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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
and Aegina, and so forth—telling him such stories from Greek history
as I could remember, or partially invent. In the Acropolis itself,
wandering among the splendid and touching ruins, there wasn’t a
soul but a dirty man, with large patches on his knees, gathering
snails.
“He follows the footsteps of Pericles, of Alcibiades, and of Solon,”
I said, “and from their dim traces he gathers snails for soup. Such,
my dear Teddy,” I added, tranquilly, “is all the history he knows. To
him the Acropolis is nothing but a hunting-ground for snails.”
“You’re talking exactly like Mr. Barlow!” replied Teddy, with a
dissatisfied snort.
In the afternoon we again set out for the Acropolis. At the
bottom of the sacred ascent a couple of carriages were waiting.
“It can scarcely be they,” I said. “They would come round and try
all the hotels first, surely.”
“Oh, a man like Brentin would do anything!” Teddy cried.
I looked into the first carriage, and soon recognized a little,
rather old, cloak Lucy used to wear, with a high Medici collar. She
never had much money for her clothes, poor child, and was apt to
be a little behind the fashions.
“It’s really they, Teddy,” I said. “Come along and we’ll give them
a fright. They deserve it.”
“They do, indeed!” shouted Teddy, scarlet with rage.
We peeped in cautiously at the entrance, and there they were.
We could see them all crossing from the Parthenon towards the
Erechtheum, headed by that toad Brentin. We let them get well
inside the walls of the beautiful little temple, and then we went
quickly across to the left towards them.
Just as we got up to the white marble walls, I pushed Teddy and
said, “Hide.” Then I went on in alone. Brentin was just saying, “This
is apparently the Erechtheum. There’s mighty little of it left; why
don’t they put it straight, anyway?”
You should just have seen their faces when they turned and saw
me. Lucy, who was looking very pale, ran tottering towards me with
a little cry, and nearly fainted in my arms. My sister followed, and
was soon on my other shoulder. Miss Rybot waved her parasol,
Forsyth and Hines cheered, and Arthur Masters gave a loud gone
away! All Brentin said was, with rather a forced smile, “Well, all
right, eh? Here you are. You got my telegram?”
We sat down on the fallen blocks of marble, and everybody
began talking at once. Where was Teddy, they asked, and why
wasn’t he with me? Had he really been caught, or had he, after all,
run straight away home in his fright?
As if trying to avoid a painful subject, “Why didn’t you come to
Venice, as we arranged?” I asked.
“We heard the French corvette was somewhere up in those
waters,” Brentin replied, “and thought it safer not. We should have
come to look for you here at once, only we calculated you couldn’t
possibly arrive till to-morrow. But what about Parsons? What’s the
matter with your telling us all about Parsons?”
“Poor Teddy!” I sighed, and everybody looked shocked. I had
scarcely made up my mind whether to say he was dead, or in prison
for life, when Teddy himself suddenly fell in among us on his hands
and knees. He looked so ghastly, with his white face and red cactus
scars—to say nothing of his extraordinary way of entering—that the
ladies began to scream, and Bob Hines fell over backward.
“Teddy!”
“Hush! Hush! Hush!” hissed Teddy. “Bailey Thompson!”
“Im-pawsible,” snarled Brentin. “He’s in Minorca.”
“I say it’s Bailey Thompson. I saw him from outside, just coming
in.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Keep quiet!”
We all huddled close together and kept as still as death.
“I couldn’t be mistaken,” Teddy whispered. “He’s got on the same
clothes and carrying the shawl, and he was looking about him, just
as he used at Monte Carlo.”
“You don’t say!” said Brentin, looking scared. “What the plague is
he doing in Athens? We shall have all our trouble over again.” And
then, thinking he was not very polite, he added, “And how are you?
All right?”
 “No thanks to you!” grunted Teddy, at which the unfeeling
Brentin began to chuckle.
“Somebody’s scratched your face well for you,” he laughed.
“Looks like marriage lines!”
We lay very still, hoping against hope Thompson wouldn’t think
the Erechtheum worth a visit; but the fact was he had looked in the
carriages outside and questioned the driver, and, from the cloaks
and what the man had said, made up his mind it was our party. So,
after peeping in at the Parthenon, he came straight across; we heard
his footsteps, the divisional tread, closer and closer. Then he
tumbled over a column, swore, and the next moment was inside
surveying us, huddled together like a covey of partridges, with an
expression I don’t find it at all easy to describe—it was such a
mixture of everything.
Poor creature, he had evidently suffered! His face was drawn, his
beard unshaved, and his forlorn eyes looked defiantly out from
under a heavily lined brow. His mouth was tight and grim, and yet
about the compressed lips there was an air of satisfaction, almost of
unholy mirth. When he saw us, ran his glance over us and noted we
were all there, netted for the fowler, flame leaped to his sombre
eyes. There was dead silence while he stepped majestically,
solemnly forward, threw his plaid shawl on a column, and
unbuttoned his dusty frock-coat.
“And how are you?” said Brentin, coolly. “Come to see over the
Acropolis?”
Thompson glared at him, and without replying sat down on his
shawl.
“How did you get here? Had a good voyage? Sakes alive, man,
what a hole in your boot!”
“Poor man!” whispered Lucy, “how fearfully tired and ill he looks.”
At so unexpected an expression of sympathy, the detective’s
expression suddenly changed. Poor wretch, he was worn out,
hungry, and depressed; humiliated and miserable, I suppose, at
being so egregiously outwitted; for his lip trembled, and, putting his
face in his dog-skin hands, he actually began to cry. I never felt so
ashamed of myself, so sorry for a man, in my life.
