The Sack of Monte Carlo 12

The Sack of Monte Carlo 12

It was quite useless saying anything further to Brentin. I merely

contented myself with pointing out that if anything could make me

suspect Mr. Bailey Thompson, it was his being the guest of Mr. Crage.

 

“Pawsibly!” drawled Mr. Brentin. “I don’t pretend the man is pure-bred,

nor exactly fit at this moment to take his seat at Queen Victoria’s

table; but that he’s stanch, with that square chin, I will stake my

bottom dollar. And seeing how well he knows the locality, we shall learn

something from him, sir, which, you may depend upon, will be highly

useful.”

 

The attitude of the band of brothers so far had been rather of the

negative order. Whether their enthusiasm was cooling, as they had been

employing their spare time in pitifully surveying the difficulties and

danger of the scheme, instead of the glory and the profit, I know not;

but, obviously, neither on Christmas Eve nor Christmas morning were they

any longer in the hopeful condition in which they were when I first

approached and secured them.

 

That they had been talking the matter over among themselves was clear,

for no sooner was the Christmas fare disposed of in the great hall than

they began to open fire. Their first shot was discharged when Mr.

Thatcher brought us in a bowl of punch, about three o’clock, and Brentin

proceeded to charge their glasses, and desire them to drink to the

affair and our successful return therefrom.

 

They drank the toast so half-heartedly, much as Jacobites when called on

to pledge King George, that Brentin lost his temper.

 

“Gentlemen!” he cried, thumping the table, “if you cannot drink to our

success with more _momentum_ than that, you will never do for

adventurers; you may as well stay right here and till the soil. And

that’s all there is to it!”

 

“What’s the matter with eating fat bacon under a hedge?” growled Bob

Hines. He had been much nettled at the way Brentin had taken us all in

charge, and more particularly at his being ordered off to church. Hence

his not altogether apposite interruption.

 

Brentin fixed him with his glittering, beady eyes. “Mr. Hines,” he said,

“if you are the spokesman of the malecontents, I am perfectly ready to

hear what you have to object.”

 

“You are very good,” Hines replied, stiffly, “but I imagined the scheme

was Blacker’s, and not yours at all.”

 

“The scheme is the scheme,” said Brentin, impatiently. “Neither one

man’s nor another’s. Either you go in with us or you do not; now, then,

take your choice, right here and now. You know all about it, what we are

going to do and how we are going to do it. There are no flies on the

scheme, any more than there are on us. We don’t care ay ginger-snap

whether you withdraw or not; but at least we have the right to know

which course you intend to pursue.”

 

“The difficulty appears to me,” Forsyth struck in, in conciliatory

tones, “that none of us have ever been to the place, so that we can’t

really tell whether the thing is possible or not.”

 

“Exactly!” murmured Teddy Parsons.

 

Brentin gave a gesture of vexation. “Monte Carlo has, of course, been

thoroughly surveyed before this determination of ours has been arrived

at—from a distance, ay considerable distance, I admit. Still, it has

been surveyed, though, naturally, through other parties’ eyes. Every

authority we have consulted agrees that the thing is perfectly feasible;

every one, without exception, wonders why it has never been done before;

every one admits it is a plague-spot which should be cauterized. Shall

we do it? Yes or no? There is the whole thing in ay nutshell.”

 

Teddy Parsons observed, “There is one thing I should like to know, and

that is—er—will there be any bloodshed?”

 

“Not unless they shed it,” was Brentin’s somewhat grim reply.

 

Teddy shuddered and went on, “But I understand we are actually to be

armed with revolvers.”

 

“That is so,” said Brentin, “but they will not be loaded, or with blank

cartridge at the most. Experience tells us that gentlemen are just as

badly frightened by an unloaded as by a loaded gun.”

 

Then Arthur Masters struck in, “I suppose there will be likely to be a

good deal of hustling and possibly violence before we can count on

getting clear away?”

 

“I don’t apprehend,” said Brentin, “there will be much of either;

though, of course, we can’t expect the affair will pass off quite so

quietly as an ordinary social lunch-party. We may, for instance, have to

knock a few people down. Surely English gentlemen are not afraid of

having to do that?”

