Mathias Sandorf/Page 28
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LAST STAKE.
[edit]The salon of the Cercle des Etrangers—otherwise the Casino—had been open since eleven o'clock. The number of players was still few, but some of the roulette tables were already in operation.
The equilibrium of these tables had previously been rectified, it being important that their horizontality should be perfect. In fact the slightest flaw affecting the movements of the ball thrown into the turning cylinder would be remarked and utilized to the detriment of the bank. At each of the six tables of roulette 16,000 francs in gold, silver, and notes had been placed; on each of the two tables of trente-et-quarante 150,000. This is the usual stake of the bank during the season, and it is very seldom that the administration has to replenish the starting fund. Except with a draw game or a zero the bank must win—and it always wins. The game is immoral in itself; but it is more than that, it is stupid, for its conditions are unfair.
Round each of the roulette tables are eight croupiers, rake in hand, occupying the places reserved for them. By their side, sitting or standing, are the players and spectators. In the saloons the inspectors stroll to and fro, watching the croupiers and the stakes, while the waiters move about for the service of the public and the administration, which employs not less than 150 people to look after the tables.
About half past twelve the train from Nice brings its customary contingent of players. To-day they were, perhaps, rather numerous. The series of seventeen for the rouge had produced its natural result. It was a new attraction, and all who worshiped chance came to follow its vicissitudes with increased ardor.
An hour afterward the rooms had filled. The talk was chiefly of that extraordinary run, but it was carried on in subdued voices. In these immense rooms with their prodigality of gilding, their wealth of ornamentation, the luxury of their furniture, the profusion of the lusters that poured forth their floods of gaslight, to say nothing ot the long pendent from which the green-shaded oil-lamps more especially illuminated the gaming-tables, the dominating sound, notwithstanding the crowd of visitors, was not that of conversation; it was the clatter and chinking of the gold and siver pieces as they were counted or thrown on the table, the rustling of the bank-notes, and the incessant “Rouge gagne et couleur,” or “dixsept, noir, impair et manque” in the indifferent voices of the chiefs of the parties and a very sad sound it was!
Two of the losers who had been among the most prominent the evening before had not yet appeared in the saloons. Already some of the players were following the different chances, endeavoring to tap the run of luck, some at roulette, others at trente-et-quarante. But the altercations of gain and loss seemed to be pretty equal, and it did not look as though the phenomenon of the night before would be repeated.
It was not till three o'clock that Sarcany and Toronthal entered the Casino. Before entering the gaming-room, they took a stroll in the hall, where they were the object of a little public curiosity. The crowd looked at them and watched them, and wondered if they would again try a struggle with this chance which had cost them so dear. Several of the profession would willingly have taken advantage of the occasion to favor them with infallible dodges—for a consideration—had they seemed more accessible. The banker, with a wild look in his eyes, did not seem to notice what was passing around him. Sarcany was cooler and firmer than ever. Both shrunk for a time from trying their last stake.
Among the people who were watching him with that special curiosity accorded chiefly to patients or convicts, there was one stranger, who seemed resolved never to lose sight of them. He was a knowing-looking young man of about three-and-twenty, with a thin face and pointed nose—one of those noses that seem to look at you. His eyes, of singular vivacity, were sheltered behind spectacles merely of preserved glass. As if he had live money in his veins, he kept his hands in his coat pocket to prevent their gesticulating, and he kept his feet close together in the first position, to make sure of remaining in his place. He was fashionably dressed, without any sacrifices to the latest exigencies of dandyism, and he gave himself no airs—but probably felt very ill at ease in his well-fitting clothes. For the young man—there could be no doubt about it—was nobody else but Point Pescade.
Outside, in the gardens, Cape Matifou was in attendance. The person on whose behalf these two had come on a special mission to this heaven or hell of Monte Carlo was Dr. Antekirtt.
