Linnet: A Romance

“How much have you lost now?” he asked each time.

And Franz, very shamefaced, yet proud in a way that he could own to such losses, made answer again and again, as the case might be, “A hundred and twenty,” “Two hundred and thirty,” “Three hundred and twenty-seven.” Ach Gott, it was pitiful!

At last, about six o’clock, the Tyroler found himself reduced to a hundred and fifty pounds of his original capital. He couldn’t understand it; this was strange, very strange; the System somehow didn’t seem to work as it ought to do. In his despair, he almost began to disbelieve in its virtues. Just then, the Seer strolled casually by once more, chatting gaily to a lady. He paused, and looked at Franz. In the thirst for human sympathy we all feel at such times, Franz beckoned him up with one hand, and confided to him in a hoarse whisper the painful state of his exchequer. “Come out and have a drink,” the Seer said, bending low, with his most courteous manner. “Let’s work this thing out. Just you show me your System?”

Franz followed him blindly across to the café opposite. The Seer ordered two cognacs and a syphon of soda-water. “Now, tell me how you do it,” he said, in a very grave voice. And, with some little reluctance, looking down at the table, Franz proceeded to disclose to his attentive listener the main points of his System.

It was a transparent fallacy, of course. Such systems always are; and the Seer, who was no fool at the doctrine of chances, saw through it at a glance. His lip curled lightly. “You’re a good mathematician?” he asked, with a well-suppressed sneer.

And Franz was obliged perforce to admit, in this critical moment, that he had got no further in that abstruse science than the first four rules of arithmetic.

The Seer assumed his kindliest and most didactic manner. “Now, you look here, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, leaning over towards his new friend confidentially; “you’ve allowed yourself to be duped; you’ve been grossly imposed upon. I can show you in a minute your System’s all bosh. The bank stands always its regular chance to win, no matter what you do, and it dodges you exactly where you think you’ve dodged it.”

He took out a pencil and paper, and began with great show of care and patience to make the fallacy as clear as day to his unwilling pupil. Franz leant over him and looked. Step by step the clever American unravelled before his eyes all the tangled mass of false assumptions and baseless conclusions Franz called his System. Poor Franz stood aghast; the demolition was patent, irresistible, crushing. Joaquin Holmes was in his element; he was a specialist on games of chance; he demonstrated with loving care that in this case, as in all others, the bank had exactly thirty-seven chances for itself, against thirty-six for the players. Franz saw it with his own eyes: sorely against his will he was forced to see it. He couldn’t gainsay it: it was clear as mud; he could only murmur in a feebly illogical way, “But my friend made twenty thousand pounds in these rooms right off with it.”

The Seer was remorseless. “Accident!” he answered, calmly, with a bland wave of the hand. “Pure luck! Coincidence! And if it happened once, by a mere fluke, to pull itself off so well, all the less reason to believe such a wonderful sequence of happy shots would ever manage to repeat itself. The bank stands always its fixed chance to win in a certain proportion; by good fortune you may circumvent it, by calculation, never!”

Franz was convinced against his will. But the blow was an appalling one. He had lost three hundred and fifty pounds already; he saw no hope of recovering it. And, what was far worse, he had practically lost twenty thousand into the bargain. During all those years while he had been saving and scraping, he had considered his fortune as good as made, if he could but once go to Monte Carlo with five hundred pounds of ready money in his pocket. In five short minutes the affable stranger had knocked the bottom out of his drum – demolished the whole vast superstructure of false facts and bad reasoning Franz had reared so carefully; and now, like a house of cards, it had tumbled about his ears, leaving the poor duped Tyroler blankly hopeless and miserable.

The reaction was painful and piteous to behold. From a potential millionaire, Franz descended at once to be the owner of a paltry hundred and fifty pounds in English money. The Seer did his best in these straits to console and comfort him. He pointed out that while no man can ensure a fortune at games of chance by trying to play on a system, any man may have the good luck to win large sums if he treats it frankly as a question of fortune, not of deliberate planning. “Only,” he added, with a significant glance towards the Casino, “it’s foolish to play where one backs one’s luck against a public bank which stands to win, by its very constitution, a certain regular proportion of all money staked against it.”

His words fell on stony ground. Franz was simply inconsolable. The longer he looked at those irrefragable calculations, the more clearly did he recognise now that the Seer was right, and the System on which he had staked his all was a pure delusion. But Mr Joaquin Holmes extended him still the most obtrusive sympathy. “I’m awfully sorry for you, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, over and over again, regarding his figures sideways. “This has been a hard trial to you. But you mustn’t give up because you’ve been bitten once. Sooner or later, luck must turn. You’ve lost a great deal; all the sooner, then, must it change for you. Give me the pleasure of dining with you at the restaurant round the corner. You’ll see things in a truer light, you know, when you’ve digested your dinner.”

