Mathias Sandorf/Page 27

Mathias Sandorf - IV,3

CHAPTER XV. SEVENTEEN TIMES.
“ times?”

“Seventeen times!”

“Yes, the red has passed seventeen times!”

“Is it possible?”

“It may be impossible, but it is.”

“And the players are mad against it?”

“More than 900,000 francs won by the bank!”

“Seventeen times! Seventeen times!”

“At roulette or trente-et-quarante?”

“At trente-et-quarante.”

“It is fifteen years since anything like it!”

“Fifteen years three months and fourteen hours,” coolly replied an old gambler, belonging to the honorable class of the ruined. “Yes, sir, and a very strange thing—it was in the height of summer, on the 16th of June, 1867—I know something about it.”

Such was the conversation, or rather the chorus of exclamation that was heard in the vestibule and peristyle of the Cercle des Etrangers at Monte Carlo, on the evening of the 3d of October, eight days after the escape of Carpena from the Spanish penitentiary.

Among the crowd of gamblers—men and women of all nations, ages, and classes—there was quite an uproar of enthusiasm. They would willingly have greeted the red as the equal of the horse that had carried off the Epsom Derby or the Longehamps Grand Prix. In fact, for the people that the Old and New Worlds daily pour into the little principality of Monaco, this series of seventeen had quite the importance of a political event affecting the laws and equilibrium of Europe.

It will easily be believed that the red in its somewhat extraordinary obstinacy had made a good many victims and the winnings of the bank had been considerable. Nearly a million of francs said some—which meant that nearly the whole of the players had become infuriated at the extraordinary series of passes.

Between them, two foreigners had paid a large part of what these gentlemen of the board of green cloth call the “deveine”—one, very cool, very self-restrained, although the emotions within him were traceable in his pallid face; the other with his features distorted, his hair in disorder, his look that of a madman or a desperado—and these had just descended the steps of the peristyle, and were strolling out under the trees on the terrace.

“That makes more than 400,000 francs that the cursed series has cost us,” said the elder.

“Yon may as well say 413,000,” said the younger in the tone of a cashier casting a column.

“And now I have only got 200,000—and hardly that,” said the first gambler.

“One hundred and ninety-seven thousand,” said the other, in the same tone.

“Yes! Of nearly two millions that I once had, when you made me come with you.”

“One million seven hundred and seventy-five thousand francs!”

“And that in less than two months.”

“In one month and sixteen days.”

“Sarcany!” exclaimed the elder, whom his companion's coolness seemed to exasperate as much as the ironical precision with which he rolled out the ciphers.

“Well, Silas?”

Toronthal and Sarcany were the speakers. Since leaving Ragusa, in the short space of three months, they had reached the verge of ruin. After dissipating all that they had received as the reward of their abominable treachery, Sarcany had hunted his accomplice out of Ragusa, taking Sava with them, and then had enticed him into gambling and every dissipation in which he could squander his wealth. It is only just, however, to say that the old banker, daring speculator as he was, had in times gone by more than once risked his fortune in hazardous adventures in which luck was his only guide.

How could Toronthal resist? Was he not more than ever in the power of the Tripolitan broker? Sometimes he revolted, but Sarcany had obtained an irresistible ascendency over him, and the wretched man fell so heavily that strength almost failed him to rise again, so that Sarcany was not at all uneasy about the occasional fancies that Toronthal had to withdraw from his influence. The brutality of his retorts and the implacability of his logic soon brought Toronthal back beneath the yoke.

In leaving Ragusa under circumstances which will not have been forgotten, their first care had been to put Sava in some safe place under the charge of Namir. And now in this retreat at Tetuan, on the borders of Morocco, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to find her. There Sarcany's pitiless companion undertook to break down the girl's resolution and tear from her her consent to the marriage. Unshaken in her repulsion and strengthened by the recollection of Pierre, Sava hitherto had obstinately resisted. But could she always do so?