The vessel that had dropped them the night before at Monte Carlo point was “Electric No. 2,” of the flotilla of Antekirtta, and this was their object:
Two days after the kidnapping on board the “Ferrato” Carpena had been brought ashore and in spite of his protests imprisoned in one of the casemates on the island. There he found that he had only changed one prison for another. Instead of being in the penitentiary of Ceuta, he was, although he knew it not, in the power of Dr. Antekirtt. Where was he? He could not tell. Had he gained by the change? He wondered much, and not without anxiety. He resolved at any rate to do all he could to improve his position.
And to the first question propounded by the doctor he replied with the utmost frankness.
Did he know Silas Toronthal and Sarcany?
Toronthal, no; Sarcany, yes; but he had only seen him at rare intervals.
Had Sarcany been in communication with Zirone and his band while they were in the neighborhood of Catania?
Yes; Sarcany was expected in Sicily, and he would certainly have come if it had not been for the unfortunate expedition which ended in the death of Zirone.
Where was he now?
At Monte Carlo, at least unless he had left that town, where he had been living for some time, and very likely with Silas Toronthal.
Carpena knew no more. But what he had just told the doctor was sufficient information for a fresh campaign.
Of course, the Spaniard did not know what object the doctor had in helping him to escape from Ceuta and carrying him off; he did not know that his treachery to Andrea Ferrato was known to him who interrogated him, and he did not know that Luigi was the son of the fisherman of Rovigno. In his casemate he was as strictly guarded as he had been in the penitentiary at Ceuta, without being able to communicate with any one until his fate had been decided.
One, then, of the three traitors who had brought about the sanguinary collapse of the conspiracy of Trieste was in the hands of the doctor. There were the other two still to be seized, and Carpena had just told where they could be found.
As the doctor was known to Toronthal, and Pierre was known to Toronthal and Sarcany, it seemed best for them not to appear until they could do so with some chance of success. But now they were on the track of the accomplices, it was important not to lose sight of them until circumstances favored the attack. And so Point Pescade, to follow them wherever they went, and Cape Matifou, to lend the strong hand when needed, were sent to Monaco, where the doctor, Pierre, and Luigi would come in the “Ferrato” as soon as they were wanted.
As soon as they arrived they set to work. They had no difficulty in discovering the hotel in which Toronthal and Sarcany had taken up their quarters. While Cape Matifou walked about the neighborhood till the evening, Point Pescade kept watch. He saw the two friends come out at about one o'clock in the afternoon. It seemed that the banker was much depressed and spoke little, while Sarcany was particularly lively. During the morning Pescade had heard what had happened the previous evening in the saloons of the Cercle, that is to say, of that extraordinary series which had made so many victims, among the chief of whom were Toronthal and Sarcany. He therefore assumed that their conversation was about that curious piece of bad luck. In addition he had learned how these two men had been heavy losers for some time, and he also assumed that they had almost exhausted their funds, and that the time was coming when the doctor could usefully intervene.
This information was contained in a telegram which Pescade, without mentioning names, sent off during the morning to Malta, whence it was forwarded by private wire to Antekirtta.
When Sarcany and Toronthal entered the hall of the Casino, Pescade followed them; and when they entered the gaming-saloons he was close behind.
It was then three o'clock in the afternoon. The play was growing animated. The banker and his companion first strolled round the rooms. For a minute or so they stopped at different tables and watched the game, but took no part in it.
Point Pescade strolled about among the spectators, but did not lose sight of them. He even thought it best, so as to disarm suspicion, to risk a few five-franc pieces on the columns and dozens of roulette, and, as was proper, he lost them—with the most exemplary coolness. But he did not avail himself of the excellent advice given him in confidence by a professor of great merit.
“To succeed, sir, you should study to lose the small stakes and win the big ones. That is the secret!”
Four o'clock struck, and then Sarcany and Toronthal thought the time had come for them to try their luck. There were several vacant places at one of the roulette-tables. They seated themselves, facing each other, and the chief of the table soon saw himself surrounded not only by players, but by spectators eager to assist at the revenge of the famous losers of the night before. Quite naturally, Pescade found himself in the front rank of the spectators, and he was not one of those least interested m the vicissitudes of the battle.
