A Gamble in Franks Oils

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

“Cardinge played on steadily and imperturbably, the girl by his side watching with growing distress. Finally he came to his last two mille notes. Claire leaned over and snatched them out of his hand. 'Listen,' she said. 'I have never played, but I have often watched and I know all about it. Will you trust to a beginner's luck?'”

 

A GAMBLE IN FRANKS OILS

The Story of One of Those New Games
They Play at Monte Carlo

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

Illustrated by Marshall Frantz

CLAIRE, unusually attractive in her white tennis clothes and simple hat, mounted the steps to the Sporting Club a little wearily. The smile with which she welcomed Cardinge, however, was transforming. She passed her arm through his and led him up the stairs.

“Give me some tea, please, Hugh, and talk nicely to me.” she begged.

“What's wrong?” he asked kindly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Nothing. Only atmosphere. There are times when I hate Armand and all his friends. I don't like those Spanish people he's so friendly with—the Lobetos. We've been playing tennis with them this afternoon. Half of their chaff I don't understand, and what I do, I hate. I think Armand ought to go into the army or be made to work at something. I'm quite sure I sha'n't be in love with him very much longer.”

“Are you in love with him now?” Cardinge demanded, as they sat down and he ordered tea.

“I'm not in the least sure about it,” she admitted. “He's very good looking, you know, except for a hateful expression now and then. And no one else could make my name sound so much like music as he does—when he's in the humor. Sometimes it thrills me to have him near, sometimes he repels me.”

“That doesn't sound very hopeful,” Cardinge observed dryly.

“I suppose it doesn't,” she agreed. “You see, Hugh, if I weren't really quite a nice girl, if I just wanted to flirt, I should adore Armand. But, as a matter of fact, I don't care about flirting with any one, unless I really like them.”

“Madame wishes you and Armand to marry,” he reminded her.

“I know that quite well,” the girl replied. “But I don't think Armand means to marry any one if he can get out of it. And, so far as I'm concerned, I can't bring myself to look upon him as a possible husband. Whenever I try it seems to me that I see that look in his face which I hate. Life is a great problem for an unprotected girl,” she added, making herself a sandwich.

“You have plenty of courage,” he remarked, “and plenty of humor. I suppose the two go together. But, as a matter of fact, you are by way of being a little unprotected out here, don't you think? Madame appears to be your only guardian and Madame is inclined to be autocratic.”

“'Supposing your wireless were to get out of order?' Cardinge, who had just strolled up, suggested.”

“There's always you,” she protested. “I rely upon you more than anybody.”

“That is very nice of you, Claire,” he acknowledged. “But I am not sure that it is wise. I am, after all, only a bird of passage.”

“Don't be silly!” she exclaimed. “You're not thinking of going away.”

“I must.”

She was very quiet for a moment.

“I couldn't bear that,” she said simply.

“My little obligation to Madame,” he went on, “was disposed of a few days after my arrival. Since then I have merely been a guest.”

“But you have helped Madame tremendously,” she pointed out.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I have been useful, perhaps. But Madame needs no one. She has the house full of her chosen servants. She could dispense with me at any moment.”

“But aren't you happy here?” she ventured a little timidly.

HE REPEATED the word as though it were a strange one to him.

“I don't think that any one who leads my sort of life could expect to find happiness,” he observed.

“Why not? No one appreciates beautiful things and places more than you do. You don't do any harm.”

“A negative position of doing no harm scarcely deserves happiness, does it?” he asked. “You see my life in its way has been adventurous—bad adventures, most of them. One little golden streak, but most of them sordid.”

“Tell me about the golden streak,” she invited.

He shook his head.

“Not to speak of it is part of my sacrifice,” he answered. “I have a fancy that some day I shall try to let you know about it—not yet.”

“Tell me this,” she begged, “was there a woman who belonged to it?”

“There was not,” he assured her. “It had to do with different things.”

“I wonder why I'm glad?” she reflected.

“Are you?”

“Very.”

There was a brief pause. His expression darkened.

“I wonder whether you realize what I am?” he muttered. “Thirty-nine years old, a reputed criminal, a wastrel, an evil-doer—and now, a fool.”

“You are not one of those things,” she declared indignantly.

“I am at least a fool,” he sighed.