 “Cry, baby, cry!” taunted Brentin. “Serve you thundering well
right—”
“Be quiet!” I sternly cried. Brentin scowled at me, while poor
Thompson began to search with blinking eyes for his handkerchief.
Then I went on, with real feeling in my voice:
“We are sorry, Mr. Thompson, for the way we have treated you,
but you must see there was no other course open to us. We were
entirely frank with you, but you were never frank with us. We
discovered your identity quite by accident, and took the advantage
we thought our due of the discovery.”
“Oh, all right, sir, thank you!”
“At any rate,” struck in the irrepressible Brentin, with a wink at
me, “you have the satisfaction of knowing you spoiled a fine piece of
work, which will now, I guess, be consummated by other more
imperfect hands than ours.”
“What!” said the detective, brightening. “You never even made
the attempt?”
“What do you take us for?” cried the ingenious and evasive
Brentin. “Make an attempt of that nature, with the sharpest
detective in old England on our heels? No, sir!”
Thompson looked pleased, and then, with sly malice, observed:
“But, after all, gentlemen, you might have done it with perfect
safety.”
“What!”
“With the most perfect safety, I assure you. I had not yet
communicated with the Monte Carlo police.”
“That so? But afterwards?”
“Oh, afterwards, I should have pinched you all, of course!”
“There you are!” cried Brentin; “we knew that, mighty well. No,
sir! There are no flies on us. You gave us a fright, Mr. Bailey
Thompson, and we, I guess, have given you one. But no real
damage has been done to either party. Let us cry quits. Your hand,
sir!”
The simple fellow shook his hand obediently, and, polite as ever,
bowed to the ladies. My sister he already knew. She smiled at him
and said:
 “But how on earth have you got here, Mr. Bailey Thompson? We
all understood you were going to the Balearic Isles.”
“I know nothing of my original destination, madam,” the
detective replied. “I only know that after steaming for some few
hours in one direction, Mr. Van Ginkel suddenly bouted ship and
went full speed in the other.”
“But why, I wonder?”
“Some matter, I understood from the captain, connected with his
divorced wife.”
“The Princess Danleno,” said Brentin.
“Some such name. She had left Cannes and gone to San Remo,
and Mr. Van Ginkel was anxious to see her and effect a
reconciliation, so the captain told me. He is full of caprice, like all
invalids, and on the caprice seizing him he simply bouted ship
without a word. But first he had to get rid of me; so he carried me,
full speed ahead, to the southernmost point of Greece—somewhere
near Cape Colonna, I believe—and there he carted me ashore,
gentlemen, like a sack of coals.”
The poor man’s lip began to tremble again, and he looked round
our circle piteously for sympathy.
“Dear! dear!” murmured Brentin; “how like him! And never said a
word the whole time, I dare say?”
“Not one! That was early on Monday morning. Since then I have
been slowly making my way up the Morea with great difficulty and
discomfort, mainly on foot, and sometimes getting a lift in a country
wagon. At Nauplia I managed to secure a passage in a coasting
steamer, which, after a tempestuous voyage, has just landed me at
the Piræus. There I saw your yacht, gentlemen, and knew, of
course, you were in the neighborhood.”
“How did you manage about the language in the Peloponnese?”
asked Hines, curiously.
“Why, fortunately, I can draw a little,” replied the detective, who
was every moment recovering his spirits, “and anything I wanted I
drew. But, often as I drew a beefsteak or a chop, gentlemen,” he
said, plaintively, “I never got it. Nothing but eggs and a sort of
polenta, and once—only once—goat’s flesh, when I drew a
bedstead, in token that I wanted to sleep there. And the fleas,
gentlemen, the fleas!” he cried. “There is a large Greek flea—”
“Never mind that just now,” said Brentin, gravely. “There are
elegant and refined ladies present. The essential is you are safe, and
bear us all no malice. That is so, eh?”
“None in the world!” cried the good fellow. “But I shall be much
obliged if you will give me directions how to get home from the
Acropolis in Athens to Brixton. I have no money to speak of, and a
large hole in my right boot.”
“That will be all right, sir,” said Brentin, rising, with his grand air.
“Henceforth you are our guest. By-gones are by-gones, and we will
look after you till you are safely landed at Charing Cross.”
“Thence, by tram or ’bus, over Westminster Bridge,” murmured
Hines, as we all rose, shook ourselves, and prepared to descend.
“Well, all’s well that ends well,” cried Thompson. “But, all the
same, I rather regret, for all our sakes, the Monte Carlo business
was left untried.”
“Some other day, sir,” said Brentin; “some other day, when you
are enjoying your well-earned retirement, and an officer not quite so
plaguy sharp is in your place.”
The pleased detective walked jauntily on in front with the rest,
while Brentin, my sister, and I followed, Lucy clinging fondly to my
arm.
“But what are you going to do with him?” I whispered. “It is
ingenious to let him suppose the thing has not been done; but once
he gets on board the yacht he’s bound to discover all, and that he’s
been fooled again. Then it will be all up, indeed!”
“Some of you must take him home overland, on the pretence
there isn’t room for every one on the Amaranth.”
“But he must find it all out directly he gets to England, mustn’t
he?” said Lucy, softly.
“I hope to goodness he won’t come trooping over to Medworth
Square,” my sister observed. “I shall never hear the last of it from
Frank. And, after all, I’ve done nothing, have I?”
“True, O queen!” muttered Brentin, knitting his brows. “But by
the time he gets back the scent will be fairly cold. And the Casino
authorities are taking the sensible course of ignoring the whole
affair. That is so, isn’t it? No doubt, you’ve seen the papers.”
Yes, I said, I had, and that was their line.
“There you are, then! For the rest, we must simply trust our luck.
It has stood by us pretty well so far. Oh, and, by-the-way, what
about Mr. Parsons? How did you manage to get him out?”
