A long shuddering sigh came out of the windows where the Countess leaned back.
"Yes. It was a great moment, that. Two nights I have watched her. Lose, lose, and lose again. And now the end. She puts all on one number. Beside her, an English milord stakes the maximum also--on the next number. The ball rolls; the moment has come; she has lost.
"Her eyes meet mine. What do I do? I jeopardize my place in the Casino. I rob the English milord. '_A Madame_,' I say, and pay over the money."
"Ah!" There was a crash as the Countess sprang to her feet and leaned across the table, sweeping her glass onto the floor. "Why?" she cried. "That's what I want to know, _why_ did you do it?"
There was a long pause, a pause that seemed interminable, and still those two facing each other across the table looked and looked. It was like a duel.
A mean little smile crept across Pierre Vaucher's face. He raised his hands. "Madame," he said. "There is such a thing as pity."
"Ah!"
She sank down again. "I see."
She was calm, smiling, herself again.
"An interesting story, Monsieur Vaucher, is it not? Permit me to give you a light for your cigarette."
She deftly rolled up a spill, lighted it at the candle, and held it toward him. He leaned forward till the flame caught the tip of the cigarette he held between his lips.
Then she rose unexpectedly to her feet. "And now I must leave you all. Please--I need no one to escort me."
Before one could realize it, she was gone. Mr. Satterthwaite would have hurried out after her, but he was arrested by a startled oath from the Frenchman.
"_A thousand thunders!_"
He was staring at the half-burned spill which the Countess had dropped on the table. He unrolled it.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered. "A fifty-thousand-franc banknote. You understand? Her winnings tonight. All that she has in the world. And she lighted my cigarette with it! Because she was too proud to accept--pity. Ah! proud, she was always proud as the Devil. She is unique--wonderful."
He sprang up from his seat and darted out. Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin had also risen. The waiter approached Franklin Rudge.
"_La note, Monsieur_," he observed unemotionally.
Mr. Quin rescued it from him quickly.
"I feel kind of lonesome, Elizabeth," remarked Franklin Rudge. "These foreigners--they beat the band! I don't understand them. What's it all mean, anyhow?"
He looked across at her. "Gee, it's good to look at anything so hundred percent American as you." His voice took on the plaintive note of a small child. "These foreigners are so _odd_."
They thanked Mr. Quin and went out into the night together. Mr. Quin picked up his change and smiled across at Mr. Satterthwaite, who was preening himself like a contented bird.
"Well," said the latter. "That's all gone off splendidly. Our pair of lovebirds will be all right now."
"Which ones?" asked Mr. Quin.
"Oh," said Mr. Satterthwaite, taken aback, "Oh! yes, well, I suppose you are right, allowing for the Latin point of view and all that--"
He looked dubious.
Mr. Quin smiled, and a stained-glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of colored light.
THE WORLD'S END
Mr. Satterthwaite had come to Corsica because of the Duchess. It was out of his beat. On the Riviera he was sure of his comforts, and to be comfortable meant a lot to Mr. Satterthwaite. But though he liked his comfort, he also liked a Duchess. In his way, a harmless, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way, Mr. Satterthwaite was a snob. He liked the best people. And the Duchess of Leith was a very authentic Duchess. She was the daughter of a duke as well as the wife of one.
For the rest, she was rather a shabby-looking old lady, a good deal given to black bead trimmings on her clothes. She had quantities of diamonds in old-fashioned settings, and she wore them as her mother before her had worn them: pinned all over her indiscriminately. Someone had suggested once that the Duchess stood in the middle of the room while her maid flung brooches at her haphazard. She subscribed generously to charities, and looked well after her tenants and dependents, but was extremely mean over small sums. She cadged lifts from her friends, and did her shopping in bargain basements.
The Duchess was seized with a whim for Corsica. Cannes bored her, and she had had a bitter argument with the hotel proprietor over the price of her rooms.
"And you shall go with me, Satterthwaite," she said firmly. "We needn't be afraid of scandal at our time of life."
Mr. Satterthwaite was delicately flattered. No one had ever mentioned scandal in connection with him before. He was far too insignificant. Scandal--and a Duchess--delicious.
"Picturesque, you know," said the Duchess. "Brigands--all that sort of thing. And extremely cheap, so I've heard. Manuelli was positively impudent this morning. These hotel proprietors need putting in their place. They can't expect to get the best people if they go on like this. I told him so plainly."
"I believe," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "that one can fly over quite comfortably. From Antibes."
"They probably charge you a pretty penny for it," said the Duchess sharply. "Find out, will you?"
"Certainly, Duchess."
Mr. Satterthwaite was still in a flutter of gratification, despite the fact that his role was clearly to be that of a glorified courier.
When she learned the price of a passage by _avion_, the Duchess turned it down promptly. "They needn't think I'm going to pay a ridiculous sum like that to go in one of their nasty dangerous things."
So they went by boat, and Mr. Satterthwaite endured ten hours of acute discomfort. To begin with, as the boat sailed at seven, he took it for granted that there would be dinner on board. But there was no dinner. The boat was small and the sea was rough. Mr. Satterthwaite was decanted at Ajaccio in the early hours of the morning more dead than alive.
The Duchess, on the contrary, was perfectly fresh. She never minded discomfort, if she could feel she was saving money. She waxed enthusiastic over the scene on the quay, with the palm trees and the rising sun. The whole population seemed to have turned out to watch the arrival of the boat, and the launching of the gangway was attended with excited cries and directions.
"That maid of mine has been sick all night," said the Duchess. "The girl's a perfect fool."
Mr. Satterthwaite smiled in a pallid fashion.
"A waste of good food, I call it," continued the Duchess robustly.
"Did she get any food?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite enviously.
"I happened to bring some biscuits and a stick of chocolate on board with me," said the Duchess. "When I found there was no dinner to be got, I gave the lot to her. The lower classes always make such a fuss about going without their meals."
With a cry of triumph the launching of the gangway was accomplished. A musical comedy chorus of brigands rushed aboard and wrested hand luggage from the passengers by main force.
"Come on, Satterthwaite," said the Duchess. "I want a hot bath and some coffee."
So did Mr. Satterthwaite. He was not wholly successful, however. They were received at the hotel by a bowing manager and were shown to their rooms. The Duchess's had a bathroom attached. Mr. Satterthwaite, however, was directed to a bath that appeared to be situated in somebody else's bedroom. To expect the water to be hot at that hour in the morning was, perhaps, unreasonable. Later he drank intensely black coffee, served in a pot without a lid. The shutters and the window of his room had been flung open, and the crisp morning air came in fragrantly. A day of dazzling blue and green.
The waiter waved his hand with a flourish to call attention to the view. "_Ajaccio_," he said solemnly. "_Le plus beau port du monde!_"
And he departed abruptly.
Looking out over the deep blue of the bay, with the snow mountains beyond, Mr. Satterthwaite was almost inclined to agree with him. He finished his coffee, and lying down on the bed, fell fast asleep.
At _déjeuner_ the Duchess was in great spirits.
"This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite," she said. "Get you out of all those fussy little old-maidish ways of yours." She swept a lorgnette around the room. "Upon my word, there's Naomi Carlton-Smith."
She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window, a round-shouldered girl who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.
"An artist?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.
He was always good at placing people.
"Quite right," said the Duchess. "Calls herself one, anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton-Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin."
"She's one of the Knowlton lot then?"
The Duchess nodded.
"Been her own worst enemy," she volunteered. "Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took 'em, of course. Then he stole somebody's jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter."