Part 13

“Ah—you thought I meant to ask for your autograph? Or perhaps for a cheque?” (Lord, how quick she was!) She shook her head. “No, I don’t care for compulsory autographs. And I’m not going to ask for money—I’m going to give you some.”

He faced her with renewed dismay. Could it be—? After all, he was not more than fifty-seven; and the blameless life he had led had perhaps helped to preserve a certain ... at least that was _one_ theory.... In these corrupt European societies what might a man not find himself exposed to? With some difficulty he executed a pinched smile.

“_Money?_”

She nodded again. “Oh, don’t laugh! Don’t think I’m joking. It’s your ear-pads,” she disconcertingly added.

“My—?”

“Yes. If you hadn’t put them on I should never have spoken to you; for it wasn’t till afterward that I saw your name on the suit-case. And after that I should have been too shy to break in on the meditations of a Great Philosopher. But you see I have been watching—oh, for years!—for your ear-pads.”

He stared at her helplessly. “You want to buy them from me?” he asked in terror, wondering how on earth he would be able to get others in a country of which he did not speak the language.

She burst into a laugh that ran up and down the whole scale of friendly derision and tender mockery.

“Buy them? Gracious, no! I could make myself a better pair in five minutes.” She smiled at his visible relief. “But you see I’m ruined—stony broke; isn’t that what they call it? I have a young American friend who is always saying that about himself. And once in the Caucasus, years ago, a gipsy told me that if ever I had gambled away my last penny (and I nearly _have_) it would all be won back by a pale intellectual looking man in velvet ear-pads, if only I could induce him to put a stake on the tables for me.” She leaned forward and scrutinized him. “You _are_ very pale, you know,” she said, “and very intellectual looking. I was sure it was you when you told me you’d been ill.”

Professor Loring D. Hibbart looked about him desperately. He knew now that he was shut up with a madwoman. A harmless one, probably; but what if, in the depths of that jewelled bag, a toy revolver lurked under the pawn-tickets and the cigarette papers? The Professor’s life had been so guarded from what are known as “exciting situations” that he was not sure of his ability to meet one with becoming tact and energy.

“I suppose I’m a physical coward,” he reflected bitterly, an uncomfortable dampness breaking out all over him. “And I _know_,” he added in self-extenuation, “that I’m in no condition yet for any sort of a struggle....” But what did one do with lunatics? If only he could remember! And suddenly he did: one humoured them!

Fortified by the thought, he made shift to glance more kindly toward the Princess Balalatinsky. “So you want me to gamble for you?” he said, in the playful tone he might have adopted in addressing little Sadie Burt of Meropee.

“Oh, how glorious of you! You will? I _knew_ you would! But first,” she broke off, “you must let me explain—”

“Oh, do explain, of course,” he agreed, rapidly calculating that her volubility might make the explanation last until they reached the next station, where, as she had declared, she was to leave the train.

Already her eye was less wild; and he drew an inward breath of relief.

“You angel, you! I _do_,” she confessed, “simply love to talk about myself. And I’m sure you’ll be interested when I tell you that, if you’ll only do as I ask, I shall be able to marry one of your own compatriots—such a beautiful heroic youth! It is for him, for him only, that I long to be wealthy again. If you loved, could you bear to see your beloved threatened with starvation?”

“But I thought,” he gently reminded her, “that it was you who were threatened with starvation?”

“We _both_ are. Isn’t it terrible? You see, when we met and loved, we each had the same thought—to make the other wealthy! It was not possible, at the moment, for either of us to attain our end by the natural expedient of a rich marriage with reasonable prospect of a quick divorce—so we staked our all at those accursèd tables, and we both lost! My poor betrothed has only a few hundred francs left, and as for me, I have had to take a miserably paid job as a dressmaker’s _mannequin_ at Cannes. But I see you are going on to Monte Carlo (yes, that’s on your luggage too); and as I don’t suppose you will spend a night there without visiting the rooms, I—” She was pulling forth the hundred francs from her inexhaustible bag when the Professor checked her with dismay. Mad though she might be, he could not even make believe to take her money.

“I’m _not_ spending a night at Monte Carlo,” he protested. “I’m only getting out there to take a motorbus for a quiet place up in the hills; I’ve the name written down somewhere; my room is engaged, so I couldn’t possibly wait over,” he argued gently.