For the first hour the chances seemed about equal. To divide them better, Toronthal and Sarcany played independently of each other. They staked separately and won a few large amounts, sometimes on simple combinations, sometimes on multiple combinations, and sometimes on many combinations at once. Luck decided neither for nor against them, but between four and six o clock it seemed to be running in their favor. At roulette the maximum is six thousand francs, and this they gained several times on full numbers.
Toronthal's hands shook as he stretched them across table to stake his money, or as he snatched from under the rake the gold and notes of the croupiers. Sarcany was quite master of himself, and his countenance gave no sign of his emotions. He contented himself with encouraging his companion with his looks, and it was Toronthal whom chance then followed with most constancy.
Point Pescade, although rather dazzled by the constant movement of the gold and notes, kept close watch on them, and wondered if they would be prudent enough to keep the wealth which was growing under their hands and if they would stop in time. Then the thought occured to him that if they had that good sense—which he doubted—they would leave Monte Carlo and fly to some other corner of Europe, where he would have to follow them. If money did not fail them they would not fall so easily into the power of Dr. Antekirtt.
“Certainly,” he thought, “in every way it will be better for them to get ruined, and I am very much mistaken if that scoundrel Sarcany is the man to stop once he is in the swim!”
Whatever were Pescade's thoughts and fears, the luck did not abandon the two friends. Three times in fact they would have broken the bank if the chief of the table had not thrown in an additional 20,000 francs.
The strife was quite an event among the spectators, the majority of whom were in favor of the players. Was not this in revenge for the insolent series of rouge by which the administration had so largely profited during the previous evening?
At half past six, when they suspended their play, Toronthal and Sarcany had realized more than £20,000.[1] They rose and left the roulette table. Toronthal walked with uncertain step, as if he were slightly intoxicated, intoxicated with emotion and cerebral fatigue. His companion, impassible as ever, watched him, thinking if he would be tempted to escape with the money he had won and withdraw himself from his influence.
Without a word they passed through the hall, descended the peristyle, and walked toward their hotel.
Pescade followed them at a distance.
As he came out he saw near one of the kiosks in the garden Cape Matifou seated on a bench.
Point Pescade stepped up to him.
“Has the time come?” asked Matifou.
“What time?”
“To—to—”
“To come on the stage? No! not yet! You must wait at the wings! Have you had your dinner?”
“Yes.”
“My compliments to you! My stomach is in my heels—and that is not the place for a stomach! But I will get it up again if I have time! Do not move from here till I get back.”
And Pescade rushed off down the hill after Toronthal and Sarcany.
When he found that they were at dinner in their rooms he sat down at the table d'hôte. He was only just in time, and in half an hour, as he said, he had brought back his stomach to the normal place that that organ occupies in the human machine.
Then he went out with a capital cigar in his mouth and took up his position opposite the hotel.
“Assuredly,” he said to himself, “I must have been made for a policeman! I have mistaken my profession!”
The question he then asked himself was: Were these gentlemen going back to the Casino this evening?
About eight o'clock they appeared at the hotel door.
Pescade saw and heard that they were in eager discussion.
Apparently the banker was trying to resist once more the entreaties and injunctions of his accomplice, for Sarcany in an imperious voice was heard to say:
“You must, Silas! I will have it so!”
They walked up the hill to the gardens of Monte Carlo. Point Pescade followed them without being able to overhear the rest of their conversation—much to his regret.
But this is what Sarcany was saying, in a tone which admitted of no reply by the banker, whose resistance was growing feebler every minute.
“To stop, Silas, when luck is with us is madness! You must have lost your head ! In the ‘deveine’ we faced our game like fools, and in the ‘veine’ we must face it like wise men. We have an opportunity, the only one perhaps, an opportunity that may never occur again, to be masters of our fate, masters of fortune, and by our own fault we shall let it escape us! Silas, do you not feel that luck—”
“If it is not exhausted,” said Toronthal.
“No! a hundred times no!” replied Sarcany. “It can not be explained, but it can be felt, and it thrills you even to your spinal cord! A million is waiting for us to-night on the Casino tables. Yes, a million, and I will not let it slip!”
“You play, then, Sarcany.”
