MR. BRENTIN’S INDISCRETION—LUCY AND I MAKE IT UP—BAILEY THOMPSON APPEARS IN CHURCH—ON CHRISTMAS DAY WE HOLD A COUNCIL OF WAR

Now it was the very day we went down to “The French Horn” together that Mr. Brentin confessed to me how, in spite of our agreement as to keeping the affair a profound secret, he had actually been so rash as to confide our whole plan to a stranger—a stranger casually encountered, above all places, in the smoking-room of the “Victoria”!

How incomprehensible, how weak and wavering is man! Here was Julius C. Brentin, as shrewd an American as can be met with in Low’s Exchange, deliberately pouring into a strange ear a secret he had hitherto rigidly guarded even from his young and attractive wife.

Of course he had his excuses and defence; what man has not, when he does wrong? But whatever the excuse, there still remained the unpleasant fact that there was positively a man walking about (and from his description one evidently not quite a gentleman) who knew all about our arrangements and could at any moment communicate them to the authorities at Monte Carlo.

When I asked him, somewhat sharply, how ever he had come to commit so gross a blunder, he had really no explanation to give. He seemed to think he had sufficiently safeguarded himself by exchanging cards with the man, than which I could not conceive anything more childish—

without an address or a club on it! What possible guarantee was there in that? Brentin himself couldn’t quite say; only he seemed to fancy the possession of his card gave him some sort of hold on the owner, and that so long as he had it in his keeping we were safe against treachery.

How totally wrong he was, and how nearly his absurd confidence came to absolutely ruining us all, will clearly appear as this work goes on and readers are taken to Monte Carlo.

At last, as I continued to reproach him, he took refuge in saying, “Well, it’s done, and there’s an end to it; give over talking through your hat!” A vulgar Americanism which much offended me, and caused us to drive up to “The French Horn” in somewhat sulky silence.

It was the 23d of December, and we found Mr. Thatcher ready for us. I at once left him to show Brentin over the house, the great hall decorated with holly and cotton-wool mottoes, and to his room, while I went in immediate search of Lucy.

Over that tender meeting I draw the sacred veil of reticence. The dear girl was soon in my arms, soft and palpitating, full of forgiveness and love. We spent the afternoon together in a long walk across the links and down to the coast-guards’ cottages, where we had tea; returning only in time for dinner, through the dark and starry evening of that singularly mild December.

The result of our walk was that we made up our minds to be married shortly before Easter—so soon, in fact, as I could get back from abroad and settle my affairs. About Monte Carlo, I told her nothing further than that my sister was not well, and I had undertaken to escort her there, and see after her for a time—a fib, which, knowing Lucy’s apprehensive nature, I judged to be necessary, and for which I trust one day to be forgiven.

Mr. Brentin and I dined together, partly in silence, partly snapping at each other. On Christmas Eve our party was complete, with the exception of Harold Forsyth, who came over next morning from Colchester. On Christmas Day, “What’s the matter with our all going to Church?” said Mr. Brentin.

“Nothing particularly the matter,” Bob Hines replied, rather gruffly, “except that some of us are probably unaccustomed to it.”

However, Brentin insisted, and to Church, accordingly, we all went, as meek as bleating lambs.

Now in the Wharton Park pew was sitting Mr. Crage. The pew is so sheltered with its high partition and curtain-rods, I didn’t see him till he stood up; nor did I know there was any one else there till the parson glared down straight into the pew from the clerk’s ancient seat under the pulpit, whence he read the lessons, and said he really must beg chance members of the congregation to observe the proper reverential attitude, and not be continually seated.

Whereupon a deep voice replied, amid considerable sensation, from the bowels of the pew, “Sir, you are in error. I always rise as the rubric directs, but having no advantage of height—” the rest of the speech being lost in the irreverent titters of our party.

Brentin, who was next the pew, looked over the partition and added to the sensation by audibly observing, “Sakes alive! It’s friend Bailey Thompson.”

When the service was over and we all got outside, he whispered, “Wait a minute, Blacker; send the others on, and I’ll present you to my friend.” So the others went on back to “The French Horn,” while I remained behind with some apprehension and curiosity to take this Mr. Bailey Thompson’s measure. He came out alone, Mr. Crage remaining to have a few words with the parson (with whom he was continually squabbling), and Brentin and Bailey Thompson greeted each other with great warmth.

He turned out to be a short, dark, determined-looking little man, with a square chin and old-fashioned, black, mutton-chop whiskers. No, he was clearly not quite a gentleman, in the sense that he had evidently never been at a public school.

“This,” said Mr. Brentin as he presented me, “is the originator of the little scheme I was telling you of—Mr. Vincent Blacker.”

“Oh, indeed!” Mr. Bailey Thompson replied, looking me full in the face with his penetrating black eyes, and politely lifting his small, tall hat. “Oh, indeed! so you really meant it?”