I rapidly sketched my part in the affair, and made them all laugh
amazingly as I told them of my disguise and its accidental
resemblance to Lord B.
“Whether we are drunken men or fools,” laughed Brentin, “I
know not; but Providence has certainly looked after us so far in a
way that I may fairly call the most favored nation clause.”
“Quoti moris minus est, eo minus est periculi!” I quoted,
somehow happening to remember the sentence from my old Latin
grammar. “Which is the Latin, ladies, for ‘Where there is the less
fear, there is the less danger.’ ”
Lucy pressed my arm and smiled happily.
Just as we neared the carriages:
“By-the-way,” I asked, “what did it all tote up to?”
“The boodle?”
“Yes.”
“Just over one million four hundred and fifty thousand francs;
roughly speaking, fifty-eight thousand pounds of your money.”
“You’ll be back in Wharton Park, dearest,” I whispered, “before
the swallow dares!”
She pressed my arm again and smiled more happily than ever.
“The only thing that troubles me,” said my sister, “is how on
earth I am to establish an alibi to Frank’s satisfaction, in case there’s
a rumpus when we get back.”
“Alibis are old-fashioned nowadays,” I answered. “We shall have
to think of something else for you than an alibi.”
The unsuspicious Bailey Thompson was standing at one of the
carriage doors in a dandified attitude, making himself agreeable to
Miss Rybot.
As we drove away he again said—for after all he was human and
meant to be malicious—“But I do really wonder you didn’t do it,
gentlemen, after all!”
“Don’t torture us with remorse, Mr. Bailey Thompson, sir,” Brentin
cried; “the sense of neglected opportunity is hard to bear.”
“Well, all I can say is, I never saw an easier bit of work in my life,
and in my absence you were really perfectly safe. Those French
police are such utter fools, and as likely as not the Casino people
would have let you off. Come, now, confess! Don’t you regret it?”
“Sir,” said Brentin, loftily, “I regret nothing, and never did. All is
for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
And the good detective couldn’t understand why, a few moments
later, Brentin was seized with a great roar of laughter. He explained
it was from seeing “Κοῦκ” in Greek letters over Cook’s offices; it
looked so droll! We all laughed heartily, too, and so drove up in
immense mirth and spirits to our hotel.
 CHAPTER XXIII

WE ARRIVE SAFE IN LONDON AND GO TO MEDWORTH SQUARE—

BACK AT “THE FRENCH HORN”—NEWS AT LAST OF THE
AMARANTH—I INTERVIEW MR. CRAGE AND FIND HIM ILL

Very little remains to tell; but that little is of importance. Of our

journey home together (my sister, Lucy, Bailey Thompson, Parsons,
and I, the others sailing on board the yacht) I need say nothing, for
it was entirely pleasant and uneventful. Our luggage wasn’t even
robbed on the Italian lines; we felt the cold somewhat as we neared
home, and that was all.
At Charing Cross Thompson was evidently well-known to the
officials; he proclaimed us all his friends and above suspicion, so our
portmanteaus were barely looked at; everybody touched their hats
to him, and we felt quite royal in our immunities.
There we parted. Teddy jumped into a cab for Euston, to catch
the night express for his dear Southport; my sister, Lucy, and I went
off in a four-wheeler to Medworth Square; while the still
unsuspicious Thompson remained on the platform, bowing and
smiling. Once safely landed at Charing Cross, our duty to him was
plainly at an end. No doubt he would immediately go off to Brixton,
find his sister, Mrs. Wingham, and learn the truth; but what that
might mean to us I really neither knew nor cared. We had so far so
brilliantly succeeded that readers must not blame me if I continued
obstinately optimistic, and believed, whatever trouble might still be
in store for us, we should certainly somehow emerge from it
scathless and joyous.
“I hope,” my sister said, as we drove away, “he won’t think it
rude of me not asking him to come and call. After all, he’s not quite
of our world, and he would need such a deal of explaining, for Frank
always insists on knowing exactly who everybody is.”
“He won’t think of coming of his own accord, I suppose?”
whispered Lucy. “And, oh! I do so wish he wasn’t a friend of Mr.
Crage’s.”
 “Lor’ bless you!” I philosophically remarked, “it’s even money we
none of us ever see or hear of him again.”
But we did, that day week exactly, when he turned up at “The
French Horn,” purple with ineffective rage, accompanied by his
dazed French confrère, Monsieur Cochefort.
In Medworth Square all was as usual. The Thursday evening
German band was playing the usual selection from that tiresome old
“Mikado,” and my sweet niece Mollie was soon tearing down the
stairs to welcome us.
“She watch for you every night, ma’am,” her Welsh nurse said;
“and last night she go down-stairs her best, and blow up Mr. Blyth
like anything for doing a door-bell ring exactly like yours, ma’am.”
My brother-in-law was very glad to get his wife back, and, having
been warned by letter, welcomed my dear Lucy with sufficient
warmth. How could he help it? Everywhere she went she won all
hearts. Brentin and Parsons both admired her desperately, and Bob
Hines, my sister told me, paid her more attention on the yacht
coming from Monte Carlo than he had ever been known to pay any
one before.
Even Forsyth, who is one of the most difficile men I know (unless
the young lady makes a dead set at him, when he thinks her lovely),
even he said to me, “That’s a real pretty girl, Vincent, and you’re a
very lucky man to get her;” while Miss Rybot once quite surprised
me by the warmth of her congratulation. “She’s so fresh and
unaffected, Mr. Blacker,” she said. “She’s like a breeze that meets
you at the end of a country lane when you come suddenly upon the
sea.” Which I thought both poetical and perfectly true—rather a rare
combination nowadays.