A fool because he sat there with tingling pulses, afraid to meet the challenging eyes of the girl beside him. He was still in the quagmire, without the courage to fight his way clear. And she—he seemed to see her coming down the sunlit, flowery paths, from her young girlhood, to the garden of beautiful womanhood. Then he set his teeth. There was a sudden vision of Armand, cynical, with the age-long wickedness of the serpent in his soft brown eyes, lounging at the gate, waiting. Cardinge rose impetuously to his feet. His thoughts had wandered a long way from the bar of the Sporting Club.

“IF YOU have finished,” he suggested, “come and watch me gamble.”

“I would rather talk,” she persisted. “I can't bear to think of your going away.”

“I can't bear to think of it, either,” he acknowledged simply. “As a matter of fact—I suppose it is absurd of me, but do you know what I am trying to do?”

“Tell me.”

“I am trying to buy the farm on the other side of the road from the villa—Bérard's, they call it.”

“But how lovely!” she exclaimed. “You really will be a neighbor, then.”

He smiled.

“The matter is not so easy. I have only half the money they want for the place.”

“Madame would lend you anything,” she assured him eagerly.

“Borrowing has never been one of my sins,” he replied. “There is plenty of money in my name somewhere, but it is money that I do not propose to use.”

“But I want you to buy the farm,” she persisted.

“I want to myself,” he admitted. “I'm going to make an effort.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked

“Can't you guess? I'm going to gamble.”

She looked dubious.

“But if you should lose?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Then I am very little worse off. I've lived somehow all my life. I shall go on living, I suppose.”

“You dear, of course you will,” she exclaimed, patting his hand. “I hate to hear you talk like that. You shall win the money and buy the farm, and I'll come and be dairy-maid!”

“You can come now and bring me luck,” he proposed,

“How much do you need to win?” she asked.

“Fifty thousand francs. Not much for a gambler.”

“And what are you going to play?”

“Roulette,” he replied. “I'm not going to prolong the agony, either. I'm going to do what I've never done before—bet in maximums.”

He changed some money and took up his stand near one of the croupiers. Claire followed him to the tables. His first stake brought him in four milles. From that moment his luck was abominable. His favorite numbers eluded him, and he lost seven maximums following on the columns and dozens. He played on steadily and imperturbably; the girl by his side watching with growing distress. Finally he came to his last two mille notes. She leaned over and snatched them out of his hand.

“Listen,” she said. “I have never played, but I have often watched and I know all about it. Will you trust to a beginner's luck?”

“Rather,” he agreed. “I'll move off, though. I should ruin anything.”

SHE slipped into a vacant chair and studied the board for a few minutes. Cardinge made his way out into the bar, drank a whisky and soda and talked to some acquaintances. After about half an hour he strolled back into the rooms. Claire was still in her place and he saw, with a little start of surprise, that she had a great pile of notes and plaques by her side. She had also a pencil and paper and seemed to be keeping an account.

“I have your fifty back again,” she told him. “But only twenty-six toward the next fifty. You must go away, please, and don't watch me. It will take me about twenty minutes to win the rest.”

He walked off a little dazed, watched the baccarat for a time, and made his way back into the bar. Presently Claire appeared. She was very pale, but her eyes seemed to be filled with an extraordinary light. She carried in her hand a roll of bills. One of the silent guardians of the place was following her. She held the roll out to Cardinge.

“I think there is one mille over,” she announced. “That will pay the lawyer's fees. The croupier tells me that I have made a record. I have had fourteen en pleins within an hour.”

“But I can't take this,” he began to protest.

She looked at him and it was his last word on that subject. He thrust the money into his pockets.

“I should like a glass of wine, please,” she begged. “I am a little tired, but very happy.”

Presently they strolled out, meaning to get a little fresh air on the terrace. They leaned over the parapet to admire a beautiful yacht, newly arrived and flying the American flag. A clean-shaven man of youthful middle age, who had just driven up in a little carriage from the harbor, got out and approached the foremost of the line of automobiles waiting to be hired. Apparently unable to make himself understood, he appealed to Cardinge.

“Say, I've forgotten most of my French,” he explained. “I wonder if you could tell me how far it is to Cagnes and whether I could get there in one of these machines?”

“You can get there with me in about an hour's time,” was the prompt reply. “Madame has been expecting you.

“Cardinge! For the love of Mike!”

Cardinge nodded.

“Let me introduce you to Madame's niece,” he said. “We have a car here and shall be going back almost at once. Mr. James B. Dickson—Miss Claire Fantenay.”