Franz followed him mechanically. He had no heart for anything. The Seer ordered a choice repast, and plied his pigeon well with the best wines in the cellar. All the while, as they dined, he harped still on three chords – his own persistent ill-luck at all games of chance; the folly of playing where the odds are against you, no matter how little, at a public table; and the certainty of winning back, on the average, what you’ve lost, if only you play long enough at even betting.

Emotions, once well roused, tend to flow on unchecked, in spite of temporary obstacles, in an accustomed channel. As the dinner digested itself, and the Dry Monopole fired Franz’s brain once more, the thrasonic mood of the gambler came over him yet again as strong as ever. Like a born braggart that he was, a true Tyrolese Robbler, he began to boast in thick tones of how he would get the better still of those swindling tables. The Seer encouraged him to the echo in this gallant resolution, but thought ill of his chances at the unfair roulette-board, against the certain dead-weight of a mathematical calculation. “Come up with me to my room after dinner,” he put in, carelessly, “and I’ll show you a little game I learnt when I went buck-shooting in the Rockies some years ago. It’s perfectly fair and square, with no sort of advantage to one side over the other. None of your beastly zeros: all even chances. I won’t play it with you myself – or at least, only for a turn or two, just to show you how it’s done – I’m so deuced unlucky. But there are lots of fellows around who’ll be glad enough to give you a chance of your revenge; and, in my opinion, it’s just about the very evenest game a sensible man ever put his money down upon.”

Franz submitted to be taught with a very good grace. He was ready enough now for anything on earth that would help him to win back his solid lost sovereigns. They went round to a large hotel in the direction of La Condamine. People were moving in and out of the doorway by degrees, for it was just after dinner, and the town was crowded. Franz followed the Seer upstairs to a nicely furnished bedroom on the second floor, arranged as a salon, with an alcove for the bed, after the continental fashion. Nobody took much notice of them; come and go is the rule at Monte Carlo everywhere; and, besides, Mr Joaquin Holmes, that affable new-comer, was very much in the habit of taking strangers to play in his bedroom.

They sat down at the table, and the Seer, after much show of fumbling in his box, produces at last a pack of English cards, the cover still unbroken. With an innocent air of very slight acquaintance with the game he had proposed, he shuffled and cut them. “Let me see,” he said, knitting his brows, and pretending to recollect. “It’s like this, I think. Ah, yes, I remember.” And he dealt out a card to himself, and another to Franz, with most ingenious carelessness.

Then he went on to explain in very glowing terms the simplicity of this game, and its peculiar guilelessness. “You back your card for what you like, and if I choose, I double you. You see, it’s even chances. We each stand to win equally. It’s easy as A.B.C. But my luck’s so bad, I won’t play you for money. Let’s stake an imaginary five pounds on the turn-up.”

They tried a deal or two, for love, on this imaginary basis, and Franz won twice out of three times. He wished it had been for sovereigns. He tried again and again, the Seer manipulating his pack all the time with conspicuous awkwardness, and managing to lose with surprising regularity. What a pity the man was so shy of tempting fate, Franz thought; though, to be sure, it was no wonder. For he lost, lost, lost, with almost incredible persistence. Still, Franz was annoyed to think that so many lucky shots, at so even a game, should all go for nothing. And he himself – why, he could win at this play like wildfire. If only he could find such a pigeon to pluck! He’d drain his man dry of all he had at a sitting!

“Come, put a louis on it!” he exclaimed at last, with a “Who’s afraid” sort of air, to the reluctant stranger.

The Coloradan hesitated. He pulled out a purse full of notes and gold. “No; I can’t go to a louis,” he answered, gingerly, after a pause. “I’ve such beastly bad luck. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll lay you ten francs on it!”

His air was candid enough to disarm the most suspicious mind. He played, and lost. Franz picked the coins up nimbly. “Try it again,” he said, with a broad smile; and Joaquin Holmes tried it. Four times running Franz won; then the American lost patience. “I’ll go you a louis,” he cried, warming up, and drawing a coin from his purse. Franz took him, and won it. At that, Holmes, as the Robbler thought, lost his head and grew frantic. He plunged; he doubled; he lost; he cursed his luck; and once more he boldly plunged again. Now and then, to be sure, he won; but ’twas always on the times when he omitted to double. This was a first-rate game, Franz thought; he was winning back his own again.