The next morning Lucy and I were off to Liverpool Street for
Nesshaven and “The French Horn.” As we drove up, and I saw the
familiar place once more, blinking in the soft February sunshine, just
as we had left it, I could scarcely believe all I had gone through in
the way of peril and adventure. Somehow, if one leaves a place for a
time, and has experiences of moment in the interval, one expects
those experiences to have had their effect elsewhere, too, even on
inanimate objects.
 I felt older, wiser, more developed, more of a man, and I was
astonished to find the place quite unaltered and Mr. Thatcher looking
just the same as he came running out in his dirty old blazer. His
mother was at the window, gazing through the panes with the naïve
curiosity of a child at new arrivals. She kissed Lucy, and said to me:
“Well, here you are back safe, you bad young man. You’ve given us
a rare fright, I can tell you”—and that was all.
That same evening, when the ladies were safely abed, I had a
long talk with Mr. Thatcher in the bar parlor. After dear Lucy’s
escapade, we decided we might as well be married at once, without
waiting for Easter; and that, with the help of a license, the following
Thursday, February 6th, would be none too soon. For myself, apart
from other considerations, I thought it clearly wisest to get married
and clear out of the country, on a lengthy wedding-tour, as quick as
we could; so that, in case of search being made for me, as the head
and guiding spirit of the raid, I might, for some few months at any
rate, be non inventus.
Next, I delicately approached the subject of the repurchase of
Wharton Park. I told Mr. Thatcher we had been extraordinarily lucky
at Monte Carlo, and that, by a combination of rare circumstances, I
was the richer by £30,000 than when I started. He was shrewd
enough to listen in silence and ask no sort of question as to what
particular system I had pursued to enable me to return with so large
a sum. In fact, I scarcely gave him time to ask questions, I was so
rapid, hurrying forward only to the main point, whether Crage’s offer
were still open and we should still be able to get the old wretch out.
He told me that since Crage’s last visit and offer to marry Lucy he
had seen nothing of him, and, so far as he knew, the place was still
to be had. We could, if I liked, go up to the house in a day or two
and make inquiries cautiously, or write Crage a letter making him a
formal proposal.
To which I replied that, knowing something of human nature, I
judged it best, when we made our offer, to be prepared with the
actual sum in notes and gold to make it good; for, with a man like
Crage, combined of malice and craft, he would most likely try to
bluff and raise us unless he saw the very gold and notes before him,
beyond which, not having any more to offer, we were not prepared
to go.
“Very true,” said Thatcher. “There’s nothing like the ready to
tempt a man, as I know very well. Why, when I was in business—”
“Then all we can do,” I continued, cutting him short, “is to wait in
patience till the boodle—”
“The what?” said Thatcher, taking the pipe out of his mouth.
“It’s an American term—the money we have won, arrives. It’s
coming in the yacht, and should be here in a day or two now. Then
we’ll go up with it to the house, in a bag, and spread it out on the
table—”
“And I shall be back in Wharton Park again!” cried Thatcher.
“Gracious powers! Who would have thought it possible? And, of
course, it will be settled on Lucy. Me for life, and then Lucy. How
delighted my poor old mother will be!”
“Yes,” I said, “and that your name may be perpetuated, I will add
it to my own. Father-in-law, here’s health and prosperity to those
two fine old English families, the Thatcher-Blackers!”
So there was nothing we could do but wait in patience for the
arrival of the Amaranth. It was tedious, anxious work, for though I
never doubted all would be well, yet Bailey Thompson’s portentous
silence somewhat alarmed me; and as the days passed, and neither
he nor the yacht gave any sign of their existence, my nerves began
to get unstrung, and I grew worn and irritable.
Fortunately, as often happens in the early days of February, the
weather was beautifully fine; so fine that the more flatulent class of
newspapers were full of letters from country correspondents, who
were finding hedge-sparrows’ eggs and raspberries in their gardens,
and the usual Lincolnshire parson broke into jubilant twitterings over
his dish of green pease. Otherwise, I don’t think I really could have
borne it.
At last, late on the Tuesday evening, came a telegram from
Brentin at Southampton—“Safe, will arrive to-morrow”—and I began
to breathe a little easier. But not a word of any sort from Bailey
Thompson, neither a reproach nor a threat; till I felt like that
Damocles of Syracuse who, though seated on a throne, was yet
immediately under a faintly suspended sword. For here was I, on a
throne, indeed—the throne of dear Lucy’s pure and constant
affection—and yet!—at any moment!—
Dramatically enough, the sword fell on my very wedding morning
—on its flat side, happily—giving me a shock, but no cut of any sort,
as I am now briefly going to tell.
The next morning came another telegram from Brentin in
London, to say he would arrive at six and beg he might be met. All
was well, he wired, adding “Any news Thompson?”
I wired back to the “Victoria” there was none: “bring boodle with
you;” and then I went off and found Thatcher.
For always I had had the fancy to pay old Crage out of the place
and be married on the same day, and here was now my chance. We
were to be married in Nesshaven Church, in the grounds of Wharton
Park, at twelve; what was to prevent us, I said to Thatcher, from
walking on up to the house first with £30,000, completing the
purchase, and hasting to the wedding afterwards? Thence back to
“The French Horn” for a light lunch, afterwards catch the half-past-
two train for Liverpool Street, and so to Folkestone in the evening.
There was nothing to prevent it, said Thatcher, who for the last
two days had gone about in a triumphant, bulging white waistcoat;
only it would require rather delicate handling, all to be done
successfully. Crage should be prepared, for instance, he thought; for,
notwithstanding the sight of the money, the sight of dear Lucy in her
happy wedding radiance might turn him sour, and he might after all
refuse to complete. What was to prevent one of us, he said—
meaning, of course, me—going up to the house and sounding the
old man first? Then we should know exactly how we stood, and
what chance there was of our money being accepted.
