Once the tension was broken by a titter of laughter, as a withered little Italian with a frightened air threw a five-franc piece down on the board and the croupier pushed it back. The poor devil apparently didn’t know that gold only may be staked at trente-et-quarante.
I plucked Brentin by the sleeve and drew him to a side seat against the wall. “I hope that gentleman may be staking here this day week,” he chuckled. “Notes are easy to carry, and I myself have seen him win sixty thousand francs.”
When he heard about Teddy he was furious. It was all I could do to prevent him from going off at once to the hotel and insisting on his leaving Monte Carlo by the next train.
“I allow,” he said, “I was precipitate with Bailey Thompson, but at least we drew something out of him in the way of information. But to confide in a blathering old woman, who has nothing to do but eat and talk—”
I went back to the hotel, only to find Teddy’s bedroom door locked, and to have my knocking greeted with a loud, sham snore. Mrs. Wingham I found still in the reading-room, alone, still focussing Sartor Resartus with her shocked and puzzled expression.
“Your friend has just gone up to bed,” she remarked, “if you are looking for him.”
I thanked her, and, sitting the other side of the fire, proceeded to draw her out. She soon told me Teddy was so like a nephew of hers she had recently lost she had felt obliged to speak to him. She noticed him at once, she said, the first evening at dinner, and felt drawn to him immediately. What a fine, manly young feller he was, and how full of sperrit.
Yes, I said, he was, and often had very ingenious ideas—for instance, that notion of his to raid the tables I had overheard him discussing with her. But, then, there was all the difference in the world between having an idea and the carrying it out, wasn’t there? Merely as a matter of curiosity, what did she think of the notion—she, who doubtless knew the place so well?
The artful old woman—Bailey Thompson’s sister, if you please, and spy, as it afterwards turned out; hence his recommending us the “Monopôle,” so that she might keep an eye on us and report—the artful old woman looked puzzled, as though she were trying to remember what it was Teddy had said on the subject. Then she began to laugh. “Oh, I didn’t think much of that. Why, look at all the people there are about! Why, you’d need a ridgiment!”
Now, will it be believed that I, who had just been so righteously indignant with Parsons for his talkative folly, did myself (feeling uncommonly piqued at her scornful tone) immediately set out to prove to her the thing was perfectly possible, and then and there explain in detail how it could all be successfully done, and with how small a force. I did, indeed, so true as I am sitting writing here now, in our flat in Victoria Street.