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EARLY DIFFICULTIES—I FAIL TO PERSUADE THE HONORABLE EDGAR FANSHAWE, THE REVEREND PERCY BLYTH, AND MR. PARKER WHITE, M. P., TO JOIN OUR MONTE CARLO PARTY

Lucy declares I have written enough about her, and now had better get on to the Monte Carlo part—who went with me, and why they went, and so on.

I dare say she’s right; for though we neither of us know anything whatever about writing, she says she represents the average reader, and, having been told (as well as I could do it) something about “The French Horn” and my love-affair there, is, as an average reader, growing anxious to learn how I got the party together for so apparently hazardous, not to say hopeless, an enterprise.

I must just mention, however, that, after my sad interview with her in Kensington Gardens, I at once wrote to Mr. Thatcher and told him exactly what had occurred, informing him of my intention to come down at Christmas and try and settle matters with his daughter. At the same time I begged him to send me up the clothes and portmanteaus I had left behind me at “The French Horn.” They arrived, accompanied by a scrawl from Mr. Thatcher, urging me to be a man and bear up and all would come right, and enclosing a rather larger bill than I fancied I owed, but which I thought it politic to pay without protest of any kind.

Even the old lady, his mother, sent me a line, in a very upright fist, kindly informing me “brighter days were in store.” A simple prophecy, that long has ceased to interest me; since I have invariably had it from the innumerable fortunetellers, by cards and tea-leaves and the crystal, whom for years past I have rather foolishly been in the habit of consulting, but never derived any real benefit from.

As for my great idea to sack Monte Carlo, it came to me one morning (quite unexpectedly, as I have said) when I was lying in bed, trying to summon up resolution to rise for another dull and irksome day. It was still a long time off Christmas, and life was lying on me with extreme heaviness; for, as I think I have explained, I am in the militia, and when once my month’s training is over have nothing to do with myself except live on my eight hundred a year and amuse myself as best I can; and my idleness was rendered further indigestible at this period by the unhappy state of my relations with dear Lucy, whom I could neither see nor write to.

But the idea that I should get a small, resolute party together, and raid the tables at Monte Carlo, brought a new interest into my life; and after making a few quiet and judicious inquiries (for I had never been there), I determined to set about the affair in earnest and see if I could get any one to join me.

My first efforts in that direction, as is generally the case with anything new and startling, were not at all successful; but the more opposition and ridicule I met with, the more obstinate and determined I became. As for the morality of the affair, that, as I have said, has never troubled me from first to last. Does any one think of calling the police immoral when they go and raid a silver gambling-hell in Soho? For the life of me I have never been able to see the difference between us, except that in our case there was needed a greater nerve and address.

Now my sister, Mrs. Rivers, the wife of the publisher, lives in Medworth Square, S. W., and, on considering her intimates, I made up my mind to approach the Honorable Edgar Fanshawe first. He has a brother in the Foreign Office, and relations scattered about everywhere in government employ, so I decided he would be a good man to have with us in case the affair proved a fiasco and we all got into trouble, a chance that naturally had to be provided for.

Fanshawe, I should explain, was at one time in the Guards, but now writes the most dreadfully dull historical novels, which my brother-in-law publishes, and no one that I have ever met reads. Every autumn, sure as fate, among the firm’s list of new books you see announced, Something or Other, a Tale of the Young Pretender; or, Something or Other Else, an Episode of the Reign of Terror; with quotations from the Scots Herald, “this enthralling story”; or, from the Dissenters’ Times, “no more powerful and picturesque romance has at present issued,” etc. Or The Leeds Commercial Gazette would declare it “the best historical novel since Scott,” which I seem to have heard before of many other dull works.

Fanshawe is a purring, mild, genteel, rather elderly person, who listens to everything you are good enough to say most attentively and politely, with his head on one side, and never will be parted from his opera-hat. When I attacked him one night after dinner in Medworth Square he was in his usual autumnal condition of beatitude at the excellence of the reviews of his latest historical composition (which, as usual, scarcely sold), and beamed on me with delighted condescension, stuffing quantities of raisins.

“What shall you be doing in January?” I cautiously began. “Would you be free for a little run over to Monte Carlo?”

Unfortunately, the Honorable Edgar is the sort of person who, half an hour after dinner, will undertake to do anything with anybody, and then write and get out of it immediately after breakfast next morning, when he’s cold; so I quite expected the reply that Monte Carlo in January would suit him exactly, and what hotel did I propose to stay at?

“Now I’ve an idea,” I went on, drawing a little closer. “You’ve been to Monte Carlo, of course, and know what a quantity of money there is in the place.”

“Some of it mine,” smiled Fanshawe. “I beg your pardon for interrupting you.”

“Well,” I said, “how would you like to join a little party of us for the purpose of getting it back?”

“A syndicate to work a system?”

“Nothing so unprofitable.”

“I don’t know of any other way.”

“My idea,” I went on, sinking my voice, “is shortly this: that half a dozen of us should join and take a yacht—a fast steam-yacht—”

“Rather an expensive way of doing it, isn’t it?” objected Fanshawe, in alarm. He doesn’t mind what he pays to have his books published, but is otherwise mean.

“Not when you consider the magnitude of the stakes.”

“Why, the most you can win, even if you break the bank, is only a hundred thousand francs!”

“But consider the number of the tables, to say nothing of the reserve in the vaults, and the money lying about already staked!”