Now, for the last week nothing had been seen of the old man,
and rumors had reached us, chiefly through the gardener, he was
very ill. He hadn’t been to church for more than a month, and at
church he had always been a very regular attendant; not so much
because he had any real religion in him as that he might aggravate
the parson by catching him up loudly in the responses, and barking
his way harshly through the hymns a good half-line behind the rest
of the congregation. Indeed, the chief attraction, I fear, at
Nesshaven Church was old Crage and his nauseous eccentricities,
and people who had heard how he had once lighted up his pipe
during the sermon and sat there sucking at it in the Wharton pew,
came from miles round in the hope he would enliven the discourse
by doing it again.
Nor had he been seen about the grounds, nor stumping down to
the inn, as he mostly did once a week to insult the inmates; in short,
the end that comes to us all—good, bad, and indifferent—was clearly
coming now to him, and if business were ever to be done, it must be
done speedily and at once.
So, before Brentin came, early on the Wednesday afternoon, I
trudged alone up to the house. There wasn’t a sign of life in it, and
when I rang at the hall door I heard the heavy bell clanging away
down the empty passages and cold servants’ quarters as in the
depths of an Egyptian tomb. I rang and rang, until at last I heard
shuffling footsteps approach. From the other side of the door came
stertorous breathing and wheezing, and the undoing of a chain; then
a burglar’s bell was taken off and fell with a jangle on the stone floor
inside, and at last the door was pulled ajar.
Poor old Crage! He looked out at me with his wicked, frightened
old face, pinched, haggard, unshaven, dirty; terror-struck, as though
he feared, I were Death himself who had been knocking at the door.
He was in his shirt and trousers and a frowzy old dressing-gown,
and his bare, bony feet were thrust in worn leather slippers. As he
breathed his throat rattled dismally, and his long hand, with the
thick, muddy veins, shook so he couldn’t fold the dressing-gown
round his gaunt, corded, bare throat.
“Hullo, young cockney!” he croaked; “what’s to do?”
“How are you, Mr. Crage?” I asked, shocked at the old man’s
fallen, forlorn look.
“Very bad!” he whispered, his rheumy eyes blinking with watery
self-pity.
“Is there anybody looking after you?”
“No—no—thieves! all thieves!—don’t want ’em.”
Then he made as if he would shut the door.
 “I came up to see you on business,” I said; “about selling the
house.”
“No business to-day,” he croaked. “Too ill. Come to-morrow—any
time. Come to-morrow.” And with that he shut the door in my face.
I heard him shuffling away across the hall, kicking the fallen bell
with a tinkle along the floor, and then, as I turned to go, I heard him
fall and groan. I ran in hastily, and with great difficulty managed to
get him on his feet again. He stood there for some few minutes,
clutching me and rattling his throat; then, hanging on my arm,
dragging me along with him, he paddled off down a short dark
passage towards a half-open door, pushed it wide, and pulled me
after him into the great empty drawing-room.
The blinds were down, and the fading February sun gleamed in
on the bare worn carpet. In front of the fine fireplace, with a little
dying wood-fire in it, stood an arm-chair, with a small table beside it.
A candle and snuffers were on it, and a plate of stale bread-and-
butter. On the high mantel-piece was a medicine bottle, full and
corked.
He sank back into his chair, and lay there, breathing heavily, with
his eyes closed.
“But is there nobody looking after you?” I asked, and he made
some twitching movement with his fingers.
Just at that moment in flounced the gardener’s wife, drying her
hands on her apron. She was a big, handsome, shameless-looking
creature, with a naming eye and a hard, high color on her stiff
cheeks.
“Now you’ve been moving yourself about again!” she cried,
bending over him.
Crage opened his eyes and looked up at her maliciously.
“He came up on business,” he whispered.
“You’re a pretty man to do business, ain’t you?” she sneered.
“No, not to-day,” he mocked. “Too ill. All right to-morrow. Tell the
genelman to come to-morrow, early. Quite well to-morrow.”
I turned to go, and Crage, raising himself in his chair, rasped out:
“Bring the money with you, young cockney, or no business. Mind
that!”
 The woman followed me to the door.
“Has he got a doctor?” I asked.
“Doctor Hall came once,” she said, “but he won’t do anything he
tells him. He won’t take his medicine and he won’t go to bed. He
says he’ll die if he goes to bed. He sleeps all night in that arm-chair
in the drawing-room. If he don’t die soon, I shall; I know that very
well. If you’ve got any business to do with him, you’d better come
early in the morning. He can’t last much longer.”
And with that she closed the door on me, and I heard her putting
up the chain again and the burglar’s bell as I went away down the
weedy gravel path.
 CHAPTER XXIV

ARRIVAL OF BRENTIN—MY WEDDING-DAY—WE GO TO WHARTON

—BAILEY THOMPSON AND COCHEFORT FOLLOW US—WE
FINALLY DEFEAT THEM BOTH

Brentin was in “The French Horn” by a quarter to seven, and,

rather to my surprise, he came alone. I thought Hines or Masters
would surely have come with him; but no, he said, except for
Forsyth, they had all parted company at Southampton. Masters and
Miss Rybot had gone to Sea View, where they were to be married
almost immediately, and Hines had gone off to stay with a married
sister at Bournemouth. Forsyth alone had travelled up to town with
him, and then gone on straight to Colchester to take up his
neglected regimental duties. So I wrote out a telegram to be sent
first thing in the morning, begging him to come over and be my best
man.
And the boodle? Brentin winked and, with his hands on his
knees, began to laugh, like the priest in the Bonne Histoire.