After a while, the Seer pulled up his chair, and settled down to it seriously. “I’m a devil of a gambler,” he said, with a smile, “when once I get well into it. I won’t leave off now till you’ve broken my bank, and got my bottom dollar. I’ve eight hundred pounds here” – which was a simple trade lie – “and I won’t stop now till I’ve lost every penny of it.”

Ha, ha; that was game! They buckled to in earnest. Franz played with a will. He won, won, won; he laughed loud; he picked up gaily; then, suddenly, strange to say, he lost, lost, lost again. All at once, the Seer’s fingers seemed to go like lightning. He dealt fast and furious; he doubled every time; luck had somehow changed; he was winning now heavily. Franz didn’t think quite so well of the game as it proceeded; he began to regard it, in fact, as little short of a swindle. But, as his pile diminished, the Seer gave him scant time to reflect between deals. “Stake! I double you!” Flash went the card; the Seer raked in the money. That was very strong champagne, and Franz’s head was reeling. Still he played, played, played, lost, lost, lost, yet played again. His pile was dwindling now with appalling rapidity. He took a pull at the brandy and soda the Seer had obligingly placed by his side. What was this? The affable stranger was clearing him out every time. Franz began to suspect a plant. Could the man be a swindler?

He glanced at his little heap. A cold thrill coursed through him. Only seven louis left! When those seven were gone – why, then he would be penniless!

The Seer dealt again. With a loud German oath, Franz seized his hand and stopped it. “I saw you do it,” he cried. “You rogue, I’ve found you out! You felt one card, changed it, and then pushed out another.”

The Seer sprang up angrily. “That’s an imputation on my honour,” he cried, standing up and facing him with an air of indignant virtue. “I’m an English gentleman. If you insult me like that – ”

But before he could say another word, – quick as thought, a knife flashed in the air with unspeakable swiftness. The Seer’s hand darted into his pocket for the trusty six-shooter. It was dagger against pistol, Tyroler against Westerner. But Franz was too sharp for him. Before the Coloradan’s deft fingers could reach the trigger of the revolver, that keen blade was buried deep in his exposed left breast – buried deep and gurgling. Without a word, without a groan, the American dropped back short into the easy-chair he had that moment quitted. Blood spurted from the wound – spurted fast in little jets. It had penetrated his heart. He was dead in a second.

In less time than it takes to say it, Franz realised what he had done, and pulled himself together from his paroxysm of passion. Leaving the notes where they lay, he crammed his own gold hastily into his waistcoat pocket. He let the knife stop in the wound; it was in no way compromising. Then he opened the door, and walked calmly out, and down the broad stone steps, and into the streets of Monte Carlo.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE PIGEON FLIES HOME

A Robbler’s not a man to be lightly discomposed by the mere accident that he happens to have committed a murder. Franz’s first impulse, indeed, as he left that blood-stained room, was to run away helter-skelter from the scene of his hasty crime – to disappear into space – London, the Tyrol, anywhere – without even going back to his hotel at Nice to reclaim his portmanteau. But second thoughts showed him how foolish so precipitate a retreat would be. By adopting it, he would be throwing away many valuable chances which now told in his favour. It was wholly to the good, for example, that he’d happened to give his name all along the line as Karl von Forstemann from Vienna. Even if the authorities found reason to suspect him of having killed this man Holmes, they’d lost much useful time in trying to track down the imaginary Von Forstemann; while he himself might be making his way quietly across the length and breadth of the continent, meanwhile, under his own true name as Franz Lindner of the London Pavilion. Though, to be sure, there was no reason why they should ever suspect him. Hundreds of people flock in and out of Monte Carlo every day; hundreds of people come and go at every hotel, unnoticed. Besides, it wasn’t likely the body’d be discovered till to-morrow morning; and by that time, Gott sei dank, he’d be safe and away across the Italian frontier.

It was early still – only a little past ten. Tremulous and startled by the magnitude of his crime, he strolled about for awhile to cool himself in the Casino gardens. Then a happy thought struck him – he’d go in and play for a bit to avoid suspicion. Hot at heart as he was, but trying his best to look unconcerned, he passed into those huge over-heated rooms once more, and played for half-an-hour with very languid attention. The greater stake now in jeopardy made it difficult for him when he won to remember even to take up his money; he let it lie once or twice on the board till it doubled and trebled itself. But that was all to the good; it suited his book well: people noticed only the more how coolly he was playing. Strange to say, he was winning, too, when he cared so little whether he won or lost – winning pounds at a time on every turn of the tables. It was a master-stroke of policy, and Franz plumed himself not a little on being clever enough to think of it. How could people ever say it was he who killed the man, when he’d spent half the night at play in the gambling rooms of the Casino?