“Me!. Play alone? No! Play with you, Silas? Yes; and if we have to choose between us, I will yield you my place. The ‘veine’ is personal, and it is manifest that to you it has returned. Play on then and win!”
In fact what Sarcany wished was that Toronthal should not be content with the few hundred thousand francs that would allow him to escape from his power; but that he would either become the millionaire he had been or be reduced to nothing. Rich, he would continue his former life. Ruined, he would have to follow Sarcany where he pleased. In either case he would be unable to injure him.
Resist as he might, Toronthal felt all the passions of the gambler rising within him. In the miserable abasement into which he had fallen he felt afraid to go, and at the same time longed to go back to the tables. Sarcany's words set his blood on fire. Visible luck had declared in his favor, and during the last few hours with such constancy that it would be unpardonable to stop.
The madman! Like all gamblers he spoke in the present when he should have spoken only in the past! Instead of saying, “I have been lucky”—which was true—he said I am lucky—which was false. And in his brain, as in that of all who trust to chance, there was no other reasoning! They forget what was recently said by one of the greatest mathematicians of France, “Chance has its caprices, it has not its habits.”
Sarcany and Toronthal walked on to the Casino, followed by Pescade. There they stopped for a moment.
“Silas,” said Sarcany, “no hesitation! You have resolved to play, have you not?”
“Yes—resolved to risk everything for everything,” replied the banker, in whom all hesitation had ceased when he found himself on the steps of the peristyle.
“It is not for me to influence you,” continued Sarcany. “Trust to your own inspiration, not mine. It will not lead you astray. Are you going for roulette?”
“No—trente-et-quarante,” said Toronthal, as he entered the hall.
“You are right, Silas! Listen only to yourself. Roulette has almost given you a fortune! Trente-et-quarante will do the rest!”
They entered the saloons and walked round them. Ten minutes afterward Pescade saw them seat themselves at one of the trente-et-quarante tables.
There, in fact, they could play more boldly, for if the chances of the game are simple, the maximum is 12,000 francs, and a few passes can give considerable difference in gain or loss. Hence it is the favorite game with desperate players, and at it wealth and poverty can be made with a vertiginous rapidity sufficient to raise the envy of all the Stock Exchanges of the world.
CHAPTER XVII.
A CHECK FOR SARCANY.
[edit]Toronthal lost his fear as soon as he was seated at the trente-et-quarante table. There was no timidity now about his play; he staked his money like a man in a fury. And Sarcany watched his every movement, deeply interested in this supreme crisis, deeply interested in the issue.
For the first hour the alternations between loss and gain almost balanced each other, the advantage being on Toronthal's side. Sarcany and he imagined they were sure of success. They grew excited and staked higher and higher until they staked only the maximum. But soon the luck returned to the imperturbable bank, which by this maximum protects its interests in no inconsiderable measure, and which knows no transports of folly.
Then came blow after blow. The winnings during the afternoon went heap by heap. Toronthal was an awful spectacle; his face became congested, his eyes grew haggard, he clung to the table, to his chair, to the rolls of notes, and the rouleaux of gold that his hand would hardly yield over, with the twitchings and convulsions of a drowning man! And no one was there to stop him on the brink of the chasm! Not a hand was stretched out to help him! Not an effort from Sarcany to tear him from the place before he was lost, before he finally sunk beneath the wave of ruin!
At ten o'clock Toronthal had risked his last stake, his last maximum. He won! Then he staked again—and again—and lost. And when he rose, dazed and scared, and fiercely wishing that the very walls would crumble and crush the crowd around him, he had nothing left—nothing of all the millions that had been left in the bank when the millions of Count Sandorf had poured in to its aid.
Toronthal, accompanied by Sarcany, who acted as his jailer, left the gaming-room, crossed the hall, and hurried out of the Casino. Then they fled across the square to the footpaths leading to La Turbie.
Point Pescade was already on their tracks, and as he passed had shaken up Cape Matifou as he lay half asleep on his bench with a shout of—
“Wake up! Eyes and legs!”
And Cape Matifou had come along with him on a trail it would not do to lose.
