A Mysterious Disappearance

“If she is worth having she will give you a chance of making a living sufficient to enable you to marry her. She is of age, I suppose, and can marry any one she likes.”

Mensmore puffed his cigarette in silence for fully a minute. Then he said:

“You are a very decent sort, Mr. – ”

“Bruce – Claude Bruce is my name.”

“Well, Mr. Bruce, you propose to hand me £10 for my railway fare, and, say, £5 for my existence, until we meet again in London, in exchange for which you purchase the rights in my life indefinitely, accidents and reasonable wear and tear excepted.”

“Exactly!”

“Make it £20, with five louis down, and I accept.”

“Why the stipulation?”

“I want to back my dream. The number is twenty-three. It evidently was not thirteen. I want to see that thing through. I will back the red after twenty-three turns up, and if I lose I shall be quite satisfied.”

“What if I refuse?”

“Then I don’t care a bit what happens during the next seven days. After that, au revoir, should we happen to meet across the divide. Please make up your mind quickly. That run on the red may come and go while we are sitting here.”

Bruce opened his pocket-book. “Here,” he said with a smile, “I will give you four hundred francs. You will reach the maximum more quickly if you are right.”

Mensmore’s face lit up with excitement. “By Jove, you are a brick,” he said. “So you really trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me back my revolver.”

Without a word, Bruce handed him the weapon.

Mensmore extracted the cartridges and threw them into a clump of shrubs.

“Come,” he cried; “come with me to the Casino. You will see something. This is not my own luck; it is borrowed. Come, quick!”

They raced off, Bruce himself being more fired with the zest of the thing than he cared to admit. Within the Casino all the tables were now crowded, but Mensmore hurried to that at which he sat during his earlier visit.

“It was here that I played in my dream,” he whispered, “soon after I came to it.”

He edged through the onlookers, closely followed by Bruce. Neither cared for the scowls and injured looks cast at them by the people whom they forced out of the way.

The Italian, the winner of half an hour ago, had come back like a moth to the candle. Now he was getting his wings singed. At last, with a groan, he hastily rose, but as a final effort flung the maximum, six thousand francs, on the black.

The disc whirled and slowly slackened pace, the ball rested in one of the little squares, and the croupier’s monotonous words came:

“Vingt-trois, rouge, impair, et passe!”

Out bounced the Italian, and Mensmore seized his chair, turning to Bruce with white face as he murmured:

“You hear! Twenty-three!”

The barrister nodded, and placed his hands on Mensmore’s shoulders as though to steady him.

Mensmore staked his ten louis on the red. They became twenty, then forty. Another whirl and they were eighty. A fourth made them one hundred and sixty.

Mensmore was now so agitated that the table and the players swam before his eyes. But Bruce, under the stress of exciting circumstances, had the gift of remaining preternaturally cool.

At the fifth coup the sum to Mensmore’s credit was £256. He would have left it all on the table had not Bruce withdrawn £16 in notes, as the maximum is £240.

When Mensmore won the sixth and seventh coups a buzz of animated interest passed around the board. People began to note the run on the red, together with the fact that a man was staking the maximum each time. Even the croupiers cast fleeting glances at the new-comer, when, several times in succession, the long rake pushed across the table the little pile of money and notes.

Thenceforth Mensmore sat in a state of stupor more pronounced now that he was playing and awake than when he dreamt he was playing.

Each time he mechanically staked the maximum and received back twice as much, while the eager onlookers now burst into cries of wonder that brought others running from all parts of the room.

But Bruce did not lose count.

When the red had turned up seventeen times, and the amount to Mensmore’s credit was £3,128, he shook the latter violently as he was about to shove forward another maximum, and, of his own volition, placed the money on the black.

“Douze, noir, pair et manque,” sang out the croupier, and Bruce hissed into Mensmore’s ear:

“Get up at once.”

His strangely made acquaintance obeyed, gathered up his gold and notes, fastened them securely in an inner pocket, and the pair quitted the Casino amid extravagant protestations of good-will and friendship from all the voluble foreigners present, having attracted not a little attention from the less demonstrative Americans and English in the room.

It was some time before the roulette tables began their orderly round again, for Mensmore’s sensational performance was in everybody’s mouth.

The highest recorded sum is twenty-three on the black, but a run of eighteen on the red is sufficiently remarkable to keep Monte Carlo in talk for a week.

Albert Mensmore certainly could not complain that the events of the particular evening were dull. For one hour at least he lived in the fire that consumes, for he stepped back from the porch of dishonored death to find himself the possessor of a sum more than sufficient for his reasonable requirements.

The pace was rapid and almost fatal.

CHAPTER X

SOME GOOD RESOLUTIONS

Once safe in the seclusion of Claude’s sitting-room Mensmore almost collapsed. The strain had been a severe one, and now he had to pay the penalty by way of reaction.

The barrister forced him to swallow a stiff brandy and soda, and then wished him to retire to rest, but the other protested with some show of animation.

“Let me talk, for goodness’ sake!” he cried. “I cannot be alone. You have seen me through a lot of trouble to-night. Stick to me for another hour, there’s a good fellow.”

“With pleasure. Perhaps it is the best thing you can do, after all. Let us see how much you have won.”

Bruce made a calculation on a sheet of paper and said: “Exclusive of the original stake of ten louis you ought to have £3,128.”

Mensmore pulled out of his pocket the crumpled bundle of notes and bills. Claude’s notes were among them, and he tossed them across the table with a smile.