She looked at him with what seemed to his inflamed imagination the craftiness of a maniac. “Don’t you know that our train is nearly two hours late? I don’t suppose you noticed that we ran over a crowded excursion charabanc near Toulon? Didn’t you even hear the ambulances rushing up? Your motorbus will certainly have left Monte Carlo when you arrive, so you’ll _have_ to spend the night there! And even if you don’t,” she added persuasively, “the station’s only two steps from the Casino, and you surely can’t refuse just to nip in for half an hour.” She clasped her hands in entreaty. “You wouldn’t refuse if you knew my betrothed—your young compatriot! If only we had a few thousands all would go smoothly. We should be married at once and go to live on his ancestral estate of Kansas. It appears the climate is that of Africa in summer and of the Government of Omsk in winter; so our plan is to grow oranges and breed sables. You see, we can hardly fail to succeed with two such crops. All we ask is enough money to make a start. And that you will get for me tonight. You have only to stake this hundred franc note; you’ll win on the first turn, and you’ll go on winning. You’ll see!”

With one of her sudden plunges she pried open his contracted fist and pressed into it a banknote wrapped in a torn envelope. “Now listen; this is my address at Cannes. Princess Balala—oh, here’s the station. Good-bye, guardian angel. No, _au revoir_; I shall see you soon. They call me Betsy at the dressmaker’s....”

Before he could open his convulsed fingers, or dash out after her, she had vanished, bag and baggage, in the crowd and confusion of the platform; other people, pushing and chattering and tearing themselves from the embrace of friends, had piled into her place, and were waving from the window, and blocking the way out; and now the train was moving on, and there he sat in his corner, aghast, clutching the banknote....

II

At Monte Carlo the Professor captured a porter and rescued his luggage. Exhausted by this effort, and by the attempt to communicate with the porter, first in Latin and then in French as practised at Purewater, he withdrew to a corner of the waiting-room and fished in his pockets for the address of the quiet _pension_ in the hills. He found it at last, and handed it wearily to the porter. The latter threw up his hands. “_Parti! Parti! Autobus_ gone.” That devil of a woman had been right!

When would there be another, the Professor asked.

Not till tomorrow morning at 8:30. To confirm his statement the porter pointed to a large time-table on the wall of the waiting-room. The Professor scanned it and sat down again with a groan. He was about to consult his companion as to the possibility of finding a night’s lodging in a respectable _pension_ (fantastic as the idea seemed in such a place); but hardly had he begun: “Can you tell me where—” when, with a nod of comprehension and a wink of complicity, the porter returned in fluent English: “Pretty ladies? Turkish bath? Fottographs?”

The Professor repudiated these suggestions with a shudder, and leaving his bags in the cloak-room set forth on his quest. He had hardly taken two steps when another stranger of obviously doubtful morality offered him a pamphlet which he was indignantly rejecting when he noticed its title: “The Theory of Chance in Roulette.” The theory of chance was deeply interesting to the Professor, and the idea of its application to roulette not without an abstract attraction. He bought the pamphlet and sat down on the nearest bench.

His study was so absorbing that he was roused only by the fall of twilight, and the scattered twinkle of many lamps all radiating up to the central focus of the Casino. The Professor started to his feet, remembering that he had still to find a lodging. “And I must be up early to catch the bus,” he reminded himself. He took his way down a wide empty street apparently leading to a quieter and less illuminated quarter. This street he followed for some distance, vainly scrutinizing the houses, which seemed all to be private dwellings, till at length he ran against a slim well-set-up young fellow in tennis flannels, with a bright conversational eye, who was strolling along from the opposite direction.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the Professor.

“What for?” rejoined the other, in a pleasant tone made doubly pleasant by the familiar burr of the last word, which he pronounced like _fur_.

“Why, you’re an American!” exclaimed the Professor.

“Sher_lock_!” exulted the young man, extending his hand. “I diagnose the same complaint in yourself.”

The Professor sighed pleasurably. “Oh, yes. What I want,” he added, “is to find a plain quiet boarding-house or family hotel.”

“Same as mother used to make ’em?” The young man reflected. “Well, it’s a queer place in which to prosecute your search; but there _is_ one at Monte, and I’m about the only person that knows it. My name’s Taber Tring. Come along.”

For a second the Professor’s eye rested doubtfully on Mr. Tring. He knew, of course—even at Purewater it was known—that in the corrupt capitals of Europe one could not always rely implicitly on the information given by strangers casually encountered; no, not even when it was offered with affability, and in the reassuring twang of the Western States. But after all Monte Carlo was not a capital; it was just an absurd little joke of a town crammed on a ledge between sea and mountain; and a second glance at the young man convinced the Professor that he was as harmless as the town.

Mr. Tring, who seemed quick at thought-reading, returned his look with an amused glance.

“Not much like our big and breezy land, is it? These Riviera resorts always remind me of the subway at rush hours; everybody strap-hanging. But my landlady is an old friend, and I know one of her boarders left this morning, because I heard her trying to seize his luggage. He got away; so I don’t see why you shouldn’t have his room. See?”

