III

The following morning I was sitting under the Noah's-ark trees, watching the people pass and repass, when a man in a suit of white flannel, carrying a light cane, and wearing a straw hat with a red band, and a necktie to match, stopped a flower-girl immediately in front of me, and affixed an additional dot of blood-color to his buttonhole.

In the glare of the daylight he was even more yellow than when under the blaze of the gas-jets. His eyes were still glassy and brilliant, but the rims showed red, as if for want of sleep, and beneath the lower lids lay sunken half-circles of black. He moved with his wonted precision, but without that extreme gravity of manner which had characterized him the night of the game. Looked at as a mere passer-by, he would have impressed you as a rather debonair, overdressed habitué, who was enjoying his morning stroll under the trees, without other purpose in life than the breathing of the cool air and enjoyment of the attendant exercise. His spider-ship had doubtless seen me when he entered the walk,—I was still an untrapped fly,—and had picked out this particular flower-girl beside me as a safe anchorage for one end of his web. I turned away my head; but it was too late.

"Monsieur did not play last night?" the croupier asked deferentially.

"No; I did not know the game." Then an idea struck me. "Sit down; I want to talk to you." He touched the edge of his hat with one finger, opened a gold cigarette-case studded with jewels, offered me its contents, and took the seat beside me.

"Pardon the abruptness of the inquiry, but who was the woman in black?" I asked.

He looked at me curiously.

"Ah, you mean madame with the bag?"

"Yes."

"She was once the Baroness Frontignac."

"Was once! What is she now?"

"Now? Ah, that is quite a story." He stopped, shut the gold case with a click, and leaned forward, flicking the pebbles with the point of his cane. "If madame had had a larger bag she might have broken the bank. Is it not so?"

"You know her, then?" I persisted.

"Monsieur, men of my profession know everybody. Sooner or later they all come to us—when they are young, and their francs have wings; when they are gray-haired and cautious; when they are old and foolish."

"But she did not look like a gambler," I replied stiffly.

He smiled his old cynical, treacherous smile.

"Monsieur is pleased to be very pronounced in his language. A gambler! Monsieur no doubt means to say that madame has not the appearance of being under the intoxication of the play." Then with a positive tone, still flicking the pebbles, "The baroness played for love."

"Of the cards?" I asked persistently. I was determined to drive the nail to the head.

The croupier looked at me fixedly, shrugged his shoulders, laughed between his teeth, a little, hissing laugh that sounded like escaping steam, and said slowly:—

"No; of a man."

Then, noticing my increasing interest, "Monsieur would know something of madame?"

He held up his hand, and began crooking one finger after another as he recounted her history. These bent keys, it seemed, unlocked secrets as well.

"Le voilà! the drama of Madame la Baronne! The play opens when she is first a novice in the convent of Saint Ursula, devoted to good works and the church. Next you find her a grand dame and rich, the wife of Baron Alphonse de Frontignac, first secretary of legation at Vienna. Then a mother with one child,—a boy, now six or seven years old, who is hardly ever out of her arms." He stopped, toyed for a moment with his match-safe, slipped it into his pocket, and said carelessly, "So much for Act I."

Then, after a pause during which he traced again little diagrams in the gravel, he said suddenly:—

"Does this really interest you, monsieur?"

"Unquestionably."

"You know her, then?" This with a glance of suspicion as keen as it was unexpected by me.

"Never saw her in my life before," I answered frankly, "and never shall again. I leave for Paris to-day, and sail from Havre on Saturday."

He drew in the point of his cane, looked me all over with one of those comprehensive sweeps of the eye, as if he would read my inmost thought, and then, with an expression of confidence born doubtless of my evident sincerity, continued:—

"In the next act Frontignac gets mixed up in some banking scandals,—he would, like a fool, play roulette—baccarat was always his strong game,—disappears from Vienna, is arrested at the frontier, escapes, and is found the next morning under a brush-heap with a bullet through his head. This ends the search. Two years later—this is now Act III.—Madame la Baronne, without a sou to her name, is hard at work in the hospitals of Metz. The child is pensioned out near by.

"Now comes the grand romance. An officer attached to the 13th Cuirassiers—a regiment with not men enough left after Metz to muster a company—is picked up for dead, with one arm torn off, and a sabre-slash over his head, and brought to her ward. She nurses him back to life, inch by inch, and in six months he joins his regiment. Now please follow the plot. It is quite interesting. Is it not easy to see what will happen? Tender and beautiful, young and brave! Vive le bel amour! It is the old story, but it is also une affaire de cœur—la grande passion. In a few months they are married, and he takes her to his home in Rouen. There he listens to her entreaties, and resigns his commission.

"This was five years ago. To-day he is a broken-down man, starving on his pension; a poor devil about the streets, instead of a general commanding a department; and all for love of her. Some, of course, said it was the sabre-cut; some that he could no longer hold his command, he was so badly slashed. But it is as I tell you. You can see him here any day, sitting under the trees, playing with the child, or along the lake front, leaning on her arm."

Here the croupier rose from the bench, looked critically over his case of cigarettes, selected one carefully, and began buttoning his coat as if to go.

By this time I had determined to know the end. I felt that he had told me the truth as far as he had gone; but I felt, also, that he had stopped at the most critical point of her career. I saw, too, that he was familiar with its details.

"Go on, please. Here, try a cigar." My interest in my heroine had even made me courteous. My aversion to him, too, was wearing off. Perhaps, after all, croupiers were no worse than other people. "Now, one thing more. Why was she in your gambling-house?"

He lighted the cigar, touched his hat with his forefinger, and again seated himself.

"Well, then, monsieur, as you will. I always trust you Americans. When you lose, you pay; when you win, you keep your mouths shut. Besides,"—this was spoken more to himself,—"you have never seen him, and never will. Le voilà. One night,—this only a year ago, remember,—in one of the gardens at Baden, a hand touched the baroness's shoulder.

"It was Frontignac's.

"The body under the brush-heap had been that of another man dressed in Frontignac's clothes. The bullet-hole in his head was made by a ball from Frontignac's pistol. Since then he had been hiding in exile.

"He threatened exposure. She pleaded for her boy and her crippled husband. She could, of course, have handed him over to the nearest gendarme; but that meant arrest, and arrest meant exposure. At their home in Vienna, let me tell you, baccarat had been played nightly as a pastime for their guests. So great was her luck that 'As lucky as the Baronne Frontignac' was a byword. Frontignac's price was this: she must take his fifty louis and play that stake at the Casino that night; when she brought him ten thousand francs he would vanish.

"That night at Baden—I was dealing, and know—she won twelve thousand francs in as many minutes. Here her slavery began. It will continue until Frontignac is discovered and captured; then he will put a second bullet into his own head. When I saw her enter my room I knew he had turned up again. As she staggered out, one of my men shadowed her. I was right; Frontignac was skulking in the garden."

All my disgust for the croupier returned in an instant. He was still the same bloodless spider of the night before. I could hardly keep my hands off him.

"And you permit this, and let this woman suffer these tortures, her life made miserable by this scoundrel, when a word, even a look, from you would send him out of the country and"—

"Softly, monsieur, softly. Why blame me? What business is it of mine. Do I love the cripple? Have I robbed the bank and murdered my double? This is not my game; it is Frontignac's. Would you have me kick over his chess board?"