Before he could open his convulsed fingers, or dash out after her, she had vanished, bag and baggage, in the crowd and confusion of the platform; other people, pushing and chattering and tearing themselves from the embrace of friends, had piled into her place, and were waving from the window, and blocking the way out; and now the train was moving on, and there he sat in his corner, aghast, clutching the banknote....
II
At Monte Carlo the Professor captured a porter and rescued his luggage. Exhausted by this effort, and by the attempt to communicate with the porter, first in Latin and then in French as practised at Purewater, he withdrew to a corner of the waiting-room and fished in his pockets for the address of the quiet pension in the hills. He found it at last, and handed it wearily to the porter. The latter threw up his hands. “Parti! Parti! Autobus gone.” That devil of a woman had been right!
When would there be another, the Professor asked.
Not till tomorrow morning at 8:30. To confirm his statement the porter pointed to a large time-table on the wall of the waiting-room. The Professor scanned it and sat down again with a groan. He was about to consult his companion as to the possibility of finding a night’s lodging in a respectable pension (fantastic as the idea seemed in such a place); but hardly had he begun: “Can you tell me where—” when, with a nod of comprehension and a wink of complicity, the porter returned in fluent English: “Pretty ladies? Turkish bath? Fottographs?”
The Professor repudiated these suggestions with a shudder, and leaving his bags in the cloak-room set forth on his quest. He had hardly taken two steps when another stranger of obviously doubtful morality offered him a pamphlet which he was indignantly rejecting when he noticed its title: “The Theory of Chance in Roulette.” The theory of chance was deeply interesting to the Professor, and the idea of its application to roulette not without an abstract attraction. He bought the pamphlet and sat down on the nearest bench.
His study was so absorbing that he was roused only by the fall of twilight, and the scattered twinkle of many lamps all radiating up to the central focus of the Casino. The Professor started to his feet, remembering that he had still to find a lodging. “And I must be up early to catch the bus,” he reminded himself. He took his way down a wide empty street apparently leading to a quieter and less illuminated quarter. This street he followed for some distance, vainly scrutinizing the houses, which seemed all to be private dwellings, till at length he ran against a slim well-set-up young fellow in tennis flannels, with a bright conversational eye, who was strolling along from the opposite direction.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the Professor.
“What for?” rejoined the other, in a pleasant tone made doubly pleasant by the familiar burr of the last word, which he pronounced like fur.
“Why, you’re an American!” exclaimed the Professor.