“See here. Can you understand this?”
He thrust into his hand a pink strip of paper. It was a cheque for a hundred pounds, made payable to Eugene Miller, Esquire, signed by Mary Errington, and marked “Not known. No account.”
“Tonnerre de Dieu!” cried Aristide. “How did you get this?”
“How did I get it? I cashed it for her—the day she went away. She said urgent affairs summoned her from Aix—no time to wire for funds—wanted to pay her hotel bill—and she gave me the address of her old English home in Somerset and invited me to come there in September. Fifteenth of September. Said that you were coming. And now I’ve got a bum cheque. I guess I can’t wander about this country alone. I need blinkers and harness and a man with a whip.”
He went on indignantly. Aristide composed his face into an expression of parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening upheaval. He saw it all, the whole mocking drama....
He, Aristide Pujol, was the most sweetly, the most completely swindled man in France.
The Comte de Lussigny, the mild Mrs. Errington and the beautiful Betty were in league together and had exquisitely plotted. They had conspired, as soon as he had accused the Count of cheating. The rascal must have gone straight to them from Miller’s room. No wonder that Lussigny, when insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in the garden. No wonder he had accepted the accusation of adventurer. No wonder he had refused to play for the cheque which he knew to be valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying for success on his manipulation of the cards. Finally he had desired to get hold of a dangerous cheque. In that he had been foiled. But the trio has got away with his thousand pounds, his wonderful thousand pounds. He reflected, still keeping an attentive eye on young Eugene Miller and interjecting a sympathetic word, that after he had paid his hotel bill, he would be as poor on quitting Aix-les-Bains as he was when he had entered it. Sic transit.... As it was in the beginning with Aristide Pujol, is now and ever shall be....
“But I have my clothes—such clothes as I’ve never had in my life,” thought Aristide. “And a diamond and sapphire tie-pin and a gold watch, and all sorts of other things. Tron de l’air, I’m still rich.”
“Who would have thought she was like that?” said he. “And a hundred pounds, too. A lot of money.”
For nothing in the world would he have confessed himself a fellow-victim.