"He is dead! He died a month ago!"
And she showed him a little yellow paper that had arrived half an hour before: a telegram from Madrid.
CHAPTER IX
SPADONI, after greeting Novoa in the Casino square, told him about the dreams which were troubling his sleep, and about his disillusionment on awakening.
"It is your fault, professor. When we were living together at Villa Sirena, I used to listen to the interesting things you knew and talked about and then I would go peacefully to sleep. Now I am practically alone. The Prince and Castro are unbearably ill-humored; they talk scarcely at all and pay no attention whatever to me. As you yourself would say, I lead an 'inner life,' always alone with my thoughts; and when I spend the night there, I sleep badly, and suffer from dreams, which are very wonderful in the beginning, but turn out very sad in the end. Oh, what wonderful evenings we used to spend, talking about scientific things!"
Novoa smiled. In the eyes of the musician, gambling and its mysteries were scientific matters. All the paradoxes that he had taken delight in uttering had been stored up in the mind of the pianist as irrefutable truths. Novoa tried to head him off by asking for news of the Prince. But Spadoni, absorbed in his mania, continued:
"Last night's dream was terrible, and nevertheless it could not have begun better. I had the secret of your infinitesimal errors; I had mastered the hidden laws of chance and was King of the world. I had a special train, composed of a sleeping car, a drawing-room car, a dining car, a swimming-pool car, and goodness knows how many special kinds of cars! It was a regular palace on wheels that was always awaiting me at the railway station, with the engine constantly keeping up steam, ready to start at any moment. I got out of the train in all the cities famous for gambling, just as a person gets out of an automobile. And seeing me coming, the owners of the Casinos, the employees, and even the green tables fairly trembled. 'Hurrah for the Avenger!' all those who had lost their money shouted in the anteroom. But I passed on, serene as a god, without paying any attention to these ovations from the common herd. Imagine what it would cost the possessor of the secret of the infinitesimal errors to win! My twelve secretaries placed on the various tables a million or two, following my instructions. 'Ready, play!' I walked about like Napoleon, giving orders to my marshals. In half an hour, they declared the bank was broken and the Casino bankrupt. 'The house is closing its doors!' shouted the employees, just as in a church when the services are over. And on coming out, the same starving wretches who had greeted me with acclamations rushed on the guards escorting me, with sudden hate, trying to kill me. The place where their fortunes were buried was closed to them forever. Now they could not return the next day and lose more money with the vague hope of squaring accounts. I had taken away all their hopes."
"Exactly," said Novoa.
"Also I had a yacht, which was larger than Prince Lubimoff's; something in the nature of a first-class cruiser. And I needed one that size, for a band of followers as large as mine. I had with me hordes of secretaries, a crowd of strong-arm men whose duty it was to defend me and my treasure, and a great number of blasé people, who considered me a very interesting person, and followed me all over the globe, like that misanthropic fellow who followed a lion tamer from city to city, hoping that the wild beasts might some day devour him. There was no longer a single Casino functioning in Europe: the one at San Sebastian had been turned into a convent; the one at Ostend was being used as a laboratory for experiments on oyster culture. In all the bathing resorts and all medicinal springs, people became interested exclusively in taking care of their health; and when they wanted distraction, they went to the promenades and played marbles and other children's games. In the meantime I went traveling through the Americas and the South Seas, breaking one bank after another, in all the big gambling houses. I was followed by journalists who made up another army larger than my own. The newspapers and the cable and telegraph agencies announced my arrival in advance, making a great stir. 'The invincible Spadoni is coming!' And the gaming establishments, feeling their end was near, tried to exploit their death agony by selling seats at fabulous prices to every one who wanted to witness my triumph. In the United States a steel king, or a king of something or other, gave a hundred thousand dollars for a seat, in order to follow my irresistible playing close at hand. Never before had such a sum been paid to see the long hair of a concert singer or the diamonds of a soprano."
"And how about Monte Carlo?" asked Novoa, interested by the gambler's wild dreams.