Sarcany and Toronthal continued to hurry on side by side, and gradually mounted the paths which twist and wind on the flank of the mountain among the olive and orange gardens. The capricious zigzags allowed Pescade and Matifou to keep them in view, although they could not get near enough to hear them.
“Come back to the hotel, Silas!” Sarcany continued to repeat in an imperious tone. “Come back, and be cool again!”
“No! we are ruined! Let us part! I do not want to see you again. I do not want—”
“Part? and why? You will follow me, Silas. To-morrow we will leave Monaco. We have enough to take us to Tetuan, and there we will finish our work.”
“No, no! Leave me, Sarcany, leave me!” said Toronthal.
And he pushed him violently aside as he tried to catch hold. Then be darted off at such speed that Sarcany had some trouble in keeping up. Unconscious of his acts, Toronthal at every step risked falling into the steep ravines above which the winding footpaths lay unrolled. Only one idea possessed him—to escape from Monte Carlo, where he had consummated his ruin, to escape from Sarcany, whose counsels had led him to misery, to escape without caring where he went or what became of him.
Sarcany felt that his accomplice was at last beyond him, that he was going to escape him! Ah! if the banker had not known those secrets which might ruin him, or at least irretrievably compromise the third game he wished to play, how little anxiety he would have felt for the man he had dragged to the brink of destruction! But, before he fell, Toronthal might give a last cry, and that cry he must stifle at all hazards!
Then from the thought of the crime on which he had resolved to its immediate execution was only a step, and this step Sarcany did not hesitate to take. That which he had intended to do on the road to Tetuan in the solitudes of Morocco might be done here this very night, on this very spot which would soon be deserted.
But just at present between Monte Carlo and La Turbie a few belated wayfarers were along the slopes. A cry from Silas might bring them to his help, and the murderer intended the murder to be committed in such a way that it would never be suspected. And so he had to wait. Higher up, beyond La Turbie and the frontier of Monaco, along the Corniche clinging to the lower buttresses of the Alps, two thousand feet above the sea, Sarcany could strike a far surer blow. Who could then come to his victim's help? How at the foot of such precipices as border that road could Toronthal's corpse be found?
But, for the last time, Sarcany tried to stop his accomplice, and tempt him back to Monte Carlo.
“Come, Silas, come,” said he, seizing him by the arm. “To-morrow we will begin again! I have some money left.”
“No! Leave me! Leave me!” exclaimed Toronthal with an angry gesture.
And if he had been strong enough to struggle with Sarcany, if he had been armed, he might not even have hesitated to take vengeance on his old Tripolitan broker for all the evil he had done him.
With a hand that anger made the stronger, Toronthal thrust him aside, then he rushed toward the last turn of the path and ran up a few steps roughly cut in the rock between the little gardens. Soon he reached the main road of La Turbie, along the narrow neck which divides the Dog's Head from Mont Agel, the old frontier line between Italy and France.
“Go, then, Silas!” exclaimed Sarcany. “Go! but you. will not go far.”
Then, turning off to the right, he scrambled over a stone hedge, scaled a garden-wall, and ran on in front so as to precede Toronthal along the road.
Pescade and Matifou, although they had not heard what had passed, had seen the banker thrust Sarcany away, and Sarcany disappear in the shade.
“Eh!” exclaimed Pescade. “Perhaps the best of them has gone. Anyhow, Toronthal is worth something. And we have no choice. Come on, Cape; forward, away!”
And in a few rapid strides they were close to Toronthal who was hurrying up the road. Leaving to the left the little knoll with the tower of Augustus, he passed at a run the houses, then closed for the night, and at length came out on the Corniche.
Point Pescade and Cape Matifou followed him, less than fifty yards behind.
But of Sarcany they thought no more. He had either taken the crest of the slope to the right or abandoned his accomplice to return to Monte Carlo.