“Some of it has melted, sir,” he joyously cried. “Your friend Hines
has got his, and Mr. Parsons, by this time, is toying with ay
registered letter way up in Southport. I have handsomely
recompensed Captain Evans and the crew; they have, no doubt,
been tanking-up and painting Portsmouth red all the time. I have
reimbursed myself for the yacht and other trifles, and there now
remains the £30,000 for your young lady’s ancestral home, and
some £20,000 for the hospitals and so on. To-morrow, sir, we will
draw up a list of the most deserving of them.”
“You have the money with you?”
“Yes,” he said; it was all safe in what he called his grip, or hand-
bag, and quite at my service. I told him of my desire to complete the
purchase immediately before the marriage was solemnized, and then
we fell to talking of Bailey Thompson and his strange silence.
“Why, the man is piqued, sir,” said Brentin; “that’s what he is,
piqued. Beyond saying that, I do not propose to give him ay second
thought. He is mad piqued, and that’s all there is to it!”
So I tried to feel completely at my ease, and managed to spend a
very happy evening in the bar parlor, Lucy playing to us and Brentin
occasionally bursting into raucous song. Now, when I think of him, I
like best to remember him as he was that evening, forgetting his
harder, commoner side, when he so outrageously proposed to desert
poor Teddy; even refusing (as I forgot at the time to mention) to
allow the cannon to be brought into play for his rescue by shelling
the rooms. He was infinitely gay and amusing, only finishing up the
evening, after dear Lucy’s retirement, with a long and violent dispute
with Mr. Thatcher on the vague subject of the immortality of the
soul. Thatcher believed he had a soul and would live forever, in
another, happier sphere; Brentin denied it, could see no sign of
Thatcher’s soul anywhere; so I left them trying to shout each other
down, both speaking at once.
I retired to rest with many solemn, touching thoughts. The last
night of bachelorhood gives rise to at least as much deep reflection
as that of the young maiden’s; more, in fact, so far as the bachelor
himself is concerned. I thought over it all so long and deeply I at last
got confused, and when I woke, the bright February sun was
streaming in on my best clothes and the bells from Nesshaven
Church were ringing.
All the morning those bells rang out their happy, irregular peal.
“The village church beneath the trees,
Where first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peal shall swell the breeze,
And point with slender spire to heaven!”

Only, to be exact, Nesshaven Church has no spire, but a sunk,

old, bird-haunted, ivy-clad tower.
It was Thatcher’s idea to set the bells going early and keep them
at it all day; you see, they rang not only for the marriage of his only
child, but for his return to their ancestral home; and, when they
showed any sign of flagging, Thatcher listened with a pained
expression, and cried, “Why, surely they’re not going to stop yet!
Run, Bobby, or Harriet, or George, my man!”—or whoever happened
to be handy—“and tell ’em to keep ’em going, and give ’em this from
me. Here, Vincent, my boy, have you got half-a-crown?”
By ten o’clock we were all dressed and ready, waiting only for
Forsyth. Soon after ten he came, and the procession started. It was
a lovely day again, mild and sunny, and, in true country-wedding
fashion, we all set out to walk. Lucy, looking perfectly sweet in gray,
was on her father’s arm, and the old lady, in black silk, on mine;
while Brentin, carrying his grip, with the boodle in it, and that good
little chap, Forsyth, brought up the rear.
The old lady, who within the last three months seemed to me to
have failed a good deal, mentally, at any rate, stepped out right well,
hanging lightly on my arm. At first she thought we were going
straight to the church, and couldn’t understand why we left it on our
right and went on up to the big house. Then she seemed to think it
quite natural, and that the place was hers again, and began talking
of her early days, when first she was married and came to Wharton
as a bride. Once or twice, indeed, she called me “Francis,” her
husband’s name, who died in 1850, and drew my attention to the
scandalous, weedy state of the walks.
“And this is what we pay good wages for!” she cried. “These men
must be spoken to about it, my dear, immediately.”
The gardener’s wife, who opened for us the hall door, was
astonished at our numbers.
“Why, what a crowd of you!” she said.
The old lady passed her haughtily.
“Come, Tom!” she cried to Mr. Thatcher. “We’ll go up-stairs and
have tea in my room. Come, Lucy!”
And up-stairs, up the bare stone staircase, they went, for, as I
whispered to Thatcher, it was just as well the ladies should be out of
the way while we did our business.
In the great empty drawing-room we found old Crage ready
waiting for us. He had dressed himself up in rusty attorney black for
the occasion, and the plain kitchen-table was neatly spread with
bundles of documents, title-deeds, and so forth.
As the woman showed us in, she told me he had been up all
night rummaging in his old tin boxes, talking and mumbling to
himself. Now he seemed quite spry and well again. I could scarcely
believe, as he sat there alert and attentive, he was the same
stricken, shambling old hunks I had seen the previous afternoon,
dragging himself about, senile and dying. Such is the power of the
will and the business instinct, prolonged even to the verge of the
grave!
Brentin, who, as usual, took everything into his own hands,
adopted the simplest method of dealing with him. Crage received us
in complete silence, and no one spoke a word, while Brentin opened
his grip and took out the notes and two or three little bags of gold.
The gold he emptied into heaps and piled them round the notes.
Then, “Thirty thousand pounds,” he said, with a smile—“thirty
thousand pounds! Is it a deal?”
Crage sat bolt upright, with his hand curved over his ear.
“For the entire property?” he asked.
“For the entire property. Is it a deal? Thirty thousand pounds,
neither less nor more.” And he emptied the grip and shook it, to
show that not a penny more remained.
“It’s worth more in the open market,” said Crage, cautiously.