“If this doesn't beat the band,” the newcomer declared enigmatically, as he shook hands.

MR JAMES B. DICKSON took stock of his surroundings at the villa without any sign of the nervousness which had possessed most of his predecessors. He welcomed Madame as an old and dear friend. He praised the villa, reveled in the beauty of the gardens, was almost solemnly impressed by the excellence of the cocktail offered him, and referred to the object of his coming in jocular fashion.

“*Of course I never see the London Times,” he explained, seated at his ease on the piazza, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his fingers caressing the stem of a wine-glass. “That didn't make no odds, though. I got the message right enough. I tell you I had to guess at the cipher for a moment, simple though it is. What's become of them all? How many of them have shown up so far?”

Cardinge ran through the names. Mr. Dickson appeared to remember them all.

“You've a few scorchers to come,” he remarked. “So you've had 'em here and sent them home again. What's the big idea?”

Madame sighed.

“Perhaps,” she murmured, “I am making a mistake, but I am disbanding my Virgins.”

“That's too bad,” Dickson observed. “Don't see why we shouldn't all come together again and have some fun.”

Madame smiled.

“Middle age seems to have brought to most of my protégés,” she declared, “the most bourgeois-like veneration for the law. So far every one has been only too anxious to get hold of his quittance and depart. Hugh Cardinge here is the only one who has stayed on with me for a time.”

“Well, well,” Dickson sighed, “I guess we're getting on in life for pranks. What's this quittance you were speaking of?”

MADAME betrayed signs of amusement. She was watching her visitor, weighing his every word.

“If you remember,” she explained, “the first qualification for becoming one of my Virgins was to have committed some misdemeanor or crime, a confession of which was written down and deposited with me. I have an envelop here addressed to you containing a document which you handed over to me one night—I think it was somewhere in the Montmartre.”

“Less said about that the better,” Dickson protested. “I'm afraid I drew on my imagination a bit. I was kind of keen on being mixed up with your lot. All the rage you were, in Paris, in those days!”

“Imagination!” Madame repeated softly. “Still the man died in the hospital on the very day you mentioned.”

Dickson had perhaps been smoking too many cigars. There was a chalky hue suddenly visible underneath the sunburn of his skin.

“You read the documents, then?”

“For purposes of verification,” Madame replied. “It was my privilege.”

Mr. James B. Dickson looked longingly at the silver cocktail-shaker. Cardinge rose and filled his glass. He drained its contents, fingered the empty glass for a moment, then set it down and turned to Madame.

“Whether the confession was faked or not,” he said, “I guess I'd better come into line with the others and ask for my quittance.”

“You shall have it,” Madame assured him, “as soon as you have earned it.”

“Earned it?”

Madame sighed gently.

“You ought to know me better, my dear friend,” she expostulated, “than to imagine that I would restore a valuable document like this without some sort of return. Each one of my departing Virgins has either amused me, or has successfully concluded some small enterprise of a financial nature.”

“I haven't my letter of credit or my check-book with me at the moment,” Dickson remarked.

“They would be useless if you had,” Madame rejoined coldly. “I do not propose to sell you your quittance.”

“Then how am I going to get it?” Dick asked bluntly.

“I shall have to consider that point,” was the thoughtful reply. “I never know which of you is going to turn up next, so I cannot make plans ahead. You will stay and dine if we send you back to the yacht?”

“Why, I should say so,” Dickson assented. “But, just one word, Madame. Over in little New York I'm on my feet all right. I'm near to the Chief Commissioner and I'm in well with the whole bunch there. But that doesn't help me any out here. Things have changed since the old days. I've got a name and a big fortune to take care of.”

“I am not a fool,” Madame assured him coldly. “Show our guest where he can wash his hands, Hugh. The dinner gong will go directly.”

MR. EDGAR FRANKS, a few days later, lounged side by side with his friend James B. Dickson upon the deck of the latter's wonderful yacht. It was a moment of supreme contentment. By their sides were long tumblers full of an amber looking liquid, slightly effervescing and stirred every now and then into cloudiness by the clink of the ice against the sides of the glass. The Mediterranean was as blue and calm as a lake of fairyland. The breeze was just sufficient to temper the warmth of the sun.

“Queer thing running across you like this, Jimmy,” Edgar Franks observed. “Let me see, it must be nearly eighteen years since we met.”