The Professor saw. But he became immediately apprehensive of having his own luggage seized, an experience unprecedented in his history.

“Are such things liable to occur in this place?” he enquired.

“What? A scrap with your landlady? Not if you pay up regularly; or if she likes you. I guess she didn’t like that other fellow; and I know he was always on the wrong side of the tables.”

“The tables—do you refer to the gambling tables?” The Professor stopped short to put the question.

“That’s it,” said the other.

“And do you yourself sometimes visit the gambling-rooms?” the Professor next enquired.

“Oh, hell,” said Taber Tring expressively.

The Professor scrutinized him with growing interest. “And have you a theory of chance?”

The young man met his gaze squarely. “I have; but it can’t be put into language that would pass the censor.”

“Ah—you refer, no doubt, to your personal experience. But, as regards the theory—”

“Well, the theory has let me down to bedrock; and I came down on it devilish hard.” His expression turned from apathy to animation. “I’m stony broke; but if you’d like to lend me a hundred francs to have another try—”

“Oh, no,” said the Professor hastily; “I don’t possess it.” And his doubts began to stir again.

Taber Tring laughed. “Of course you don’t; not for lending purposes. I was only joking; everybody makes that joke here. Well, here’s the house; I’ll go ahead and rout out our hostess.”

They stopped before a pleasant-looking little house at the end of the street. A palmtree, a couple of rose-bushes and a gateway surmounted by the word _Arcadie_ divided it from the pavement; the Professor drew a breath of relief as a stout lady in an orange wig bustled out to receive him.

In spite of the orange wig her face was so full of a shrewd benevolence that the Professor felt sure he had reached a haven of rest. She welcomed him affably, informed him that she had a room, and offered to lead him up to it. “Only for tonight, though? For it is promised to a Siamese nobleman for tomorrow.”

This, the Professor assured her, made no difference, as he would be leaving at daylight. But on the lowest step of the stair he turned and addressed himself to Mr. Tring.

“Perhaps the lady would be good enough to have my bags brought up from the station? If you would kindly explain that I’m going out now to take a little stroll. As I’m leaving so early tomorrow it’s my only chance to have a look around.”

“That’s so; I’ll tell her,” the young man rejoined sympathetically; and as the Professor’s hand was on the gate, he heard Mr. Tring call out, mimicking the stentorian tones of a megaphone man on a sight-seeing motorbus: “Third street to the left, then first right to the tables”; after which he added, in his natural tone: “Say, Arcadia locks up at midnight.”

The Professor smiled at the superfluous hint.

III

Having satisfied a polyglot door-keeper as to his nationality, and the fact that he was not a minor, the Professor found himself in the gambling-rooms. They were not particularly crowded, for people were beginning to go out for dinner, and he was able to draw fairly near to the first roulette table he encountered.

As he stood looking over the shoulders of the players he understood that no study of abstract theories could be worth the experience acquired by thus observing the humours of the goddess in her very temple. Her caprices, so ably seconded by the inconceivable stupidity, timidity or rashness of her votaries, first amused and finally exasperated the Professor; he began to feel toward her something of the annoyance excited in him by the sight of a pretty woman, or any other vain superfluity, combined with the secret sense that if he chose he could make her dance to his tune, and that it might be mildly amusing to do so. He had felt the same once or twice—but only for a fugitive instant—about pretty women.

None, however, had ever attracted him as strongly as this veiled divinity. The longing to twitch the veil from her cryptic features became violent, irresistible. “Not one of these fools has any idea of the theory of chance,” he muttered to himself, elbowing his way to a seat near one of the croupiers. As he did so, he put his hand into his pocket, and found to his disgust that it contained only a single five franc piece and a few _sous_. All the rest of his money—a matter of four or five hundred francs—lay locked up in his suit-case at _Arcadie_. He anathematized his luck in expurgated language, and was about to rise from the table when the croupier called out: “_Faites vos jeux, Messieurs_.”

The Professor, with a murmured expletive which was to a real oath what Postum is to coffee, dropped back into his place and flung his five franc piece on the last three numbers. He lost.

Of course—in his excitement he had gone exactly contrary to his own theory! It was on the first three that he had meant to stake his paltry bet. Well; now it was too late. But stay—

Diving into another pocket, he came with surprise on a hundred franc note. Could it really be his? But no; he had an exact memorandum of his funds, and he knew this banknote was not to be thus accounted for. He made a violent effort to shake off his abstraction, and finally recalled that the note in question had been pressed into his hand that very afternoon as he left the train. But by whom—?