At eleven, he left off, several pounds to the good, and strolled down to the station with well-assumed carelessness. He returned in a carriage with the two jolly young Englishmen. Casually, on the way, he mentioned to them that he was going to leave Nice next morning. At the hotel they broke another bottle of champagne together. Franz sat up, and talked excitedly, and even sang comic songs; he was afraid to go to bed; though still self-possessed, and by no means panic-stricken, he was nervous and agitated.

That night, he never undressed. He lay in his clothes on the bed, and slept by snatches fitfully. In the morning, he rose early, and looked hard for spots of blood as he washed and dressed himself. But he had done his work far too neatly to spatter his clothes. “Coffee, quick, and my bill!” he said to the waiter who answered the bell; “I want to catch an early train at the station for England.” He said England on purpose, though he meant it to be Italy. With a true Tyroler’s instinct, he would strike straight home – by Milan, Verona, and the Brenner, to St Valentin.

At the station, he took a through ticket, first-class, for Genoa. He had to pass Monte Carlo, and he did so with repugnance. Yet he wasn’t much afraid; the Robbler instinct was still strong within him. A couple of fat Frenchmen got into the carriage at Monaco; they were talking of some tragedy that had happened last night at an hotel at La Condamine. Franz pricked up his ears but tried to look unconcerned. “Somebody dead?” he inquired in his Teutonic French, with a show of languid interest.

“Yes; another suicide,” one of the Frenchmen answered, shrugging his shoulders, with a smile. “Que voulez-vous? An Englishman – a fellow called Holmes – or, some say, an American. He stabbed himself last night, after losing heavily. He was stopping at my hotel: he went to bed all well; the servants knocked this morning – got no answer – went in and found the body in a fauteuil, where the malheureux had stabbed himself.”

Franz’s eye gleamed bright. So at first they had put the best interpretation upon it! The mere suspicion of a suicide might give him a start that would enable him to escape. He shrugged his shoulders in return. “A common episode of life as things go at Monte Carlo!” he murmured, philosophically.

The Frenchmen got out and left the train at Mentone. At Ventimiglia, Franz crossed the frontier with a beating heart; so far, at least, no telegram to arrest or detain him. All morning, the train crawled on at a snail’s pace towards Genoa. Franz chafed and grumbled, eating his heart out with impatience. At San Pier d’Arena, the junction-station, he took his portmanteau in his hand, and re-booked for Milan. There he spent that second night in fear and trembling. On his way up to an hotel, he bought a copy of an evening paper – the Corriere della Sera. The same story still – Suicidio a Monte Carlo.

He didn’t sleep much; but he slept – that was ever something. At seven o’clock, he was up, and walked out towards the Cathedral. But that mount of marble, with its thousand spires and its statued pinnacles in the myriad niches, had no power on such a day to arrest his attention; beside the great west door, he was looking for a boy with a morning newspaper. Soon he found one, and tore it open under the arcades of the Piazza. He knew no Italian, but by the aid of his scanty French he could make out the meaning of one sinister paragraph. “It is now believed that the man Holme or Holmes, who was found stabbed in his room at the Hotel des Étrangers, at Monte Carlo, yesterday morning, met his death by foul means, and not, as was at first suspected, by suicide. The doctors who have examined the wound concur in the opinion that it could hardly by any possibility be self-inflicted. Holmes is now known to have been a notorious card-sharper, and it is surmised that he may have been murdered in a fit of revengeful passion by one of his victims, several of whom he is said to have duped during the last few days in the neighbourhood of the Casino. No clue, however, has as yet been obtained to the name or personality of his supposed assailant.”

Murder! they called it murder to stab that cheating rogue! and they took him for a murderer just because he’d revenged himself! When they’d got as far as that, it was probable before long they’d track the deed home to Herr Karl von Forstemann. Franz saw clearly enough now what his next move must be. Herr Karl von Forstemann must disappear as if by magic from this earthly scene, and Franz Lindner of St Valentin, and of the London Pavilion, that honest and simple-minded Tyrolese musician, must at once replace him.

