Читать книгу The Sack of Monte Carlo: An Adventure of To-day - Walter Frith - Страница 3

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SOME SLIGHT EXPLANATION—OBJECTS OF THE EXPEDITION—LOVE THE PROMOTER—LUCY THATCHER—HER PORTRAIT BY LAMPLIGHT

The idea occurred to me, quite unexpectedly and unsought for, early one morning in bed; and, as ideas of such magnitude are valuable and scarce (at any rate, with me), it was not long before I determined to try and realize it.

The expedition was so successful, and we got, on the whole, so clear and clean away with the swag, or, as Mr. Julius C. Brentin, our esteemed American collaborateur, called it, “the boodle,” that, for my part, there I should have been perfectly content to let the affair rest; but, the fact is, so many of my friends have taken upon themselves to doubt whether we really did it at all, and the Monte Carlo authorities from the very first so cunningly managed to suppress all details (with their subsidized press), that I feel it due to us all to try and write the adventure out; since I know very well how, with most, seeing in print is believing.

Briefly, then, my idea was to sack or raid the gambling-tables at Monte Carlo, that highly notorious cloaca maxima for all the scum of Europe, which there gutters and gushes forth into the sapphire and tideless Mediterranean. I had worked details out for myself, and believed that, what with the money on the tables and the reserve in the vaults, there could not be much short of £200,000 on the Casino premises, a sum as much worth making a dash for, it seemed to me, as Spanish plate-ships to Drake or Raleigh. Nor did it seem likely we should have to do much fighting to secure it; for all the authorities I consulted assured me the place was by no means a Gibraltar, and, in fact, that half a dozen resolute gentlemen with revolvers and a swift steam-yacht waiting in the harbor would be more than enough to do the trick and clean the place out; which was pretty much what we found.

As for the morality of the affair, I confess that never in the least troubled me—never once. One puts morality on one side when dealing with a gaming-establishment, and to raid the place seemed to me just as reasonable and fair as to go there with a system, besides being likely to be a good deal more profitable. And since the objects to which we destined the money were in the main charitable, I soon came to regard the expedition strictly in pios usus (as lawyers say), and hope and believe the public will regard it in that light too.

Let me say right here—to quote Mr. Brentin again—that not one of us touched one single red cent of the large amount we so fortunately secured, but that it was all expended for the purposes (in the main, as I say, charitable) for which we had always intended it—with the single exception of a necklet of napoleons I had made for the fat little neck of my enchanting niece Mollie, which she always wears at parties, and keeps to this day in an old French plum-box, along with her beads and bangles and a small holy ring I once brought her from Rome; being amazingly fond of all sorts of bedizenments, as most female children are.

Mollie, therefore, was the only person who really had any of the swag, or boodle; though, of course, she doesn’t know it, and thinks it was properly won at play. For as for Bob Hines, who had some for the new gymnasium and swimming-bath at his boys’ school at Folkestone; and Mr. Thatcher (my dear wife Lucy’s father), who got his old family estate, Wharton Park, back; and the hospitals, convalescent homes, and sanatoriums, which all shared alike; and Teddy Parsons, of my militia, who had the bill paid off that was worrying him—that was all in the original scheme, and all went to form the well-understood reasons for our undertaking the expedition; without which inducements, indeed, it would never even have started.

So if, after this clear denial in print, the public still choose to fancy anything has stuck to my fingers, all I can ask them in fairness to do is to come to our flat in Victoria Street any morning between twelve and two, when they can see the accounts and receipts for themselves, all in order and properly audited by Messrs. Fitch & Black, the eminent accountants of Lothbury, E. C....

Now, they say love is at the bottom of most of the affairs and enterprises of the world, and so I believe it mostly is. At all events, I don’t fancy I should have undertaken, or, at any rate, been so prominent in this Monte Carlo affair, if I hadn’t at the time been so deeply in love with Lucy, and correspondingly anxious to get her father’s property back for them at Wharton Park. It is situate near Nesshaven, on the Essex coast; which, though to many it may not be a particularly attractive part of the country, is to me forever sacred as the spot where I first met the dear girl who is now my wife, coming back so rosily from her morning bath, through the whin and the sand, from the long, flat shore and the idle sea, carrying her own damp towel back to her father’s inn, “The French Horn.”

I can see her now as I saw her then, on that warm September morning eighteen months ago; sea and sky and monotonous Essex land all bathed in hazy sunshine, the whins still glistening with the morning mist, which at that time of the year lies heavily till the sun at mid-day warms them dry and sets the seed-cases exploding like Prince-Rupert drops—I can see her, I say, come towards me along the coast-guard path, round the pole that sticks up to mark it, and towards the wooden bridge that crosses one of the dikes.

If any line of that sweet face were faint in my memory, I have only to look across at her now, as she sits sewing under the lamp as I write, for all its charm and perfection to be present as first I saw it. I have only to put a straw-hat on the pretty, rough, dark hair, which in sunshine gleams with the bronze of chestnut, give her a freckle or two on the low, white forehead, color her round cheek a little more delicately rose-leaf, and there she is—not forgetting to take away the wedding-ring!—as she passed me on the Nesshaven golf-links that hazy September morning eighteen months ago. There is the straight nose, the short upper lip, the pure, fresh mouth, the plump and rounded chin, and the soft, pink lips that part so readily with a smile and show the beautiful white teeth, white as the youngest hazel-nuts....

Lucy felt my eyes were upon her, and looked up at me and smiled, with something of a blush, for she blushes very readily. She saw me still looking longingly, the invitation in my eyes, and after a moment’s hesitation (for, though we have been married nearly six months, she still is shy) she put down her sewing and came to me at my writing-table. She bent over me and put her arms round my neck, her warm cheek against mine. Her soft lips kissed me; I felt the tender, loving palpitation of her bosom as I bent my head back. Our sitting-room seemed full of silence, happy and melodious silence, while from outside in Victoria Street I head the jingle of a passing cab....