Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo

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MADEMOISELLE OF MONTE CARLO

By William Le Queux

1921

MADEMOISELLE OF MONTE CARLO

FIRST CHAPTER

THE SUICIDE'S CHAIR

"Yes! I'm not mistaken at all! _It's the same woman!_" whispered the
tall, good-looking young Englishman in a well-cut navy suit as he stood
with his friend, a man some ten years older than himself, at one of the
roulette tables at Monte Carlo, the first on the right on entering the
room--that one known to habitual gamblers as "The Suicide's Table."

"Are you quite certain?" asked his friend.

"Positive. I should know her again anywhere."

"She's very handsome. And look, too, by Jove!--how she is winning!"

"Yes. But let's get away. She might recognize me," exclaimed the younger
man anxiously. "Ah! If I could only induce her to disclose what she
knows about my poor father's mysterious end then we might clear up the
mystery."

"I'm afraid, if all we hear is true about her, Mademoiselle of Monte
Carlo will never do that," was the other's reply as they moved away
together down the long saloon towards the trente-et-quarante room.

"_Messieurs! Faites vos jeux_," the croupiers were crying in their
strident, monotonous voices, inviting players to stake their counters
of cent-sous, their louis, or their hundred or five hundred franc notes
upon the spin of the red and black wheel. It was the month of March, the
height of the Riviera season, the fetes of Mi-Careme were in full swing.
That afternoon the rooms were overcrowded, and the tense atmosphere of
gambling was laden with the combined odours of perspiration and perfume.

Around each table were crowds four or five deep behind those fortunate
enough to obtain seats, all eager and anxious to try their fortune upon
the rouge or noir, or upon one of the thirty-six numbers, the columns,
or the transversales. There was but little chatter. The hundreds of
well-dressed idlers escaping the winter were too intent upon the game.
But above the click of the plaques, blue and red of different sizes,
as they were raked into the bank by the croupiers, and the clatter of
counters as the lucky players were paid with deft hands, there rose ever
and anon:

"_Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!_"

Here English duchesses rubbed shoulders with the most notorious women in
Europe, and men who at home in England were good churchmen and exemplary
fathers of families, laughed merrily with the most gorgeously attired
cocottes from Paris, or the stars of the film world or the variety
stage. Upon that wide polished floor of the splendidly decorated Rooms,
with their beautiful mural paintings and heavy gilt ornamentation, the
world and the half-world were upon equal footing.

Into that stifling atmosphere--for the Administration of the Bains de
Mer of Monaco seem as afraid of fresh air as of purity propaganda--the
glorious afternoon sunlight struggled through the curtained windows,
while over each table, in addition to the electric light, oil-lamps
shaded green with a billiard-table effect cast a dull, ghastly
illumination upon the eager countenances of the players. Most of those
who go to Monte Carlo wonder at the antiquated mode of illumination.
It is, however, in consequence of an attempted raid upon the tables one
night, when some adventurers cut the electric-light main, and in the
darkness grabbed all they could get from the bank.

The two English visitors, both men of refinement and culture, who had
watched the tall, very handsome woman in black, to whom the older
man had referred as Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo, wandered through
the trente-et-quarante rooms where all was silence, and counters,
representing gold, were being staked with a twelve-thousand franc
maximum.

Those rooms beyond are the haunt of the professional gambler, the man
or woman who has been seized by the demon of speculation, just as others
have been seized by that of drugs or drink. Curiously enough women
are more prone to gamble than men, and the Administration of the
Etablissement will tell you that when a woman of any nationality starts
to gamble she will become reckless until her last throw with the devil.

Those who know Monte Carlo, those who have been habitues for twenty
years--as the present writer has been--know too well, and have seen
too often, the deadly influence of the tables upon the lighter side of
woman's nature. The smart woman from Paris, Vienna, or Rome never loses
her head. She gambles always discreetly. The fashionable cocottes seldom
lose much. They gamble at the tables discreetly and make eyes at men if
they win, or if they lose. If the latter they generally obtain a "loan"
from somebody. What matter? When one is at "Monty" one is not in a
Wesleyan chapel. English men and women when they go to the Riviera leave
their morals at home with their silk hats and Sunday gowns. And it is
strange to see the perfectly respectable Englishwoman admiring the same
daring costumes of the French pseudo-"countesses" at which they have
held up their hands in horror when they have seen them pictured in the
papers wearing those latest "creations" of the Place Vendome.

Yes. It is a hypocritical world, and nowhere is canting hypocrisy more
apparent than inside the Casino at Monte Carlo.

While the two Englishmen were strolling over the polished parquet of the
elegant world-famous _salles-de-jeu_ "Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo" was
experiencing quite an extraordinary run of luck.

But "Mademoiselle," as the croupiers always called her, was usually
lucky. She was an experienced, and therefore a careful player. When she
staked a maximum it was not without very careful calculation upon the
chances. Mademoiselle was well known to the Administration. Often her
winnings were sensational, hence she served as an advertisement to the
Casino, for her success always induced the uninitiated and unwary to
stake heavily, and usually with disastrous results.

The green-covered gaming table, at which she was sitting next to the end
croupier on the left-hand side, was crowded. She sat in what is known at
Monte as "the Suicide's Chair," for during the past eight years ten men
and women had sat in that fatal chair and had afterwards ended their
lives abruptly, and been buried in secret in the Suicide's Cemetery.

The croupiers at that table are ever watchful of the visitor who, all
unawares, occupies that fatal chair. But Mademoiselle, who knew of it,
always laughed the superstition to scorn. She habitually sat in that
chair--and won.

Indeed, that afternoon she was winning--and very considerably too. She
had won four maximums _en plein_ within the last half-hour, and the
crowd around the table noting her good fortune were now following her.

It was easy for any novice in the Rooms to see that the handsome,
dark-eyed woman was a practised player. Time after time she let the
coups pass. The croupiers' invitation to play did not interest her. She
simply toyed with her big gold-chain purse, or fingered her dozen piles
or so of plaques in a manner quite disinterested.

She heard the croupier announce the winning number and saw the rakes at
work dragging in the stakes to swell the bank. But she only smiled, and
now and then shrugged her shoulders.

Whether she won or lost, or whether she did not risk a stake, she simply
smiled and elevated her shoulders, muttering something to herself.

Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo was, truth to tell, a sphinx to the staff
of the Casino. She looked about thirty, but probably she was older.
For five years she had been there each season and gambled heavily with
unvarying success. Always well but quietly dressed, her nationality
was as obscure as her past. To the staff she was always polite, and she
pressed hundred-franc notes into many a palm in the Rooms. But who she
was or what were her antecedents nobody in the Principality of Monaco
could ever tell.

The whole Cote d'Azur from Hyeres to Ventimiglia knew of her. She was
one of the famous characters of Monte Carlo, just as famous, indeed, as
old Mr. Drewett, the Englishman who lost his big fortune at the tables,
and who was pensioned off by the Administration on condition that he
never gamble at the Casino again. For fifteen years he lived in Nice
upon the meagre pittance until suddenly another fortune was left him,
whereupon he promptly paid up the whole of his pension and started at
the tables again. In a month, however, he had lost his second
fortune. Such is gambling in the little country ruled over by Prince
Rouge-et-Noir.

As the two Englishmen slipped past the end table unseen on their way out
into the big atrium with its many columns--the hall in which players
go out to cool themselves, or collect their determination for a final
flutter--Mademoiselle had just won the maximum upon the number four, as
well as the column, and the croupier was in the act of pushing towards
her a big pile of counters each representing a thousand francs.

The eager excited throng around the table looked across at her with
envy. But her handsome countenance was quite expressionless. She simply
thrust the counters into the big gold-chain purse at her side, glanced
at the white-gloved fingers which were soiled by handling the counters,
and then counting out twenty-five, each representing a louis, gave them
to the croupier, exclaiming:

"_Zero-trois!_"

Next moment a dozen persons followed her play, staking their cent-sous
and louis upon the spot where she had asked the croupier at the end of
the table to place her stake.

"_Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!_" came the strident cry again.

Then a few seconds later the croupier cried:

"_Rien ne vas plus!_"

The red and black wheel was already spinning, and the little ivory
ball sent by the croupier's hand in the opposite direction was clicking
quickly over the numbered spaces.

Six hundred or more eyes of men and women, fevered by the gambling
mania, watched the result. Slowly it lost its impetus, and after
spinning about unevenly it made a final jump and fell with a loud click.

"_Zer-r-o!_" cried the croupier.

And a moment later Mademoiselle had pushed before her at the end of
the croupier's rake another pile of counters, while all those who had
followed the remarkable woman's play were also paid.