The Corniche is an old Roman road. When it leaves La Turbie it drops toward Nice, running in mid-mountain by magnificent rocks, isolated cones, and profound precipices that cleave their ravines down to the railway line along the shore. Beyond, on this starry night by the light of the moon, then rising in the east, there showed forth confusedly the six gulfs, the Isle of Sainte Hospice, the mouth of the Var, the peninsula of Garoupe, the Cape of Antibes, the Juan Gulf, the Lerius Islands, the Gulf of Napoule and the Gulf of Cannes, with the mountains of Esterel in the background. Here shone the harbor lights of Beaulieu at the base of the escarpments of Petite-Afrique, then of Ville franche in front of Mont Leuza, and yonder the lamps of the fishing-boats were reflected on the calm waters of the open sea.
It was just after midnight. Toronthal, as soon as he got out of La Turbie, left the Corniche, dashed down a little road leading directly to Eza, a sort of eagle's nest with a half savage population, boldly placed on a rock above a mass of pines and carob-trees.
The road was quite deserted. The madman kept on for some time without slackening his pace or turning his head; suddenly he threw himself off to the left, down a narrow footpath running close to the high cliff along the shore, under which the railway and carriage roads pass by the tunnel.
Point Pescade and Cape Matifou hurried after him. A hundred paces further on Toronthal stopped. He had jumped on to a rock which overhung a precipice whose base, hundreds of feet below, dropped deep into the sea.
“What was he going to do? Had the idea of suicide entered his brain? Would he then end his miserable existence by hurling himself into the waves?”
“A thousand devils!” exclaimed Pescade; “we must have him alive! Catch him, Cape Matifou, and hold him tight!”
But they had not gone twenty yards before they saw a man appear to the right of the path, glide along the slope among the myrtles and lentisks, and clamber up so as to reach the rock upon which Toronthal stood.
It was Sarcany.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Point Pescade. “He is going to give his friend something to send him from this world into the next! Hurry up, Matifou. You take one—I'll take the other!”
But Sarcany stopped. He risked being recognized. A curse escaped his lips. Then springing off to the right before Pescade could reach him, he vanished among the bushes.
An instant afterward as Toronthal had gathered himself together to jump from the rock, he was seized by Cape Matifou and pulled back on to the road.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
“Let you make a mistake, Mr. Toronthal? Oh dear no!” answered Point Pescade.
He was quite prepared for this incident, which his instructions had not foreseen. But although Sarcany had escaped, Toronthal was captured, and all that could now be done was to take him to Antekirtta, where he would be received with all the honor that was his due
“Will you forward the gentleman—at a reduced rate?” asked Point Pescade.
“With pleasure,” said Matifou.
Toronthal, hardly knowing what had happened, made but very slight resistance. Pescade found a rough footpath leading to the beach, and down it he was followed by Cape Matifou, who sometimes carried and sometimes dragged his inert prisoner.
The descent was extremely difficult, and without Pescade's extraordinary activity and his friend's extraordinary strength they would certainly have had a fatal fall. However, after risking their lives a score of times, they gained the rocks on the beach. There the shore is formed of a succession of small creeks, capriciously cut back into the sandstone, shut in by high reddish walls and bordered by ferruginous reefs tinting the waves a bright blood color as they curl over them.
Day had begun to break when Point Pescade found a shelter at the back of a deep ravine that had been cut down into the cliff in geologic ages. Here he left Toronthal in charge of Cape Matifou.
“You will stop here!” he said.
“As long as you like.”
“Twelve hours even, if I am twelve hours away?”
“Twelve hours.”
“And without eating?”
“If I do not breakfast this morning I shall dine this evening—and for both of us!”
“And if you do not have dinner for two you shall have supper for four!”
And then Cape Matifou sat down on a rock so as not to lose sight of his prisoner; and Point Pescade made his way along the shore from creek to creek toward Monaco. He was not away as long as he expected. In less than two hours he came upon the “Electric” moored in one of the deserted creeks. And an hour later that swift vessel had arrived off the ravine in which Cape Matifou, seen from the sea, looked like a mythological Proteus herding the sheep of Neptune.
A minute or two afterward he and his prisoner were on board, and without having been noticed by the coastguard or the fishermen the “Electric” was off, under full power, for Antekirtta.
1↑ Verne: centaines de mille francs, One hundred thousand francs.