In the meantime Sarcany never ceased from exciting his companion to plunge into the follies of the gambling-table, although he had lost his own fortune in a similar way. In France, in Italy, in Germany, in the great centers where chance keeps house in all its forms, on the exchange, on the race-course, in the clubs of the great capitals, in the watering-places as in the sea-side towns, Silas Toronthal had followed as Sarcany led, and had soon been reduced to a few hundred thousand francs. While the banker risked his own money, Sarcany risked the banker's, and down this double slope both went to ruin at double-quick time. What gamblers call the “deveine” had been dead against them, and it was not for want of trying every chance that offered. In short, their amusement cost them the best part of the millions received from the possessions of Count Sandorf, and it had even become necessary to offer for sale the house in the Stradone at Ragusa.

And so they had been at Monte Carlo for the last three weeks, never leaving the tables of the club, trying the most infallible dodges, working out schemes that went always awry, studying the rotation of the cylinder of the roulette when the croupier's hand was tiring through his last quarter hour of duty, loading to the maximum numbers, which obstinately refused to come, combining simple combinations with multifold combinations, listening to the advice of ruined old stagers, becoming professional gamblers, trying in fact every imbecile device, employing every stupid fetish which could class the gambler between the child who has no reason and the idiot who has forever lost it. And not only did they risk their money, but they enfeebled their intelligence by imagining absurd combinations, and they compromised their personal dignity by the familiarity which the frequenting of the very mixed assembly imposed upon all. In short, at the close of this evening, which would hereafter be celebrated in the annals of Monte Carlo, owing to their obstinacy in struggling against a series of seventeen rouges at trente-et-quarante, they had left off with less than 200,000 francs between them.

But if they were nearly ruined, they had not yet lost their senses, and while they were talking on the terrace they noticed a gambler who had become suddenly deranged, and who was running through the gardens shouting:

“It turns! It goes on turning!”

The unfortunate man imagined that he had just put his money on the coming number, and that the cylinder in a movement of fantastic gyration was turning and doomed to turn for ages. He was mad.

“Have you become calmer, Silas?” asked Sarcany of his companion. “Does not that lunatic teach you to keep cool? We have not won, it is true, but the luck will turn, for it must turn, and without our doing anything to make it. Why try to better it? It is dangerous, and besides it is useless. You can not change the run if it is bad, and you would not change it when it is good. Wait then, and when the luck turns, let us be bold and make our game while the run lasts.”

Did Toronthal listen to this advice—absurd as is all advice connected with games of chance? No! He was overwhelmed, and he had then but one idea—to escape from this domination of Sarcany, to get away, and to get away so far that his conscience could not reproach him! But such a fit of resolution could not last long in his enervated, helpless nature. Besides, he was watched by his accomplice. Before he left him to himself, Sarcany wanted him until his marriage had taken place with Sava. Then he would get rid of Silas Toronthal, he would forget him, and he would not even remember that that feeble individual had ever existed, or that he had ever been associated with him in any enterprise whatever! Until then it was necessary for the banker to remain under his thumb!

“Silas,” continued Sarcany, “we have been unfortunate to-day; chance was against us. To-morrow it will be for us!”

“And if I lose the little that is left?” answered Toronthal, who struggled in vain against these deplorable suggestions.

“There is still Sava, Toronthal!” answered Sarcany quickly. “She is an ace of trumps, and you can not overtrump her!”

“Yes! To-morrow! to-morrow!” said the banker, who was just in that mental condition in which a gambler would risk his head.

The two then entered their hotel, which was situated half-way down the road from Monte Carle to La Condamine.

The port of Monaco lies between Point Forcinana and Fort Antoine, and is an open bay exposed to the north-east and south-east winds. It rounds off between the rock on which stands the capital, and the plateau on which are the hotels and villas, at the foot of the superb Mount Agel, whose summit rising to 3600 feet towers boldly above the picturesque panorama of the Ligurian coast. The town has a population of some 1200 inhabitants, and is situated on the rock of Monaco, surrounded on three of its sides by the sea. It lies hidden beneath the never-fading verdure of palms, pomegranates, sycamores, pear-trees orange-trees, citron-trees, eucalyptuses, and arborescent bushes of geraniums, aloes, myrtles, lentisks and palmachristis heaped all over the place in marvelous confusion.