“_Messieurs, faites vos jeux! Faites vos jeux! Le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus._”

The hundred francs, escaping from his hand, had fluttered of themselves to a number in the middle of the table. That number came up. Across the green board thirty-six other hundred franc notes flew swiftly back in the direction of the Professor. Should he put them all back on the same number? “Yes,” he nodded calmly to the croupier’s question; and the three-thousand seven hundred francs were guided to their place by the croupier’s rake.

The number came up again, and another argosy of notes sailed into the haven of the happy gambler’s pocket. This time he knew he ought to settle down quietly to his theory; and he did so. He staked a thousand and tripled it, then let the three thousand lie, and won again. He doubled that stake, and began to feel his neighbours watching him with mingled interest and envy as the winnings once more flowed his way. But to whom did this mounting pile really belong?

No time to think of that now; he was fast in the clutches of his theory. It seemed to guide him like some superior being seated at the helm of his intelligence: his private dæmon pitted against the veiled goddess! It was exciting, undoubtedly; considerably more so, for example, than taking tea with the President’s wife at Purewater. He was beginning to feel like Napoleon, disposing his battalions to right and left, advancing, retreating, reinforcing or redistributing his troops. Ah, the veiled goddess was getting what she deserved for once!

At a late hour of the evening, when the Professor had become the centre of an ever-thickening crowd of fascinated observers, it suddenly came back to him that a woman had given him that original hundred franc note. A woman in the train that afternoon....

But what did he care for that? He was playing the limit at every stake; and his mind had never worked more clearly and with a more exquisite sense of complete detachment. He was in his own particular seventh heaven of lucidity. He even recalled, at the precise moment when cognizance of the fact became useful, that the doors of _Arcadie_ closed at midnight, and that he had only just time to get back if he wished to sleep with a roof over his head.

As he did wish to, he pocketed his gains quietly and composedly, rose from the table and walked out of the rooms. He felt hungry, cheerful and alert. Perhaps, after all, excitement had been what he needed—pleasurable excitement, that is, not the kind occasioned by the small daily irritations of life, such as the presence of that woman in the train whose name he was still unable to remember. What he would have liked best of all would have been to sit down in one of the brightly lit cafés he was passing, before a bottle of beer and a ham sandwich; or perhaps what he had heard spoken of as a Welsh rabbit. But he did not want to sleep on a bench, for the night air was sharp; so he continued self-denyingly on his way to _Arcadie_.

A sleepy boy in a dirty apron let him in, locked up after him, and led him to a small bare room on the second floor. The stairs creaked and rattled as they mounted, and the rumblings of sleep sounded through the doors of the rooms they passed. _Arcadie_ was a cramped and ramshackle construction, and the Professor hoped to heaven that his _pension_ in the hills would be more solidly built and less densely inhabited. However, for one night it didn’t matter—or so he imagined.

His guide left him, and he turned on the electric light, threw down on the table the notes with which all his pockets were bulging, and began to unstrap his portmanteaux.

Though he had so little luggage he always found the process of unpacking a long and laborious one; for he never could remember where he had put anything, and invariably passed through all the successive phases of apprehension and despair before he finally discovered his bedroom slippers in his spongebag, and the sponge itself (still dripping) rolled up inside his pyjamas.

But tonight he sought for neither sponge not pyjamas, for as he opened his first suit-case his hand lit on a ream of spotless foolscap—the kind he always used for his literary work. The table on which he had tossed his winnings held a crusty hotel inkstand, and was directly overhung by a vacillating electric bulb. Before it was a chair; through the open window flowed the silence of the night, interwoven with the murmurs of a sleeping sea and hardly disturbed by the occasional far-off hoot of a motor horn. In his own brain was the same nocturnal quiet and serenity. A curious thing had happened to him. His bout with the veiled goddess had sharpened his wits and dragged him suddenly and completely out of the intellectual apathy into which he had been gradually immersed by his illness and the harassing discomforts of the last few weeks. He was no longer thinking now about the gambling tables or the theory of chance; but with all the strength of his freshly stimulated faculties was grappling the mighty monster with whom he meant to try a fall.

“_Einstein!_” he cried, as a Crusader might have shouted his battle-cry. He sat down at the table, shoved aside the banknotes, plunged his pen into the blue mud of the inkstand, and began.

The silence was delicious, mysterious. Link by link the chain of his argument unrolled itself, travelling across his pages with the unending flow of a trail of migratory caterpillars. Not a break; not a hesitation. It was years since his mental machinery had worked with that smooth consecutiveness. He began to wonder whether, after all, it might not be better to give up the idea of a remote and doubtful _pension_ in the hills, and settle himself for the winter in a place apparently so propitious to his intellectual activities.