"Mademoiselle is in good form to-day," remarked one ugly old Frenchwoman
who had been a well-known figure at the tables for the past ten years,
and who played carefully and lived by gambling. She was one of those
queer, mysterious old creatures who enter the Rooms each morning as soon
as they are open, secure the best seats, occupy them all the luncheon
hour pretending to play, and then sell them to wealthy gamblers for a
consideration--two or three louis--perhaps--and then at once go to their
ease in their own obscure abode.

The public who go to Monte know little of its strange mysteries, or of
the odd people who pick up livings there in all sorts of queer ways.

"Ah!" exclaimed a man who overheard her. "Mademoiselle has wonderful
luck! She won seventy-five thousand francs at the _Cercle Prive_ last
night. She won _en plein_ five times running. _Dieu!_ Such luck! And it
never causes her the slightest excitement."

"The lady must be very rich!" remarked an American woman sitting next to
the old Frenchwoman, and who knew French well.

"Rich! Of course! She must have won several million francs from the
Administration. They don't like to see her here. But I suppose her
success attracts others to play. The gambling fever is as infectious
as the influenza," declared the old Frenchwoman. "Everyone tries to
discover who she is, and where she came from five years ago. But nobody
has yet found out. Even Monsieur Bernard, the chief of the Surveillance,
does not know," she went on in a whisper. "He is a friend of mine, and I
asked him one day. She came from Paris, he told me. She may be American,
she may be Belgian, or she may be English. She speaks English and French
so well that nobody can tell her true nationality."

"And she makes money at the tables," said the American woman in the
well-cut coat and skirt and small hat. She came from Chelsea, Mass., and
it was her first visit to what her pious father had always referred to
as the plague spot of Europe.

"Money!" exclaimed the old woman. "Money! _Dieu!_ She has losses, it is
true, but oh!--what she wins! I only wish I had ten per cent of it. I
should then be rich. Mine is a poor game, madame--waiting for someone to
buy my seat instead of standing the whole afternoon. You see, there is
only one row of chairs all around. So if a smart woman wants to play,
some man always buys her a chair--and that is how I live. Ah! madame,
life is a great game here in the Principality."

Meanwhile young Hugh Henfrey, who had travelled from London to the
Riviera and identified the mysterious mademoiselle, had passed with
his friend, Walter Brock, through the atrium and out into the afternoon
sunshine.

As they turned upon the broad gravelled terrace in front of the great
white facade of the Casino amid the palms, the giant geraniums and
mimosa, the sapphire Mediterranean stretched before them. Below, beyond
the railway line which is the one blemish to the picturesque scene,
out upon the point in the sea the constant pop-pop showed that the
tir-aux-pigeons was in progress; while up and down the terrace, enjoying
the quiet silence of the warm winter sunshine with the blue hills of
the Italian coast to the left, strolled a gay, irresponsible crowd--the
cosmopolitans of the world: politicians, financiers, merchants, princes,
authors, and artists--the crowd which puts off its morals as easily as
it discards its fur coats and its silk hats, and which lives only for
gaiety and without thought of the morrow.

"Let's sit down," suggested Hugh wearily. "I'm sure that she's the same
woman--absolutely certain!"

"You are quite confident you have made no mistake--eh?"

"Quite, my dear Walter. I'd know that woman among ten thousand. I only
know that her surname is Ferad. Her Christian name I do not know."

"And you suspect that she knows the secret of your father's death?"

"I'm confident that she does," replied the good-looking young
Englishman. "But it is a secret she will, I fear, never reveal,
unless--unless I compel her."

"And how can you compel her?" asked the elder of the two men, whose dark
hair was slightly tinged with grey. "It is difficult to compel a woman
to do anything," he added.

"I mean to know the truth!" cried Hugh Henfrey fiercely, a look of
determination in his eyes. "That woman knows the true story of my
father's death, and I'll make her reveal it. By gad--I will! I mean it!"

"Don't be rash, Hugh," urged the other.

"Rash!" he cried. "It's true that when my father died so suddenly I had
an amazing surprise. My father was a very curious man. I always thought
him to be on the verge of bankruptcy and that the Manor and the land
might be sold up any day. When old Charman, the solicitor, read the
will, I found that my father had a quarter of a million lying at the
bank, and that he had left it all to me--provided I married Louise!"