At the other side of the harbor Monte Carlo faces the tiny capital, with its curious pile of houses, built on all the ledges, its zigzags of narrow climbing roads running up to the Corniche suspending in mid-mountain its chessboard of gardens in perpetual bloom, its panorama of cottages of every shape, its villas of every style, of which some seem actually to hang over the limpid waters of this Mediterranean bay.

Between Monaco and Monte Carlo at the back of the harbor from the beach up to the throat of the winding valley which divides the group of mountains is a third city, La Condamine.

Above to the right rises a large mountain, whose profile, turned toward the sea, had gained it the name of Dog's Head. On this head there is now a fort which is said to be impregnable, and which has the honor to be French. For it marks the limit on that side of the principality of Monaco.

From La Condamine to Monte Carlo vehicles have to ascend a superb hill, at the upper end of which are the private houses and the hotels, in one of which were now staying Toronthal and Sarcany. From the windows of their apartment the view extended from La Condamine to beyond Monaco, and was only stopped by the Dog's Head, which seemed to be interrogating the Mediterranean as the Sphynx does the Lybian Desert.

Sarcany and Toronthal had retired to their rooms. There they examined the situation, each from his own point of view. Had the vicissitudes of fortune broken the community of interests which for fifteen years had bound them so closely together?

Sarcany when he entered had found a letter addressed to him. It came from Tetuan, and he hastily tore it open.

In a few lines Namir told him of the two things that interested him deeply. The first was the death of Carpena, drowned in the harbor of Ceuta under such extraordinary circumstances; the second was the appearance of Dr. Antekirtt on the Moorish coast, the way in which he had dealt with the Spaniard, and then his immediate disappearance.

Having read the letter, Sarcany opened the window. Leaning on the balcony he looked into space and set himself to think.

“Carpena dead? Nothing could be more opportune! Now his secrets are drowned with him! On that side I am at ease! Nothing more to fear there!”

Then coming to the second passage of his letter: “As to the appearance of Dr. Antekirtt at Ceuta, that is more serious! Who is this man? It would not matter much after all if I had not found him for some time more or less mixed up in my concerns! At Ragusa his interviews with the Bathory family! At Catania, the trap he laid for Zirone! At Ceuta, this interference, which has cost the life of Carpena! Then he is very near Tetuan, but it does not seem that he has gone there, nor that he has discovered Sava's retreat. That would be the most terrible blow, and it may yet come! We shall see if we can not keep him off, not only in the future, but in the present. The Senousists will soon be masters of all the Cyrenaic, and there is only an arm of the sea to cross to get at Antekirtta! If they must be urged on—I know well.”

It is evident that Sarcany's horizon was not without its black spots. In the dark schemes which he followed out step by step in face of the object he had set himself and which he had almost attained, he might stumble over the very smallest stone in his path, and perhaps never get up again. Not only was this intervention of Dr. Antekirtt enough to unsettle him, but the position of Toronthal was also beginning to cause him anxiety.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “we are in a corner! To-morrow we must stake everything! Either the bank goes, or we go! If I am ruined by his ruin. I know how to recoup myself! But for Silas it is different. He may become dangerous, he may talk, he may let out the secret on which all my future rests! I have been his master up to now, but he may become my master!”

The position was exactly as Sarcany had described it. He was under no mistake as to the moral courage of his accomplice. He had his lesson before; Silas Toronthal when he had nothing to lose, would only use him to make money out of him.

Sarcany pondered over what was best to be done. Absorbed in his reflections he did not see what was happening at the entrance to the harbor of Monaco a few hundred feet beneath him.

About a half cable-length away a long hull without mast or funnel, came gliding through the waves. Altogether, it did not show for more than three feet above the water level. Soon after, gradually nearing Point Focinana, it slipped into smoother water near the beach. Then there shot off from it a little boat, which had appeared like an incrustation on the side of the almost invisible hull. Three men were in the boat. In a few strokes of the sculls they reached the shore, two of them landed, and the third took back the boat. A few minutes afterward the mysterious craft, which had not betrayed its presence either by light or sound, was lost in the darkness, and had left no trace of its passage.

The two men as soon as they had left the beach went along by the edge of the rocks toward the railway station, and then went up the Avenue des Spelugues, which runs around the gardens of Monte Carlo.

