages were included in its make-up.

Moreover, it had taken two whole days, and nights in its journey from Paris, being everywhere shunted aside for the _rapides_ and _trains de luxe_ to pa.s.s through.

From this train of poorer people two English ladies, quietly dressed, and pale and stained with travel under none too pleasant conditions, had descended.

They were driven at once with their trunks to a modest _pension_ in the Rue Grimaldi in Monaco, and spent some hours in sleep.

Ethel McMahon had told her lover in Paris that she had obtained a fortnight's leave of absence from her school, had saved a little money, and was about to take her mother to Switzerland for a change of air.

Basil had accepted the statement implicitly, glad to hear that the girl he loved was to have a short respite from her labours, and, for his own part, finding that the proposed holiday would coincide with his own absence from Paris, he said nothing of his plans. So it had been arranged, and the two lovers were mutually ignorant of each other's purposes and without the slightest idea that they were bound for the same destination. Mrs. McMahon had absolutely refused to allow Ethel to communicate a word of their project to Gregory, and the girl was all the more ready because by now she was thoroughly infected with her mother's enthusiasm, and was absolutely convinced in her own mind that they were to gain a small fortune at the tables.

How splendid it would be to come to Basil and to tell him that they could be married at once! That funds for the launching of the great invention were forthcoming, that all was to end as happily as some old song!

About six o'clock Ethel went into her mother's room. The rest had refreshed her. Her eyes were glowing with excitement, and with her long hair falling over her dressing-gown she seemed the personification of radiant hope.

"Now, what are we to do, mother?" she said excitedly. "How do you feel?"

The older woman was seated in the one arm-chair the little bedroom of the _pension_ boasted, and was anxiously scrutinising a bundle of faded papers covered with figures and bold masculine handwriting.

"It is certain, Ethel!" she said. "I have been going through your father's figures for the hundredth time. I am sure it can't fail. You know he only invented this particular system just before he died, and we never had an opportunity to try it properly."

Ethel nodded. "I feel just as you do, mother, dear," she answered. "It _can't_ fail. But what are we to do? Are you thoroughly rested?"

"I feel in better health," the old lady answered, "than I have felt for years. Excitement would keep me up if nothing else would, but, as it is, I have no trace of fatigue. What's the use of spending the evening in this dull _pension_ with these third-rate people, for such of the guests as I have seen are rather a seedy-looking lot, and Madame de Bonville is just the ordinary Southern Frenchwoman who keeps a place of this sort?

No! We will dress, have dinner, and take a cab to the Casino. There will be no difficulty about obtaining our tickets for this evening. We shall have to renew them each day, until we have been here for some time--if, indeed, it is necessary to remain here. After a week or two they give you a ticket for a month, but I don't suppose we shall need that."

"Then we are to begin to-night!" Ethel cried, a flush mounting in her cheeks and her voice ringing with antic.i.p.ation.

The elder lady smiled. "We will not begin the system to-night," she answered. "That, I do think, would be unwise. We will take a louis or two and get a place at one of the tables, if we can, and just see what happens. I want you to get accustomed to a scene which will seem extraordinarily strange to you. We will take it that we are merely reconnoitring this evening, and begin serious play upon the morrow.

Dinner is at half-past seven, so go and prepare yourself, my child, and then come and help me."

Ethel left the room and crossed the pa.s.sage to her own, singing for sheer lightness of heart. Already the beauty of the South had caught hold of her, and such glimpses of it as she had seen only intensified her mood. In her innocence she had not the slightest misgiving. She would have laughed to scorn anyone who had told her that there was a chance of losing the little unexpected capital that had come to them from the lottery.

Dinner at the _pension de Bonville_ was the ordinary polyglot affair. An English major--no regiment specified--some stolid Germans, three shrill-voiced American girls, and some nondescript and rather haggard looking young men made up the company. Doings at the Casino during the day were compared and discussed. The little cards, printed in red and black, which are provided by the Casino authorities for recording the play, and p.r.i.c.ked each time the wheel is spun, were handed about, and in this atmosphere, so familiar to her in the past, old Mrs. McMahon seemed like a changed being. She talked with the rest, in English or fluent French; she was like some old war horse once more snuffling the breeze of battle, and Ethel was no less interested and entranced, though her knowledge of roulette--for none of the _pensionnaires_ seemed to indulge in the more expensive _trente-et-quarante_--was purely theoretical.

After dinner the major gallantly offered to escort the ladies to the Casino and to obtain their tickets. Shortly afterwards, m.u.f.fled in opera cloaks, for between eight and nine is often the coldest hour of the day on the Riviera, the three walked up the steep, winding way towards the Palace of Chance.

A full moon hung in the sky; everywhere were brilliant illuminations; the air as it proved was not at all cold upon this night, but soft and odorous of flowers.

The gardens of the Casino were like enchantment to Ethel McMahon. It was indeed a scene from the "Arabian Nights." The tall palms clicked faintly in the breeze with a sound like distant castanets. The electric lights shone down upon enormous beds of flowers which everywhere studded the lawns. Faint music was heard on every side, and gaudily painted and luxurious automobiles flitted noiselessly along the polished roadways.

Here was the great Hotel de Paris, its long facade glowing with colour, full of the wealthiest people in the world, dining very differently from the way in which the major and his new friends had dined in the Rue Grimaldi. Beyond, on the other side of the square, were the gardens of the Metropole, and the gla.s.s Cafe de Paris at its side winked and glittered like a gigantic topaz.

"That, my dear," said Mrs. McMahon, pointing to a modest looking restaurant in an arcade, "that is Ciro's."

Ethel's sense of humour was tickled by the calm patronage of the information. She knew, of course, that she was looking upon the most famous restaurant in the whole world, but her mother's tone amused her.

And then, in a moment, she had no thought but one.