"Well, why not marry her?" queried Brock lazily. "You're always so
mysterious, my dear Hugh."

"Why!--because I love Dorise Ranscomb. But Louise interests me, and I'm
worried on her account because of that infernal fellow Charles
Benton. Louise poses as his adopted daughter. Benton is a bachelor of
forty-five, and, according to his story, he adopted Louise when she was
a child and put her to school. Her parentage is a mystery. After leaving
school she at first went to live with a Mrs. Sheldon, a young widow, in
an expensive suite in Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster. After that she
has travelled about with friends and has, I believe, been abroad quite
a lot. I've nothing against Louise, except--well, except for the
strange uncanny influence which that man Benton has over her. I hate the
fellow!"

"I see! And as you cannot yet reach Woodthorpe and your father's
fortune, except by marrying Louise--which you don't intend to do--what
are you going to do now?"

"First, I intend that this woman they call 'Mademoiselle of Monte
Carlo,' the lucky woman who is a decoy of the Administration of the
Bains de Mer, shall tell me the true circumstance of my father's death.
If I know them--then my hand will be strengthened."

"Meanwhile you love Lady Ranscomb's daughter, you say?"

"Yes. I love Dorise with all my heart. She, of course, knows nothing of
the conditions of the will."

There was a silence of some moments, interrupted only by the pop-pop of
the pigeon-shots below.

Away across the white balustrade of the broad magnificent terrace the
calm sapphire sea was deepening as the winter afternoon drew in. An
engine whistled--that of the flower train which daily travels express
from Cannes to Boulogne faster than the passenger train-deluxe, and
bearing mimosa, carnations, and violets from the Cote d'Azur to Covent
Garden, and to the florists' shops in England.

"You've never told me the exact circumstances of your father's death,
Hugh," remarked Brock at last.

"Exact circumstances? Ah! That's what I want to know. Only that woman
knows the secret," answered the young man. "All I know is that the
poor old guv'-nor was called up to London by an urgent letter. We had
a shooting party at Woodthorpe and he left me in charge, saying that he
had some business in London and might return on the following night--or
he might be away a week. Days passed and he did not return. Several
letters came for him which I kept in the library. I was surprised that
he neither wrote nor returned, when, suddenly, ten days later, we had a
telegram from the London police informing me that my father was lying in
St. George's Hospital. I dashed up to town, but when I arrived I found
him dead. At the inquest, evidence was given to show that at half-past
two in the morning a constable going along Albemarle Street found him in
evening dress lying huddled up in a doorway. Thinking him intoxicated,
he tried to rouse him, but could not. A doctor who was called pronounced
that he was suffering from some sort of poisoning. He was taken to
St. George's Hospital in an ambulance, but he never recovered. The
post-mortem investigation showed a small scratch on the palm of the
hand. That scratch had been produced by a pin or a needle which had
been infected by one of the newly discovered poisons which, administered
secretly, give a post-mortem appearance of death from heart disease."

"Then your father was murdered--eh?" exclaimed the elder man.

"Most certainly he was. And that woman is aware of the whole
circumstances and of the identity of the assassin."

"How do you know that?"

"By a letter I afterwards opened--one that had been addressed to him at
Woodthorpe in his absence. It was anonymous, written in bad English,
in an illiterate hand, warning him to 'beware of that woman you
know--Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo.' It bore the French stamp and the
postmark of Tours."

"I never knew all this," Brock said. "You are quite right, Hugh! The
whole affair is a tangled mystery. But the first point we must establish
before we commence to investigate is--who is Mademoiselle of Monte
Carlo?"

SECOND CHAPTER

CONCERNS A GUILTY SECRET

Just after seven o'clock that same evening young Henfrey and his friend
Brock met in the small lounge of the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather
obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the
Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte
Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Paris, the Hermitage,
and the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil.

The Palmiers was a place where one met a merry cosmopolitan crowd, but
where the cocotte in her bright plumage was absent--an advantage which
only the male habitue of Monte Carlo can fully realize. The eternal
feminine is always so very much in evidence around the Casino, and the
most smartly dressed woman whom one might easily take for the wife of an
eminent politician or financier will deplore her bad luck and beg for "a
little loan."

"Well," said Hugh as his friend came down from his room to the lounge,
"I suppose we ought to be going--eh? Dorise said half-past seven, and
we'll just get across to the Metropole in time. Lady Ranscomb is always
awfully punctual at home, and I expect she carries out her time-table
here."

