Readers who have been to Monte Carlo will remember that, before going into the hall, there is a room on the left, where half a dozen men sit writing cards of admission and drawing up lists of visitors. They make no trouble about it, they simply ask you your hotel and nationality—Anglish, hein?—and hand you over a pink card, good only for one day. Then you go to the right and leave your stick. Neither stick nor umbrella are allowed in the rooms. “Another point in our favor,” as I whispered to Brentin.
Facing is the large hall; up and down stroll gamblers, come out for a breath of air or the whiff of a cigarette. Any one may use it, or the concert-room on the right, or the reading-rooms above, without a ticket; the ticket is needed only for the gambling. You can even cash a check or discount a bill there; for clerks are in attendance from the different banking-houses, within and without the principality, who will attend to your wants as a loser or take charge of your winnings.
On the left, heavy doors are constantly swinging. You can hear, if you listen, as they swing, the faint, enticing clink of the five-franc pieces within.
“Oh, my friends,” murmured Brentin, as we moved towards them, “support me!”
He presented his pink card with a low bow to the two men guarding the entrance; we followed, and the next minute were palpitating in the stifling atmosphere of the last of the European public infernos.
CHAPTER XIII
MRS. WINGHAM AND TEDDY PARSONS—HE FOOLISHLY CONFIDES IN HER—I MAKE A SIMILAR MISTAKE
Now there was staying at our hotel, among other quiet people, a quiet old lady, whom, from her accent and the way she occasionally stumbled over an h, I took to be the widow of a well-to-do tradesman, a suburban bon marché, or stores. She played regularly every afternoon till dinner-time, dressed in black, with a veil down just below the tip of her nose, and worn black kid gloves, staking mostly on the pair or impair at roulette; and every evening she sat in the hotel over a bit of wood-fire, reading either Le Petit Niçois or an odd volume of Sartor Resartus, which, with some ancient torn Graphics, formed the library of the “Monopôle.” Her name I discovered afterwards to be Mrs. Wingham.
It was only the third evening after our arrival that, going into the reading-room to write my daily loving letter to Lucy, there I found Mrs. Wingham and Teddy Parsons seated each side of the fire, talking away as confidentially as if they had known each other all their lives. Bob Hines, who had taken to gambling and couldn’t be kept away from the rooms, and Brentin had gone down to the Casino.
Few things I know more difficult than to write a letter and at the same time listen to a conversation, and I soon found myself writing down scraps of Teddy’s inflated talk, working it, in spite of myself, into my letter to Lucy—talk all the more inflated as I had come into the room quietly at his back, and he didn’t know I was there.