The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 15
The first beam of morning sunlight found Carmelita still tossing about upon her pillow. Dudley's dramatic outburst and departure had thoroughly frightened and chastened her. Nothing in the world mattered now except proving to him that he was wrong, that their marriage could yet be a glorious success, that she was willing to make any sacrifice to assure that. There was one consoling thought: He had said that he would always love her.
She wondered bitterly if he would forgive her the lie upon which her life here in Hedgewood was founded.
The gods must laugh at the struggles of mortals to avoid admitting a lie even when it is the easiest way out of difficulty. Carmelita felt that she could die rather than go to her husband and admit her gambling and her debts.
She rose wearily and took a cold shower-bath to try and drive the ache from her head. She hardly touched the breakfast which her maid brought to her bedroom. She would start, she decided, by discharging her butler and maid; she would give them two weeks' notice that very day.
Carmelita walked into the library and sat down before the desk in which the sheaves of bills, mute witnesses of the past weeks of folly, were resting in an inner drawer. She spread them out upon the desk and took up her pad and pencil. The total surprised and disheartened her. It was even larger than she had feared and she had not taken into consideration the five thousand dollar I. O. U. to Hayden. Hayden—how long could she count upon the suave, hard-eyed manager of Canary Cottage to delay the final reckoning?
And that afternoon, as if in answer to her question, a squat figure of a man, double-chinned and paunchy and dressed somewhat too loudly, walked up the blue-stone path and confronted her where she was trying to read Vogue upon the piazza before she was hardly aware of his presence. It was Hayden. She glanced around hurriedly and reassured herself that no one else was in earshot. He bowed and apologized for his intrusion. He could be very obsequious when he wanted to be and when he believed it paid. But there was a little ominous gleam in his small eyes. She had owed him his bill for a long time and he had heard rumors of impending trouble between the Dudley Drakes and, though the very wealthy Prince Rao-Singh was apparently still her sponsor and best friend, it was the wise thing to do to see where he, Hayden, stood.
One had to be careful with this flighty, young millionaire set. They had a habit of playing and not paying, of disappearing without leaving a forwarding address with the postman. Besides, Mrs. Drake had seemingly scratched Canary Cottage off her list as a place of amusement. He had not seen her there for several weeks. By making inquiries he had discovered that she was still in the neighborhood but he did not know how soon she would be going. On the whole, though his patrons did not usually care to have him invading their homes, he thought it expedient to come around and pay a business call.
Carmelita sensed uneasily what was coming as she asked him to sit down. He did so, his huge panama hat with the flashy band resting upon his knee and the remains of a brightlybanded cigar between his fat fingers. He mopped his brow at intervals. He had walked the mile from Canary Cottage and he was not the build which weathers the heat well.
"Haven't seen you at the Cottage lately, Mrs. Drake?" he started genially. She offered no comment. He got down to business. "Well, to tell the truth, I've come around about the little bill you owe us." He fumbled in his inside coat pocket and drew forth the duplicate of the I. O. U.'s Carmelita had in her desk. "Can't win all the time, you know."
"I cannot pay you now, Mr. Hayden," she said. "You will have to wait." The man was very distasteful to her, aside from his unpleasant mission. Most people to whom we owe money are.
"You have owed us the bill for over a month now. I'd like to see it settled up." He was thrusting his stubby jaw forward now and showed signs of getting considerably more troublesome.
"If you will wait—" she began helplessly. Oh, why did these crises have to come all at once, without a chance of recovery between them? She was at her wit's end. She suddenly remembered the words of Rao-Singh that evening before her birthday party, "If ever your creditors become unmanageable," he had assured her, "just come to me." No, she couldn't do that—as a last resource possibly. That burning kiss the night before—even now it brought a blush to her cheek.
Hayden was speaking in a cold tone, "Then I am sorry, madame, but you force us to present the bill to your husband for collection. We don't like to do it and it may be very embarrassing to both of us—but it seems to be the only way out."
Carmelita stared at him wildly. The world was about to crash around her head now? No, no! "Please, please,—don't do that. Give me until to-morrow at least. I shall have the money somehow. Promise me you will let me have another day."