“Then take it to the open market. We have no time to haggle. My
client is on his way to be married. Good-day.” And with that he
began to scrape the notes and gold together again.
“Hold hard!” cried Crage. “Don’t hurry an old man.”
“We’ll give the old man three minutes,” said Brentin, coolly
pulling out his watch.
We were all three of us grouped round the table, watching Crage,
with our backs to the door. The woman stood at his elbow, and we
could, in the complete silence, hear the heavy, swinging tick-tick of
Brentin’s large old-fashioned watch.
“Half time!” cried Brentin, when suddenly we heard steps outside
in the hall. I had just time to recognize Bailey Thompson’s even,
divisional tread, when he pushed the door open and stepped in. He
was dressed as usual, and behind him came a gentleman in a tight
black frock-coat, an evident Frenchman, thin, dark, and wiry, with a
withered face, like a preserved Bordeaux plum.
 “One moment, if—you—please, gentlemen!” cried Bailey
Thompson, as he stepped up to the table.
My heart gave a bound, and Forsyth started and said, “Ho!” but
the unabashed Brentin merely politely replied, “One moment to you,
sir. We will attend to you directly.—Time’s up, Mr. Crage! is it or is it
not a deal?”
Bailey Thompson laughed. “Cool as ever, Mr. Brentin, I see,” he
said. “But don’t you think this amusing farce of yours has gone on
long enough? It has been successful so far, as I always thought it
would be!”
“You’re mighty good!”
“We have no desire to be unduly hard on you.”
“You are mighty particular good!”
“The Casino authorities are, on the whole, willing to regard you
as eccentric English gentlemen of position, who have played a very
cruel practical joke on them.”
“That so?”
“That is so. This is their representative, Mossieu Cochefort.”
“Enchantay!” cried Brentin, with a bow.
“He is charged to say that, on the due return of the money you
have sto—ahem!—carried off, and an undertaking from you in
writing that you none of you ever visit the place again, on any
pretence, they are willing to forego criminal proceedings, and no
further questions will be asked.”
“Oh, come off it!” cried Brentin, laughing.
“Otherwise,” continued Bailey Thompson, with great gravity, “I
must ask you, Mr. Blacker, and Mr. Forsyth here, to follow me to the
cab in waiting at the door, and return with us to London as our
prisoners.”
“In short, sir,” said Brentin, swelling with indignant importance,
“you invite us, eccentric gentlemen of recognized position, to
compound a felony!”
Thompson shrugged his shoulders, and Mossieu Cochefort looked
puzzled.
“Be ashamed of yourself, sir!” Brentin cried, his voice ringing
scornfully through the empty room. “Be ashamed of yourselves, you
and Mossieu Cochefort, and give over talking through your hat! Mr.
Crage, if you will write out a formal receipt we will look upon the
affair as settled. The formal transfer can be effected later.”
“Aye, aye!” mumbled Crage, and, with his eyes on the money,
began fumbling in the inside pocket of his rusty black coat for the
receipt.
“Gentlemen!” cried Thompson, with affected earnestness, “I warn
you! I very solemnly warn you—”
“Oh, come off it, Mr. Bailey Thompson, sir!” was Brentin’s
emphatic and withering reply; “come off it, and shut your head. We
have long had enough of you and your gas. For my part, my earnest
advice to you and Mossieu Cochefort is that you kiss yourselves
good-bye and go your several ways. And tell your amazing Casino
Company from us that the only undertaking we will give them is not
to come and do it again in the fall. To repeat a success is always
dangerous; and next time, no doubt, you will all be better prepared.
—Now, Mr. Crage, the receipt!”
“Qu’est ce qu’il a dit?” asked the puzzled Frenchman, as
Thompson, fuming and fretting, dragged him off to the window to
explain.
Meantime old Crage had produced his receipt, already written
and signed, and, handing it over, with trembling, eager fingers was
beginning to count the notes.
“Ten fifties—ten thousands—ten twenties,” he was mumbling,
“nice clean notes—beautiful crisp notes—he won’t get ’em back from
me, if that’s what he’s after! No, no, not from Crage. Crage wasn’t in
Clement’s Inn for forty years for nothing. Ten more fifties!—” So he
went on mumbling to himself, and stuffing the notes away in a
broken old pocket-book, while Brentin handed me over the receipt,
and snapped his grip with a click.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “We’ve bluffed ’em. Keep cool.”
“Hadn’t you better let me keep ’em for you!” whined the woman,
bending over Crage’s chair. “You’ll only lose ’em. Give ’em me to take
care of for you, there’s a dearie!”
To which pathetic appeal the old man paid no sort of heed, but
pushed the pocket-book into his inside breast-pocket, with many
senile signs of satisfaction and joy.
“And now!” cried Brentin, in imperturbable high spirits, “the
wedding-procession will reform, and proceed to the church for the
tying of the sacred knot. Mr. Bailey Thompson—Mossieu Cochefort—
we shall be glad if you will join us, and afterwards, at ‘The French
Horn,’ to a slight but high-toned repast. Good-day, Mr. Crage; take
care of yourself and your money. Let us hope that when the robins
nest they will find you in your usual robust health. Mossieu Cochefort
—Mr. Bailey Thompson—if you will kindly follow us—”
But a sudden access of fury seemed to have seized the usually
calm little detective; he was stamping his feet, waving his arms,
almost foaming at the mouth.
In execrable French, Stratford-atte-Bow-Street French, he began
to swear aloud he would have nothing more to do with it, that he
had done his best, that he had never yet had dealings with the
French police but they hadn’t muddled it; for his part, his work was
finished, and he was going home.
