The number 18 came up, therefore I again received another little handful of gold. I knew that many envious eyes were cast in my direction, and to me the excitement of winning was an entirely new sensation.
Ulrica fancied the last dozen, and I placed five louis upon it, winning a third time. Having won eight hundred francs in three turns of the wheel, I began to think roulette not such wearying fun as I had once believed it to be.
I wanted to continue playing, but the others prevented me. They knew too well that the bank at Monte Carlo only lends its money to the players.
With Reggie at my side I went out and strolled through those beautiful gardens beside the sea, watched the pigeon-shooting, and afterwards sat on the terrace of the Café de Paris and enjoyed the brilliant sundown.
CHAPTER III
IS A MYSTERY
I was left alone with Reggie, for Ulrica had taken Gerald in to the orchestral concert.
“What awfully good luck you had!” he observed after we had been chatting some time. “If you’d had the maximum on each time you’d have won about four thousand dollars.”
“There are a good many if’s in gambling,” I remarked. “I’ve never had any luck before in gambles at bazaars and such-like places.”
“When you do have luck, follow it, is my motto,” he laughed. “I should have advised you to continue playing to-day, only I thought it might annoy Ulrica,” and he raised his glass to his lips.
“But I might have lost all that I won,” I remarked. “No, I prefer to keep it. I’d like to be unique among the people and go away with some of the bank’s money. I intend to keep what I have, and not to play again.”
“Never?”
“Never!”
“My dear Miss Rosselli, that’s what everyone says here,” he laughed. “But before you’ve been on the Riviera long you’ll discover that this is no place for good resolutions. Gambling is one of the sweetest and most insidious of vices, and has the additional attraction of being thought chic. Look at the crowd of women here! Why, every one of them play. If they didn’t, others would believe them to be hard up--and poverty, you know, is distinctly bad form here. Even if a woman hasn’t sufficient to pay her hotel bill she must wear the regulation gold chatelaine,--the gold chain-purse,--if it only contains a couple of pieces of a hundred sous. And she must play. Fortunes have been won with only five francs.”
“Such stories, I fear, are only fairy tales,” I said incredulously.
“No. At least one of them is not,” he answered, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips and looking at me amusedly. “I was playing here one night last March when a young French girl won three hundred thousand francs after having first lost all she had. She borrowed a five-franc piece from a friend and with it broke the bank. I was present at the table where it occurred. Fortune is very fickle here.”
“So it seems,” I said. “That is why I intend to keep what I’ve won.”
“You might have a necklace made of the louis,” he said. “Many women wear coins won at Monte Carlo attached to their bangles.”
“A happy thought!” I exclaimed; “I’ll have one put on my bangle to-morrow as a souvenir.”
“Are you staying on the Riviera long?” he inquired presently.
“I really don’t know. When Ulrica is tired of it, then we shall move down to Rome, I suppose.”
“When she’s lost sufficient, you mean,” he smiled. “She’s quite reckless when she commences. I remember her here several seasons ago. She lost very heavily. Luck was entirely against her.”
I too remembered her visit. She left me in Washington and went to the Riviera for a couple of months, and on her return was constantly bewailing her penury. This, then, was the secret of it. She had never revealed to me the truth.
“And you think that I shall be stricken with the prevalent epidemic?” I inquired.
“I hope not,” he answered quickly. “But after all, the temptation is utterly irresistible. It is sad, indeed, that here in this corner of God’s earth, which He has marked as the nearest approach to paradise, should be allowed to flaunt all the vices and the seven deadly sins which render the world horrible. Monte Carlo is the one blot upon the Riviera. I’m a gambler,--I make no secret of it, because I find resistance impossible while I have money in my pocket,--nevertheless, much as I like a fling here each winter I would gladly welcome the closing of the Casino. It is, alas! true that those red-carpeted steps and the wide doors opposite form the entrance-gate to hell.”
I sighed, glancing over to the flight of steps before us, where the gay wintering world in summer toilettes were passing up and down. He was possessed of common sense and spoke the truth. Inside those rooms the perspiring, perfumed crowds were fluttering around the tables as moths around a candle, going headlong to ruin both moral and financial.