Sarcany had seen nothing of this. His thoughts were far away from Monaco—at Tetuan. But he would not go there alone, he would compel his accomplice to go with him.

“Silas my master!” he repeated. “Silas able to checkmate me with a word! Never! If to-morrow the game does not give us back what it has taken away from us, 1 shall be obliged to make him follow me! Yes! To follow me to Tetuan, and then on the coast of Morocco, if Silas Toronthal gives trouble, Silas Toronthal will disappear!”

As we know, Sarcany was not the man to recoil at one crime more, particularly when circumstances, the distance of the country, the wildness of the inhabitants, and the impossibility of seeking and finding the criminal, rendered its accomplishment so easy.

Having decided on his plans, Sarcany shut the window, went to bed, and was soon asleep without being in the least troubled by his conscience.

It was not so with Toronthal. He passed a horrible night. Of his former fortune what had he left? Hardly 200,000 francs—and these were to be squandered in play. It was the last throw! So his accomplice wished, and so he himself wished. His enfeebled brain, filled with chimerical calculations, was no longer able to reason coolly nor justly. He was even incapable, at this moment at least, of understanding his real position with regard to Sarcany. He could not see that the parts had shifted, and that he who had been the victor was in turn the vanquished. He only saw the present with its immediate ruin, and only dreamed of the morrow which might float him again or plunge him into the depths of misery.

Thus passed the night for the two associates. One was permitted to spend it in repose, the other to struggle with all the anguish of insomnia.

In the morning about ten o'clock Sarcany joined Toronthal. The banker was seated before a table, covering the pages of his note-book with figures and formulæ.

“Well, Silas,” said he in a careless tone the tone of a man who would not assign more importance to the world's miseries than he could help—“well, Silas, in your dreams did you give the preference to the red or the black?”

“I did not sleep a wink!” replied the banker.

“So much the worse, Silas, so much the worse. To-day you must be cool, and a few hours of repose were what you wanted. Look at me! I have had a little, and I am in the best condition to struggle with Fortune! She is a woman after all, and she loves best the men who can command her.”

“She has betrayed us all the same!”

“Bah! Merely caprice! And the caprice will pass, and she will smile on us!”

Toronthal made no reply. Did he even understand what Sarcany had said to him, while his eyes were fixed on the pages of his note-book and the useless combinations?

“What are you doing there?” asked Sarcany. “Tips? Diddles! Tut-tut. You are ill, Silas! You can't mix up mathematics and luck; it is luck alone we want to-day!”

“Be it so!” said Toronthal, shutting up his book.

“Eh! 0f course, Silas! I only know one way to go to work,” said Sarcany, ironically. “But to do that we must have made special studies—and our education has been neglected on that point! Then stick to chance! She stuck to the bank yesterday! She may desert it to-day! And if she does, she'll give back all she took!”

“All!”

“Yes, all, Silas! But don't be cast down! Cheer up and keep cool!”

“And to-night if we are ruined?” asked the banker, looking straight at Sarcany.

“Well, we'll clear out of Monaco.”

“Where to?” exclaimed Toronthal. “Cursed be the day I knew you, Sarcany! Cursed be the day I employed you! I should never have been where I am if it had not been for you!”

“It is too late to abuse me, my dear fellow, and it is not quite the thing to quarrel with people who are going to help you.”

“Be careful!” said the banker.

“I am careful,” said Sarcany.

And Toronthal's threat confirmed him in his scheme to put it out of his power to injure him.

“My dear Silas,” he continued, “do not worry yourself! Why should you? It excites your nerves, and you must not be nervous to-day! Have confidence and don't despair about me! If unfortunately the deveine goes against us think of the other millions that are waiting for me, in which you will share.”

“Yes! Yes! I must have my revenge!” said Toronthal with the gambler's instinct. “The bank was too lucky yesterday—and to-night—”

“To-night we shall be rich, very rich,” said Sarcany. “And I engage that we shall get back all we have lost! And then we shall leave Monte Carlo! And start for—”

“For where?”

“For Tetuan, where we have another part to play! And that the finest and the best!”