Hayden hesitated. He rose and twirled his hat a minute. Then he said, "Very well—to-morrow. If the money is not paid by midnight, I will have to go to town the next morning and call at Drake and Porter's." He hesitated again, seeming to feel that some explanation was due for his hardness. "Life is too uncertain these days in the gambling business, madame, to let bills run on. I hope you understand. And, personally, I think we have been pretty easy on you anyway."
With another bow he was off.
After a sparse luncheon Carmelita again sat down at her desk and spread out the bills in front of her and resumed her figuring. Then she started to take account of her resources. Dudley always left a check with her when he left on Monday mornings—a somewhat larger amount than he had been in the habit of allotting to her when they were occupying the apartment together. It was every cent he could afford, she knew. The last check was still there, intact. By rigid economy she could keep herself a week with it but it was a mere drop in the bucket toward paying her other bills. She looked at it with a pathetic little smile. Poor Dudley. She pressed her lips against the paper whimsically. There was another check in the wall-safe, the five thousand dollar note from Rao-Singh, in payment of the kiss. Mrs. Peabody and Mrs. Hurd had promised to drive over the following morning, Monday, for a final settlement of the receipts from the Fête and she was to deliver Rao-Singh's check, together with other smaller, miscellaneous receipts in her possession to them then.
Carmelita held Rao-Singh's check in her hand. It was made out to "Cash" and signed with the cramped English writing of the Hindu. Her cheeks still burned with the thought of what it had bought, and cost her. Suddenly a mad idea flashed through her brain and, though she tried to dismiss it, it recurred to her constantly all through the afternoon. She had replaced Rao-Singh's check in the safe but the picture of it as a life-saver was continually flashing into her troubled brain.
It seemed to her to open a road out of her difficulties—a risky, thorny road to be sure, but perhaps worth the chance.
Lucy Hodge had invited her to a party at her house that evening in honor of the group of internationally famous tennis players who had just finished the annual tournament over at the Hedgewood Country Club. But she felt that she could not enjoy any sort of party in her present state of mind and during the afternoon she telephoned Lucy and pleaded illness.
"You are not letting last night's little fracas worry you, are you, my dear?" came the cool drawl of Mrs. Hodge over the wire. "You are very foolish if you do. Better come over, well or ill, and forget your troubles. There are some awfully nice, handsome boys coming. Rao-Singh asked me particularly if you would be on hand."
But Carmelita stood by her white lie, which was, after all, partly true. She did not feel well. Her head throbbed. Besides, she could not face the curious, all-seeing eyes, the wagging scandal-tongues of Lucy's set. And particularly she could not face Rao-Singh after the kiss which had revealed his dangerous feelings toward her.
After her dinner alone that Sunday evening Carmelita sat for several minutes thoughtfully over her coffee. Lucy's crowd would all be at the Hodges'. It is always comforting if one is able to think in the midst of grave difficulty that taking one more step in the wrong direction cannot make matters worse and may be just the trick that will save the day. It was such reasoning that led Carmelita to her decision. Once the decision was made, she acted calmly and swiftly.
She arose from the table and, going to the wall-safe took out Rao-Singh's check for five thousand dollars, which she was to deliver to Mrs. Peabody and Mrs. Hurd in the morning. She telephoned for a taxicab from the village and when, dressed for the cool night air, she reappeared downstairs, the cab had arrived. Rao-Singh's check rested in the beaded bag which she carried on her arm as she stepped into the machine, without having left word with her servants where she was going. "Canary Cottage," she told the driver.
Hayden's palace of chance was having a pretty dull evening and the proprietor was not in sight when Carmelita gave the signal and was admitted through the familiar door. She was anxious to avoid being recognized but there was no need of caution. A swift glance around showed nobody whom she knew—a few "sports" from the village who were talking loudly and spending little and three members of the Little Neck actors' colony silently playing roulette at a table in the center of what had been the palatial living-room of this once sedate old mansion. In the next room a fairly large mixed party of men and women were evidently making their first visit, judging by the noise they were making and the look of polite disgust upon the face of the banker.