He paid his bill at the hotel, took a cab to the station instead of the omnibus, and caught the through train to Venice direct – throwing the police off his track, if it came to police, by getting out short, portmanteau in hand, at Verona, for the Brenner. All day long, he travelled on by that beautiful mountain line, up the Adige towards Botzen; and, though he was flying for his life, it gave him none the less a genuine thrill of joy when he beheld once more those beloved Tyrolese peaks, and heard the German tongue spoken with a Tyrolese accent. He slept that night at Botzen. There, he felt his foot once more upon his native heath. In the morning, he rose early, and went into a hatter’s, where he bought a Tyrolese hat of the old conical pattern; all fugitive that he was, the ingrained instincts of his youth yet made him turn the blackcock’s feather in it the wrong way forward, Robbler-wise. Vain-glorious still and defiant, nobody would ever have taken him for a runaway criminal. He bought also a pair of stout Tyrolese boots, and introduced a few other little changes in his costume, sufficient to transform him at once from the cosmopolitan snob into the simple Franz Lindner of the old days at St Valentin. Then he took the train north again, right through to Innsbruck, where he slept his third night, more confident than before, and had a chance of reading all in a Vienna paper.

That all was bad enough. No doubt now remained on the minds of the French police that Joaquin Holmes had been really murdered. The hypothesis of suicide broke down at every step. Suspicion pointed most to one or other of three persons whom he was believed to have duped just before the murder. One of these three was being traced by detectives to Marseilles and Paris; the other two, it was believed, had gone on to Italy. In the interests of justice, the police would mention no names at present, but one of these three, they held, must almost certainly be the murderer.

Still, the instinct of his race urged Franz on to St Valentin. He took the afternoon train north as far as Jenbach; then he tramped all the way on foot to his native village. It was late when he arrived, and, tired and hunted down, he went straight to the Wirthshaus. Cousin Fridolin held up his hands in astonishment to see the wanderer. It wasn’t merely surprise that Franz should come back at all, but that he should come back as he went – a genuine Tyroler. All were well in the place: the Herr Vicar and everyone. And Andreas Hausberger and Linnet were here as well – returned home for a holiday.

It was Franz’s turn now to start back in surprise. What, Andreas and Linnet come back to St Valentin! Impossible! You don’t mean it!

But Cousin Fridolin did mean it – with his thumbs in the armholes of his red Tyrolese waistcoat. They’d retired for the night – they were here at the inn; but he’d knock at their door (full of country hospitality as he was, the simple soul!) and tell them to come out and welcome a friend home again.

Franz seized his arm to prevent him. “Oh no,” he cried; “not that… There are reasons why you mustn’t… Andreas and I had a difference some years ago at Meran; and though we patched it all up again in a way in London, I don’t want to see him now – at least, not till to-morrow.”

As for Cousin Fridolin, standing back and regarding him in surprise, he could hardly understand these fine town-bred manners. If Franz had come back a true Tyroler in dress, he brought with him none the less all the airs and graces of Western civilisation, as understood by the frequenters of the London Pavilion. They sat awhile and talked, while Franz ate the rough supper and drank as much as was good for him of the thin country beer; but Cousin Fridolin noticed that his old rival and companion seemed unaccountably stiff and reserved in his demeanour. Especially did he shirk any obtrusive questions as to whence he had come, and by what route he had got there. As they parted for the night, Franz turned to Cousin Fridolin, who alone in the village had yet seen or spoken with him. “Don’t tell Andreas and Linnet I came here to-night,” he said. “I want them not to know till they meet me as a surprise to-morrow morning.”

Cousin Fridolin, much wondering, promised compliance with his wish. He lighted Franz to his room, and bade him good-night in a very audible whisper. Herr Andreas and his wife had the next rooms to him, he said. Franz nodded a distant assent, and shook his hand somewhat coldly. The terror that had stood over him since he left Monte Carlo grew somehow much deeper, much nearer, much more real, as he found himself once more in these familiar surroundings. He bolted the door with its little wooden button, and sat alone on the bed for some minutes in silence. The solitude appalled him more than ever before; he felt conscious, in some dim way, the hue-and-cry of the police was now well after him.

As he sat there and listened to his own heart beating, while the tallow candle guttered on the table by his side, a low sound from the next room began to attract his attention. It was a stifled sound, with a choking sort of sob in it. Just at first, too preoccupied with his own emotions, Franz hardly noticed it; but at last it obtruded itself upon him by its very unobtrusiveness. Of a sudden, he realised to himself what manner of noise this was. It was the deep suppressed sound of a woman weeping. With her head under the bed-clothes, she was crying, crying, crying silently.

Rising up from his bed, Franz crept over to the door of communication between the two rooms, his mind for the moment distracted by the sound even from his own immediate and pressing danger. For it was borne in upon him at once by what Fridolin Telser had said, that the woman in the next room was none other than Linnet!