The two men put on light overcoats over their dinner-jackets and
strolled in the warm dusk across the Gardens and up the Galerie, with
its expensive little shops, past the original Ciro's to the Metropole.

In the big hall they were greeted by a well-preserved, grey-haired
Englishwoman, Lady Ranscomb, the widow of old Sir Richard Ranscomb, who
had been one of the greatest engineers and contractors of modern times.
He had begun life as a small jerry-builder at Golder's Green, and had
ended it a millionaire and a knight. Lady Ranscomb was seated at a
little wicker table with her daughter Dorise, a dainty, fair-haired girl
with intense blue eyes, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of
pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been
voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in our broad-minded
to-day, the day of undressing on the stage and in the home, it was
nothing more than "smart."

Mother and daughter greeted the two men enthusiastically, and at Lady
Ranscomb's orders the waiter brought them small glasses of an aperitif.

"We've been all day motoring up to the Col di Tenda. Sospel is lovely!"
declared Dorise's mother. "Have you ever been there?" she asked of
Brock, who was an habitue of the Riviera.

"Once and only once. I motored from Nice across to Turin," was his
reply. "Yes. It is truly a lovely run there. The Alps are gorgeous. I
like San Dalmazzo and the chestnut groves there," he added. "But the
frontiers are annoying. All those restrictions. Nevertheless, the run to
Turin is one of the finest I know."

Presently they rose, and all four walked into the crowded
_salle-a-manger_, where the chatter was in every European language, and
the gay crowd were gossiping mostly of their luck or their bad fortune
at the _tapis vert_. At Monte Carlo the talk is always of the run of
sequences, the many times the zero-trois has turned up, and of how
little one ever wins _en plein_ on thirty-six.

To those who visit "Charley's Mount" for the first time all this is as
Yiddish, but soon he or she, when initiated into the games of roulette
and trente-et-quarante, quickly gets bitten by the fever and enters into
the spirit of the discussions. They produce their "records"--printed
cards in red and black numbers with which they have carefully pricked
off the winning numbers with a pin as they have turned up.

The quartette enjoyed a costly but exquisite dinner, chatting and
laughing the while.

Both men were friends of Lady Ranscomb and frequent visitors to her fine
house in Mount Street. Hugh's father, a country landowner, had known Sir
Richard for many years, while Walter Brock had made the acquaintance of
Lady Ranscomb a couple of years ago in connexion with some charity in
which she had been interested.

Both were also good friends of Dorise. Both were excellent dancers, and
Lady Ranscomb often allowed them to take her daughter to the Grafton,
Ciro's, or the Embassy. Lady Ranscomb was Hugh's old friend, and he
and Dorise having been thrown together a good deal ever since the girl
returned from Versailles after finishing her education, it was hardly
surprising that the pair should have fallen in love with each other.

As they sat opposite each other that night, the young fellow gazed into
her wonderful blue eyes, yet, alas! with a sinking heart. How could they
ever marry?

He had about six hundred a year--only just sufficient to live upon
in these days. His father had never put him to anything since he left
Brasenose, and now on his death he had found that, in order to recover
the estate, it was necessary for him to marry Louise Lambert, a girl for
whom he had never had a spark of affection. Louise was good-looking,
it was true, but could he sacrifice his happiness; could he ever cut
himself adrift from Dorise for mercenary motives--in order to get back
what was surely by right his inheritance?

Yet, after all, as he again met Dorise's calm, wide-open eyes, the grim
truth arose in his mind, as it ever did, that Lady Ranscomb, even though
she had been so kind to him, would never allow her only daughter to
marry a man who was not rich. Had not Dorise told him of the sly hints
her mother had recently given her regarding a certain very wealthy man
named George Sherrard, an eligible bachelor who lived in one of the most
expensive flats in Park Lane, and who was being generally sought after
by mothers with marriageable daughters. In many cases mothers--and
especially young, good-looking widows with daughters "on their
hands"--are too prone to try and get rid of them "because my daughter
makes me look so old," as they whisper to their intimates of their own
age.

After dinner all four strolled across to the Casino, presenting their
yellow cards of admission--the monthly cards granted to those who are
approved by the smug-looking, black-coated committee of inspection, who
judge by one's appearance whether one had money to lose.

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