“Getting on,” Dickson admitted.

“It was two years before poor Henry came to such a shocking end in Paris. You knew him, by the bye, didn't you?”

“Not intimately,” Dickson replied. “We ran across one another now and then.”

Edgar Franks continued to look into the past.

“Now I come to think of it,” he ruminated, “I seem to remember that you two didn't hit it off very well, did you? There was trouble about some concession you both went after in Rumania, and Henry always had an idea—about his wife. A jealous fellow, even when he was a lad!”

“I am afraid,” Dickson confessed, “that we were not the best of friends.”

“He came to a terrible end, poor fellow,” Edgar Franks sighed.

DICKSON made no reply. His clean shaven jaw was set and stern. He was looking intently toward the horizon. His companion lifted his head. Above them the blue lightning sometimes crackled and flashed.

“It's a world of brains, this,” Edgar Franks declared. “Don't care what any one says, James—a world of brains.”

“I get you,” Dickson murmured. “People are pretty slick nowadays.”

“Look at what's going on there,” his guest observed, looking lazily up at the masthead. “An entire market in the New York Stock Exchange is being soothed by those half-a-dozen messages I have sent off during the last forty-eight hours. Not only that, but look at how they go. Straight from here to my own villa. Wireless telegraphy was a great invention in itself, but its installation into private houses was the most amazing thing that ever happened. Curiously enough, James,” Mr. Edgar Franks went on, knocking the ash from his cigar, “I began to have grave suspicions a few months ago that the ordinary cable service in these parts was interfered with. Certainly some news cabled to me was by some means or other communicated to another line of speculators in the same market. Now, with one's own wireless, that is impossible.”

“There's a great market in your oils,” Dickson remarked.

“A huge one,” the other acquiesced, “but very sensitive—sensitive to an amazing degree. You'd scarcely believe me, but, were to get out of touch with my brokers for two or three days and not let them hear from me at all, my oils would drop anywhere round ten points. That's why I never miss cabling every day. Sometimes it pays Me to let them slack a point or two Sometimes they want bracing up. It's a great game.”

“Supposing your wireless were to get out of order?” Cardinge, who had just strolled up, suggested.

“It never does,” was the confident reply. “If by any chance it did there is a station at Nice. And beyond that, of course, there is the ordinary cable, which I don't want to trust to again if I can help it.”

“Did you see the postal authorities about that other affair?” Cardinge asked curiously.

“I saw them, but I did not press the matter,” Mr. Edgar Franks confessed. “The fact of it is that I had a little adventure in which that cablegram may have been concerned which I have never mentioned to a soul, but which sometimes makes me wonder, when I think of it, whether the fault really did lie with the postal authorities.”

“An adventure?” Cardinge repeated.

Edgar Franks nodded portentously.

“If I tell you two fellows,” he said, “I hope you'll understand that I never want it talked about.”

“Certainly not,” they both promised.

“Well, I had the cable in my pocket when I motored home from the Golf Club on the morning it arrived. I admit that I had lunched pretty well and that I was very sleepy—but—well, you can judge for yourselves. What apparently happened was that I stopped the car in the drive on the way up to the villa, and went fast asleep. I did that all right, but when I woke there were one or two circumstances connected with the whole affair which I was never able to understand. In the first place there were marks as though another car had stopped just where mine had, and then, although nothing was missing from my pocketbook, I am perfectly certain that the cable was in a different compartment to that in which I had placed it. Furthermore, I seem to have a cloudy recollection that, sleepy though I was, I stopped for some definite reason, that there was another car about and a man with one of those silly little masks on his face, who spoke to me.”

Dickson laughed heartily.

“Pretty good for the middle of the day,” he commented.

“How many liqueurs did you say?” Cardinge asked politely.

Edgar Franks accepted his companions' incredulity good-humoredly.

“Well,” he said, “I've let the matter slip out of my mind, anyway. Some one made a scoop in oil shares that day, but of course the leakage may have been on the other side. With my own private wireless I feel pretty safe nowadays. I can deal with stations I trust and get my messages over in code. Everything I have sent during the last few hours from your fellow will be received by my secretary and coded before it is despatched.”

Dickson yawned.

“I suppose one needs some interest in life,” he observed, “but personally, when I'd made my pile I was glad to cut out finance altogether. I've a few millions in stocks which vary, but the bulk of my money is in Uncle Sam's keeping. He don't allow me much interest, but it comes to about as much as I can spend.”