Carmelita felt that she would be less conspicuous with the large party. Perhaps there was also within her the secret thought that here were other women gambling, women as foolish as she, a faint attempt even to deceive herself that her action was something different from the desperate enterprise that it was.
Carmelita arraigned herself alongside the players, and so intent was each one upon the game that at first they gave her hardly as much as a curious glance. The thin, hard, puffy-eyed banker shifted his eye to her for a second. But he had never seen her before and he was, she was grateful to discover, new to the place. She had feared to come upon Hayden and have him demand the whole five thousand dollars in payment of her Canary Cottage debts when she presented the check for cashing. That would never have done. She was relying on paying all her debts with this one sweep of good fortune, wiping her slate of worries clean, and going back to Dudley with a light heart and untroubled mind. She had simply borrowed the five thousand dollars entrusted to her care and belonging to the charity funds to use as an initial stake in her venture and she could easily replace it from her winnings. After all she had been responsible for the presence of the check among the proceeds. Her beauty, her gameness, her daring had brought Rao-Singh and his wealth into the bidding. Who had a better right to borrow it now—temporarily? Desperation is a ruthless persuader.
She saw that the stakes the strangers at her table were playing for were high. Very well. Little ventured, little gained. "Give me a thousand dollars in chips and four thousand in cash," she instructed the banker and presented her check. He glanced at the signature and back to her with cynical interest. He knew Rao-Singh by name and his checks were honored in the place. Also that the Hindu had a weakness for white-skinned women. Another of his string? A beautiful prize, but they all fell—
He produced the disks and a roll of bills and pushed them toward Carmelita. She took a deep breath. Now for it! She must win!
And at the first few turns of the wheel she did win. The polished spokes flashed. "Fourteen," the banker announced in his monotonous professional voice and Carmelita had doubled her thousand dollar risk. Twice more she won. But the laws of chance are immutable, and the fate that had seemed to pursue her during the past few weeks began to take its toll.
Two more spins of the wheel and she had lost her winnings and her original stake and was obliged to cash another thousand dollars. She rubbed her hands nervously. The others seemed to sense that a drama was being played out before them, with this beautiful, exquisitely dressed stranger and that relentlessly spinning roulette wheel in the chief rôles. They neglected their own play to observe the swiftly approaching denouement. Could she stave off disaster or would she go under with her last dollar?
The second thousand was swept away and Carmelita, white-faced, cashed the remaining three thousand and determined to risk it all upon a combination of three numbers that promised a return of five to one if she won. Fifteen thousand dollars—enough to pay back the original five, make good her I. O. U.'s with Hayden and have left five thousand to dispose of the sundry other bills that hung over her. Fifteen thousand—or nothing!
With a nervous movement of both hands she pushed all her chips upon the chosen numbers and stood back for the verdict. Every nerve in her body seemed to be stretched to the snapping point.
"Are you all through?" asked the unperturbed banker of the other players around the table. There was no need to ask. A woman's fate seemed to them to be in the balance, though they did not precisely understand how, and they were content to watch the drama play itself to a close.
He hooked a long finger around the polished rod and spun it. Round and round it flashed, slowed smoothly down, and even before it came completely to rest Carmelita knew she was lost.
"The even combination," he announced and swept the disks toward him. Her entire fortune had been staked upon the odd.
Suddenly something seemed to give way within her. Fog was gathering in her head and she felt her knees sag. A stocky, gray-haired men next to her caught her under the shoulders in time to prevent her falling. He led her quickly toward a window and, despite the banker's swift caution not to open it, for safety's sake, with a mention of prowling motorcycle policemen, he raised the sash to admit the cool night air.
Carmelita recovered almost instantly. "I'm quite—all right—thank you," and she tried to smile. "If you will—just call a taxi for me."
Her benefactor did so and procured a chair for her and stood beside her, mercifully not attempting a conversation, the fifteen minutes until a cab from the village arrived.
As she walked slowly toward the door, the cashier behind the polished mahogany desk was examining the name upon her check and he bestowed upon her back a wise little smile.