 

“It is not a question of fear,” Masters haughtily replied. “I’m not

thinking of that.”

 

“Hear! Hear!” cried that snipe Parsons.

 

“I am thinking of the ladies of our party.”

 

“There’s a very pretty girl here,” Parsons ventured. “I wish she could

be persuaded—”

 

Forsyth nudged him, while I cried “Order!” savagely.

 

“There will be ladies in our party,” Masters went on. “It would be a

terrible thing if they were to be frightened or in any way injured.”

 

“I yield to no man,” declaimed Brentin, “in my chivalrous respect for

the sex. But there are certain places and times when the presence of

ladies is highly undesirable. The Casino rooms at Monte Carlo, when we

are about to raid them, is one. That’s the reason which has determined

me to leave Mrs. Brentin behind, in complete ignorance of what we are

about to do. I do not presume to dictate to other gentlemen what their

course of action should be, but I must say our chances of success will

be enormously magnified if no ladies are permitted to be of the party.”

 

“Hear! Hear!” murmured Hines, who from a certain gruffness of manner is

no particular favorite with the sex.

 

“Perhaps it would be enough,” urged Masters, “if, on the actual day of

our attempt, the ladies of our party undertook not to go into the

rooms?”

 

“Perhaps it would,” Brentin replied, “but for myself I should prefer

they remained altogether in England, offering up a series of succinct

and heartfelt prayers for our safe return.”

 

Bob Hines gave a snort of laughter, whereupon Brentin fixed him

inquiringly.

 

“Englishwomen have prayed for the safe return of heroes before now, Mr.

Hines.”

 

“I am aware of it.”

 

“Then why gurgle at the back of your throat?”

 

“I have a certain irrepressible sense of humor.”

 

“That is remarkable for an Englishman!”

 

Whether Mr. Brentin were deliberately bent on rubbing us all up the

wrong way, I don’t know, but he was most certainly doing it, so I

thought it judicious to interpose. It was just at that moment Mr. Bailey

Thompson stepped into the room.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI

 

MR. BAILEY THOMPSON GIVES US HIS INGENIOUS ADVICE—WE ARE FOOLS

ENOUGH TO TRUST HIM—MISPLACED CONFIDENCE

 

 

“THE very man!” cried Brentin. “Mr. Bailey Thompson, let me present you

to my friends. You are just in time to give them assurance of the

feasibility of the great scheme you and I have already had some

discussion over.”

 

Now Bailey Thompson’s name had been cursorily mentioned during dinner as

that of a gentleman who might look in in the course of the afternoon,

and, if he came, would be able to give us some useful hints; but, beyond

that, Brentin had kept him back as a final card, having already some

notion of the wavering going on, and desiring to use him to clinch the

business one way or the other.

 

Mr. Thompson bowed and smiled, and Brentin went on.

 

“There is some dissatisfaction in the camp, sir; there is some doubt and

there is fear. Advice is badly needed. I look to you to give it us.”

 

“I shall be very glad to be of any use.”

 

“Then let me present you, Mr. Thompson. This powerful young man with the

leonine head and cherry-wood pipe is Mr. Hines; next him, with the

slight frame, tawny mustache, and Richmond Gem cigarette, is Mr.

Parsons; opposite, with the clean, clear, and agreeable countenance and

the cigar, is Mr. Forsyth; next him, with the sloping brow and

thoughtful back to his head, is Mr. Masters, who doesn’t smoke. Vincent

Blacker you know. Gentlemen, Mr. Bailey Thompson. There is your glass,

sir; drink, and when you feel sufficiently stimulated and communicative,

speak!”

 

Mr. Thompson darted his penetrating eyes over the company, smiled again,

and took his glass of tepid punch.

 

“So you really mean it,” he said, sitting between us.

 

Mr. Brentin groaned. “Don’t let us hear that from you again, sir,” he

said; “it is likely to breed bad blood. Take it from me, we really mean

it, and only need advice how it should best be done. Mr. Bailey

Thompson, we are all attention.”

 

“In the first place, then,” the little man remarked, amid dead silence, as he sipped his punch, “let me say you have, in my judgment, enormously underestimated the amount of money in the rooms.”