“You're a richer man than I, James,” his guest declared a little enviously.

“I'm a thirstier one,” Dickson rejoined, finishing his tumbler and holding up his finger for a steward. “We shall land you in time for dinner, after all.”

“I'm not worrying,” his companion confessed. “I'm perfectly content here.”

IN AN hour or two's time, however, Mr. Edgar Franks was worrying very much indeed. He was met on the quay by a pale-faced and excited-looking young man who came hurrying on to the yacht as soon as the gang-plank was down.

“Mr. Franks,” he exclaimed breathlessly, “I've some bad news for you!”

“What's wrong now?” his employer demanded anxiously.

“It's the wireless! It's been ruined—deliberately interfered with. Some one must have got into the villa and done it on Monday night. We didn't discover it until two or three hours after you left. I haven't received a single message from you.”

Edgar Franks was speechless. He seemed unable to grasp the situation.

“I was expecting you back all day yesterday,” the young man went on. “I thought when you didn't get my acknowledgment you'd realize that something was wrong.”

“The receiving apparatus here was out of order, damn it!” Edgar Franks exclaimed furiously. “They told me directly we started. I could only send messages. Come on, Simons. We must get up to the cable office at once.”

The two men left the yacht at a run, Edgar Franks neglected even to take leave of host. All his instincts of politeness were swept away by a cold and chilling fear. It was quite possible that he had lost a great deal of money.

MADAME condescended to explain a little as they all sat around her chair on the piazza during that pleasant half-an-hour before dinner. First of all, though, she inquired about Cardinge's arm, which was still in a sling.

“Much more comfortable,” he assured her.

“It's a perfectly terrible place, all the same,” Claire insisted, “and it hasn't been properly looked after at all. I shall have to go on bandaging it every hour.”

“Claire has found her métier at last,” Armand sneered.

“I'd rather spend my life as a nurse than as the wife of a man I didn't care about,” Claire rejoined coldly.

“Children!” Madame exclaimed with a reproving glance.

“As a burglar,” Cardinge intervened, “I am afraid that I am not a great success. If I had known as much about the instrument as Madame, I expect that I could have destroyed it without using any force at all.”

Madame drew the familiar sealed envelope from the small bag by her side.

“You have perhaps earned your quittance more easily than any of them,” she remarked, turning to Dickson. “All that you had to do was to make yourself agreeable to a fool and keep him away for forty-eight hours.”

“I'd like to know how you put things over on him?” Dickson asked curiously.

Madame waited until the butler who had just appeared with the cocktail tray had left the room.

“Well,” she explained, “as soon as Mr. Franks had accepted your invitation I cabled my brokers in New York and I arranged for them to let me know every hour from opening time the next morning the prices of Franks oils. Then, of course, I picked up every message Edgar Franks sent from the yacht and which his secretary did not receive. It was quite easy to see, from their tenor and from the fact that I cabled two days ago news of the serious illness at his villa on the Riviera of Mr. Edgar Franks, which way the market would go on his oils. I started by selling and, at closing time to-day, I bought heavily in readiness for to-morrow's explanations. It was really very simple.”

“But where on earth did you learn to manipulate a wireless?” Dickson demanded

Madame smiled.

“I had scientific hobbies even in the old days,” she reminded him. “I had one of the first private wireless installations in my house in Paris, and I had it fitted here secretly directly I bought the villa.... With my compliments, Jimmy!”

She handed him the document. Mr. James B. Dickson took it into his hand and tore it slowly to pieces. Claire had wandered down to the gardens. Armand had disappeared to the other end of the piazza in search of another cocktail. Dickson was gazing down at the scraps of paper in his hand.

“Do you know anything about this story of mine which you have been guarding all these years?” he inquired of Madame.

“You killed a man, didn't you?” she asked coolly.

Dickson nodded.

“It was in a fair fight,” he said. “The newspapers always spoke of it as a murder, but it wasn't. It was a fair fight. It was his life or mine—and I won.”

He continued to gaze at the scraps of paper. He was still deep in thought. Madame looked at him questioningly. He glanced around as though to be sure of their isolation,

“The man was Edgar Franks's brother,” he told her. “He was my bitterest enemy.”

(The sixth of this series of stories will appear in the December issue)