“Here they are!” he cried, “three of them, all ready for you. Will
you have them, or won’t you? Les voilar! Nong? Vous ne les voulay
pas? Then if you don’t want them, why the ——” (dreadful bad
word!) “did you bring me off down here?” he yelled, breaking into
profane English.
“Mais, voyons! voyons!” murmured the startled and conciliatory
Cochefort.
“Damn your voyons!” Bailey Thompson screamed. “If you don’t
want them, and won’t take them, do the rest of it yourself, the best
way you can. I wash my hands of it. Good-day, gentlemen, and
thank your lucky stars for the imbecility of the French police!” and
with that he rushed to the door, through the hall, and out into his
cab. As he pulled the hall door open I heard the wedding-bells come
surging in with a new burst of joy.
“Mais, mon ami!” cried Cochefort, as Thompson tore himself
away, “ne me laissez pas comme ça!” and with much gesticulation
prepared to follow.
But Brentin sagely stopped him. “Restay, Mossieu Cochefort!” he
said, graciously; “Restay avec nous. Tout va biang. Restay!”
 “Mais, quel cochon!” cried the angry Cochefort, stretching out his
black kid hands, and shaking them in Bailey Thompson’s direction.
“Ma parole d’honneur! a t’on jamais vu un pareil sacré cochon!”
“C’est vrai!” said Brentin. “Mais il est toujours comme ça. Vous
savvy, il n’est pas gentilhomme. Nous sommes tous gentilhommes.
Nous vous garderong et vous traiterong tray biang. Restay!”
So Mossieu Cochefort allowed himself to be comforted, and
restay’d. We took him with us to the church, and did him right well
at lunch, and then, so forlorn and downcast the poor creature
seemed, Lucy and I carried him off with us up to town, if only out of
kindness, to put him on his way back to Monaco.
On the way up in the train he confessed to me his only
instructions had been to try and get the money back, and that if he
couldn’t manage that, or part of it, he was directed not to think of
embarrassing the authorities by taking us all in charge. I could
conceive, he said, that the authorities didn’t want to be made the
laughing-stock of Europe by having to try us, nor to add to their
already heavy expenses by keeping us in prison—nearly all quite
young men—for the term of our natural lives. He hadn’t been able
fully to explain all this to Bailey Thompson: the man was such a
lunatic, he said, and so obstinate: and besides, from the moment of
his arrival Bailey Thompson had ridden the high horse over him, and
proudly declaring he didn’t require to be taught his duties by a
foreigner, had immediately carried him off down to Nesshaven,
scarcely allowing him once to open his mouth all the way.
At Liverpool Street he seemed more lost, poor wretch, than ever.
He knew no single word of English, and looked at us so pathetically,
as we stood on the platform together, our soft hearts were touched.
So we made up our minds to carry him along with us to Folkestone,
dine him at the “Pavilion,” and afterwards see him safe on board the
night-boat for Boulogne.
It was droll, all the same, this carrying a French detective about
with us on our wedding-day; but the man was so truly grateful I
have never regretted it. We gave him a good dinner at the hotel,
and at ten o’clock walked him out on to the pier for his boat. He
made me a little speech at parting, declaring I had treated him “en
vrai camarade,” and that if ever I wanted to come to Monte Carlo
again I was to let him know and he would see I came to no harm.
To Lucy he presented all his compliments and felicitations on
securing the affection of “un si galant homme!” and then, with a
twenty-pound note I slipped into his hand at parting, bowed himself
away, and was soon lost to sight in the purlieus of the second cabin,
whither he went prepared to be dreadfully sick, smooth and calm as
the night was.
As Lucy and I strolled back to the hotel, arm-in-arm, we both
were silent.
At last, just as we got back and heard the steamer’s final
clanging bell and despairing whistle, “I can’t make out, really,
whether you’ve all done right or wrong,” she whispered, softly; “but
this I know, dearest, you have been most extraordinarily lucky.”
To which simple little speech I merely pressed her arm, by way of
showing how thoroughly I agreed with her.
 CONCLUSION
This is the true account of our raiding the tables at Monte Carlo,
done the best way I could.
For the rest, I may just mention poor old Crage died before the
end of the month, and by Easter Mr. Thatcher and his mother were
safely installed in Wharton Park. Arthur Masters was married to Miss
Rybot in April, Forsyth is to do the same to a widow (so he says) in
September, Bob Hines is very flourishing with his new gymnasium
and swimming-bath—just about finished now, as I write, at the end
of June—and Parsons is, I believe, at Southport, parading Lord
Street as usual in breeches and gaiters.
As for Brentin, I never saw him again, for by the time Lucy and I
had returned from our honeymoon he was back in New York. But I
heard from him the other day—a long, rambling letter, in which he
told me he had sold the Amaranth to Van Ginkel, for his wife the
Princess Danleno, whom he had remarried, and with whom, on
separate vessels, he was sailing about the Greek Archipelago—
probably in belated search for Bailey Thompson. He concluded by
begging me to think of something “snappy” we could do together in
the fall, ending finally by writing: “What’s the matter with our going
to Egypt and turning the Nile into the Red Sea? A communicative
stranger, an Englishman, by his accent, assures me there is just one
place where it can be done. Think it over, sonny, and if you decide to
do it, count on me. Sincerely, Julius C. Brentin.”
I would write more, only Lucy is calling to me from the hay-field,
the other side of the ha-ha of Wharton, where I have come to finish
this work in retirement.
“Around my ivied porch shall cling
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew,
And Lucy at her wheel shall sing
In russet gown with ’kerchief blue.”

As my dear Lucy says, I really am, and always have been, a most
extraordinarily lucky man.
THE END
 TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Some
words are hyphenated by the author for emphasis.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SACK OF
MONTE CARLO: AN ADVENTURE OF TO-DAY ***

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