Chance in Chains: A Story of Monte Carlo

Basil was given notes to the value of £16,000.

The most notable thing about the Casino, with its enormous resources, is the absolute impassibility of its officials.

Again Basil wagered £8,000 – this time upon black.

He won, and as his money was being paid to him a loud murmur rose from the crowd – a loud murmur, broken by a sharp and pulsing cry.

A tall and beautiful girl had risen from her feet and had fallen in a deep swoon into the arms of the bystanders behind her.

There was an immediate struggle. The electric tension of the moment was over. The well-dressed crowd surged and almost fought in a panic of snapped nerves and suddenly relaxed excitement.

People came surging from all sides. The other tables were deserted, and, far away through the great halls, those who were playing trente-et-quarante rose from their cards with listening ears.

In that supreme moment Basil Gregory did not lose his head. He gathered up his enormous winnings. The pockets of his coat bulged with wealth. And Ethel McMahon was being carried out into the Atrium, followed by her mother in a state of wild hysteria, before he rose from his seat.

He took six thousand-franc notes from one of his pockets. To each of the six croupiers he gave a note.

Then he sauntered quietly out into the huge hall.

Under the brilliant electric lights which gleamed upon the marble he saw little groups of people – each group seeming quite small in the immensity – talking earnestly together.

As he came out among them every head was turned, though of Ethel and her mother he saw not a trace.

But as he went to the cloak-room, and delivered his metal ticket, two or three commissionaires came up to him with awed and respectful faces.

"That young lady?" he said, "and the elder one with her?"

"It was nothing, monsieur," one of the men hastened to say. "They are two English ladies staying at the pension in the Rue Grimaldi. Your success, monsieur, unnerved them. They have been sent home in a voiture."

Basil nodded as he was helped into his long, dark coat.

With a smile he distributed a few gold coins, and then, alone, unattended, he walked out into the warm, aromatic night, and strolled to his adjacent hotel among flower-bordered paths, under the twin lights of electricity and the great, red moon of the South.

At the Hôtel de Paris, at the Métropole, at Ciro's, people were gathering for gay supper parties.

As he entered the huge, brilliantly decorated lounge of the Malmaison, groups of wealthy people were smoking a preliminary cigarette before supper. Some of them – many of them – recognised him, and nodded and whispered to each other, but he entered the lift and went straight to his own room.

He turned up the electric lights, and locked the door. And then, from pocket and pocket, he poured out crackling, crumpled heaps of notes, heavy handfuls of gold – the wealth of which he had dreamed.

After a minute or two, without even locking the door of his sitting-room, he stumbled out of it and up the stairs to the servants' quarters.

He gave the signal knocks.

He was at once admitted to the dingy little bedroom-workshop.

Emile Deschamps was there. The Frenchman's face was as grey as evening ice.

He was staring at his apparatus in a sort of stupor, and by his side the chronometer ticked.

Emile gave a loud shout as Basil tumbled into the place.

"It is done, then?" he gasped. "Mon ami, it is a thing done?"

All grimy as he was Basil led his friend down into his sitting-room.

At two o'clock on the afternoon of the next day two English ladies, accompanied by a little, swarthy Frenchman, with a dressing-case which never left his hands, rolled out of the station of Monte Carlo, en route for Paris.

For two days after this Monsieur Montoyer was observed to walk distractedly through the salons and occasionally to place a maximum upon a single number. Monsieur Montoyer did not repeat his successes, and those who followed his play cursed him and their own credulity deeply and silently.

The great night when Fortune smiled upon the "young Russian nobleman" is still remembered by the assiduous acolytes of Chance. It is talked about, and given as an instance to new-comers of what bold, indifferent play can accomplish.

Nobody connects Sir Basil Gregory, Bart., the head of the great firm of Deschamps, Gregory and Co., which has revolutionised wireless telegraphy, with the spectacled, clean-shaven young gentleman who made such a sensation one night in the Casino at Monte Carlo.

Sir Basil and Lady Gregory spend almost all their days in the charming old house they have bought near Falmouth.

But on the Riviera there is an old, old lady – the well-known Madame McMahon – who still haunts the gambling hells of the Continent. She is a recognised figure. She has a marvellous system which never comes off, but when she gets into difficulties with the proprietors of her pension, mysterious telegraphic drafts upon the local bank always arrive in the nick of time, either from Cornwall or from Quimperlé, in Brittany, where Monsieur Edouard and Monsieur Charles Carnet have a house, and are churchwardens of the unique cathedral.