The old boy looked puzzled, but nodded his head politely all the same. “That’s true,” he said, vaguely.

“The place is not in any sense guarded, as no doubt you remember.”

“No, I don’t know that I ever saw a soldier about, except one or two, very bored, on sentry go, up at Monaco. But what has that to do with it?”

“Why, half a dozen resolute men with revolvers could clear the whole place out in five minutes,” I murmured, seductively. “The steam-yacht lies in the harbor, we collect the money, or as much of it as half a dozen of us can carry away, and, once on board the lugger—”

Fanshawe pushed his chair back and stared at me.

“—We go full-steam ahead to one of the Greek islands, divide the swag, scuttle the steamer, make our way to the Piræus, inspect the Acropolis, and come home, viâ Corfu, as Cook’s tourists. Or go to the Holy Land, eh, by way of completely averting suspicion?” And I winked and nudged him, nearly falling over in my effort to get at his frail old ribs.

“My dear friend!” gasped the startled Fanshawe; “why propose such an elaborate pleasantry? It’s like school-boy’s talk in a dormitory.”

“I never felt further from my school-days in my life,” I answered with determination. “The affair is perfectly easy—easier than you think. All it wants is a little resolution, and the money’s ours.”

“But it’s simple robbery.”

“Oh, don’t imagine,” I at once replied, “I propose anything so coarse as burglary and the melting-pot. No; I say to myself, here is the most iniquitous establishment in Europe, simply reeking with gold, of which an enormous surplus remains at the end of the year to be divided, principally among Semitic Parisians, who lavish it on their miserable pleasures. Here, on the other hand, are numerous deserving establishments in London—hospitals and so on—with boards out, closing their wards and imploring subscriptions. The flow of gold has evidently got into the wrong channels, as it always will if not sharply looked after. Be ours the glorious enterprise to divert it anew—”

“My good friend,” interrupted Fanshawe, “if I thought you serious—”

“Never was more serious in my life!”

“But, gracious me, suppose you’re all caught?”

“Oh, there is a prison up at Monaco, I believe,” I answered, lightly; “but they tell me prisoners come and go just as they please. That doesn’t in the least alarm me. Besides, Europe would be on our side—at all events, the respectable portion of it—and would hail our coup with rapture, even if it ended in failure. And with your brother in the Foreign Office, they’d soon have you back. Now what do you say? Will you make one?”

“My dear Blacker, you really must be crazy!”

“At a given signal, when the rooms are fullest, some of us—two would be enough—drive the gamblers into a corner and make them hold up their hands. The others loot the tables and the vaults. Then we turn out the electric light—”

“Any more wine, Fanshawe?” called out my brother-in-law.

Fanshawe rose, and I saw at once by the limp way he pulled his waistcoat down he was no good.

“Well,” I said, as I followed him into the drawing-room, “if you won’t join us, you must give me your word not to breathe a syllable of what we are going to do. It’s an immense idea, and I don’t want any one to get hold of it first, and find the place gutted by some one else before we can get a look in.”

Fanshawe’s only reply was that if I got into trouble he would thank me not to apply to him to bail me out; so we mutually promised.

I don’t know that, on the whole, I very much regretted him; he is, after all, a very muddle-headed, nervous old creature; but my hopes were for a time a good deal dashed by the refusal of the Reverend Percy Blyth to join us (much as he approved of the scheme), though I did my best to tempt him with the offer of new stops for his organ out of the boodle. He is the clergyman of St. Blaise’s, Medworth Square, and intimate with all the theatrical set, for whom he holds services at all sorts of odd hours; the natural result of which is he is on the free list of nearly every theatre, and has given me many a box.

Now every school-boy knows how priceless the presence of a parson is to all human undertakings—on a race-course, for instance, for thimble-rigging, the three-card trick, and other devices. They call him the bonnet, and if you have any trifling dispute about there being no pea, or the corner of the card being turned down, you are likely to be very much astonished to find the clergyman (who, of course, is only a cove dressed up) take the proprietor’s part and, at a pinch, offer to fight you, or any other dissatisfied bystander.

So I naturally thought it would be a good thing for us if we had a real parson in the party, if only as a most superior bonnet, to avert suspicion; though, if I had only thought a little, I might have known the idea wouldn’t work, since Blyth couldn’t very well have gone into the Casino rooms in parson’s rig, and I didn’t really want him for anything else.

There was only one other of my sister’s friends I approached on the subject before I had recourse to my own—Parker White, a bouncing sort of young man who had just got into the House of Commons, and who, I thought, might possibly be useful. But, as I cautiously felt my way with him, he looked so frightened, and talked such balderdash about his position and filibustering and European complications (complications with Monaco, if you please, with an army of seventy men!) that I pretended it was all a joke and turned the conversation.

To tell the truth, I was not much disappointed in Parker White, since I know very well how most of those younger men in the House are all gas and no performance; but, all the same, he was pretty cunning; for, to put it vulgarly, he lay low and waited, and when talk began to get about of what we had done, and the Casino Company’s shares fell immediately in consequence of our success, he bought them up like ripe cherries; and then, when it was all contradicted by a subsidized press (which made me wild and drove me to writing this work in self-defence), and the shares jumped up again, he promptly sold and made a good thing out of it.

But he has never had the grace to thank me for putting the opportunity in his way; which is so like those men in the House who speculate on their information on the sly and then blush to find it fame.