“Yes,” I observed reflectively, “I suppose you’re right. Thousands have been ruined within that place.”
“And thousands have ended by committing suicide,” he added. “The average number of suicides within this tiny Principality of Monaco is more than two a day!”
“More than two a day!” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Yes. Of course, the authorities bribe the press and hush it all up, but the authentic figures were published not so long ago. The Administration of the Casino find it cheaper to bury a corpse than to pay a ruined gambler’s fare to St. Petersburg, London, or New York. That’s why the poor devils who are cleaned out find the much-talked-of viatique so difficult to obtain. Human life is held very cheap here, I can tell you.”
“Oh, don’t talk like that,” I protested. “You make one feel quite nervous. Do you mean that murder is often committed?”
“Well--not exactly that. But one must always remember that here, mixing with the best people of Europe, are the very scum of the world, both male and female. Although they dress elegantly, live well, play boldly, and give themselves airs and titles of nobility, they are a very queer and unscrupulous crowd, I can assure you.”
“Do you know any of them by sight?” I inquired, much interested.
“Oh, one or two,” he answered, laughing indifferently. “Some of them, of course, are eccentric and quite harmless characters.” Then a moment later he added: “Do you see that tall, thin old man just ascending the steps--the one with the soft, white felt hat? Well, his is a curious story. Twenty years ago he came here a millionaire, and within a month lost everything he possessed at trente-et-quarante. So huge were the profits made by the bank, that instead of giving him his viatique to London they allotted him a pension of a louis a day for life, on the understanding that he should never again enter the Rooms. For nearly twenty years he lived in Nice, haunting the Promenade des Anglais and brooding over his past foolishness. Last year, however, somebody unexpectedly died and left him quite comfortably off, whereupon he paid back to Monte Carlo all that he had received and returned again to gamble. His luck, however, has proved just as bad as before. Yet each month as soon as he draws his income he comes over, and in a single day flings it all away upon the red, his favorite color. His history is only one of many.”
With interest I looked at the tall, thin-faced old gambler as he painfully ascended the steps, and even as I watched he passed in, eager to fling away all that stood between himself and starvation.
Truly the little world of Monte Carlo is a very queer place.
Ulrica and Gerald came laughing across the leafy Place and joined us at our table. It was very pleasant there, with the band playing the latest waltzes, the gay promenaders strolling beneath the palms, the bright flowers, and the pigeons strutting in the roadway. Indeed, as one sat there it seemed hard to believe that this was actually the much-talked-of Monte Carlo--the plague spot of Europe.
I don’t think that I ever saw Ulrica look so well as on that afternoon in her white serge dress, which she had had made in Paris; for white serge is, as you know, de rigueur at Monte in winter, with a white hat and white shoes. I was also in white, but it never suits me as it does her; yet one must be smart, even at the expense of one’s complexion. At Monte Carlo one must at least be respectable, even in one’s vices.
“Come, let’s go back to the Rooms,” suggested Ulrica when she had finished her tea, flavored with orange-flower water, which is the mode at the Café de Paris.
“Miss Rosselli won’t play any more,” said Reggie.
“My dear Carmela,” cried Ulrica; “why, surely you’ve the pluck to follow your good fortune?”
But I was obdurate, and although I accompanied the others I did not risk a single sou.
The place was crowded and the atmosphere absolutely unbearable, as it always becomes about five o’clock. The Administration appear afraid of letting in a little air to cool the heads of the players, hence the rooms are hermetically sealed.
As I wandered about with Reggie, he pointed out to me other well-known characters in the Rooms--the queer old fellow who carries a bag purse made of colored beads; the old hag with a mustache who always brings her own rake; the bright-eyed, dashing woman known to the croupiers as “The Golden Hand;” the thin, wizen-faced little hunchback who one night a few months before had broken the bank at the first roulette table on the left; men working so-called “systems” and women trying to snatch up other people’s winnings. Now and then my companion placed a louis upon a transversale or colonne and once or twice he won, but, declaring that he had no luck that day, he soon grew as tired of it as myself.