“Meant it?” echoed Brentin. “Why, the band of brothers is here; they were in the pew next you. Mr. Bailey Thompson, we are all here together for the making of our final arrangements, and in two weeks we start.”

“Oh, indeed!” he smiled; “it’s a bold piece of work.”

“Sir, it is colossal, but it will succeed!”

“Let us hope so. I am sure I wish you every success.”

“Mr. Bailey Thompson,” said Brentin, evidently nettled at the way the little man continued incredulously to smile, “if you care to join us some time during the afternoon we shall be glad to lay details of our plan before you. They will not only prove our bona-fides, but show how complete and fully thought out all our preparations are.”

“If I can leave my friend Crage towards four o’clock, I will,” Mr. Thompson replied. “I know Monte Carlo as well as most men, and may be able to give you some useful hints.”

“We shall be glad to see you, for none of us have ever been there. But not a word to your friend!”

“Not a word to a soul!” smiled the imperturbable little man; and he left us to join the abandoned Crage, who was still inside the sacred edifice snarling at the parson.

It was quite useless saying anything further to Brentin. I merely contented myself with pointing out that if anything could make me suspect Mr. Bailey Thompson, it was his being the guest of Mr. Crage.

“Pawsibly!” drawled Mr. Brentin. “I don’t pretend the man is pure-bred, nor exactly fit at this moment to take his seat at Queen Victoria’s table; but that he’s stanch, with that square chin, I will stake my bottom dollar. And seeing how well he knows the locality, we shall learn something from him, sir, which, you may depend upon, will be highly useful.”

The attitude of the band of brothers so far had been rather of the negative order. Whether their enthusiasm was cooling, as they had been employing their spare time in pitifully surveying the difficulties and danger of the scheme, instead of the glory and the profit, I know not; but, obviously, neither on Christmas Eve nor Christmas morning were they any longer in the hopeful condition in which they were when I first approached and secured them.

That they had been talking the matter over among themselves was clear, for no sooner was the Christmas fare disposed of in the great hall than they began to open fire. Their first shot was discharged when Mr. Thatcher brought us in a bowl of punch, about three o’clock, and Brentin proceeded to charge their glasses, and desire them to drink to the affair and our successful return therefrom.

They drank the toast so half-heartedly, much as Jacobites when called on to pledge King George, that Brentin lost his temper.

“Gentlemen!” he cried, thumping the table, “if you cannot drink to our success with more momentum than that, you will never do for adventurers; you may as well stay right here and till the soil. And that’s all there is to it!”

“What’s the matter with eating fat bacon under a hedge?” growled Bob Hines. He had been much nettled at the way Brentin had taken us all in charge, and more particularly at his being ordered off to church. Hence his not altogether apposite interruption.

Brentin fixed him with his glittering, beady eyes. “Mr. Hines,” he said, “if you are the spokesman of the malecontents, I am perfectly ready to hear what you have to object.”

“You are very good,” Hines replied, stiffly, “but I imagined the scheme was Blacker’s, and not yours at all.”

“The scheme is the scheme,” said Brentin, impatiently. “Neither one man’s nor another’s. Either you go in with us or you do not; now, then, take your choice, right here and now. You know all about it, what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. There are no flies on the scheme, any more than there are on us. We don’t care ay ginger-snap whether you withdraw or not; but at least we have the right to know which course you intend to pursue.”

“The difficulty appears to me,” Forsyth struck in, in conciliatory tones, “that none of us have ever been to the place, so that we can’t really tell whether the thing is possible or not.”

“Exactly!” murmured Teddy Parsons.

Brentin gave a gesture of vexation. “Monte Carlo has, of course, been thoroughly surveyed before this determination of ours has been arrived at—from a distance, ay considerable distance, I admit. Still, it has been surveyed, though, naturally, through other parties’ eyes. Every authority we have consulted agrees that the thing is perfectly feasible; every one, without exception, wonders why it has never been done before; every one admits it is a plague-spot which should be cauterized. Shall we do it? Yes or no? There is the whole thing in ay nutshell.”

Teddy Parsons observed, “There is one thing I should like to know, and that is—er—will there be any bloodshed?”

“Not unless they shed it,” was Brentin’s somewhat grim reply.

Teddy shuddered and went on, “But I understand we are actually to be armed with revolvers.”

“That is so,” said Brentin, “but they will not be loaded, or with blank cartridge at the most. Experience tells us that gentlemen are just as badly frightened by an unloaded as by a loaded gun.”

Then Arthur Masters struck in, “I suppose there will be likely to be a good deal of hustling and possibly violence before we can count on getting clear away?”

“I don’t apprehend,” said Brentin, “there will be much of either; though, of course, we can’t expect the affair will pass off quite so quietly as an ordinary social lunch-party. We may, for instance, have to knock a few people down. Surely English gentlemen are not afraid of having to do that?”

“It is not a question of fear,” Masters haughtily replied. “I’m not thinking of that.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried that snipe Parsons.

“I am thinking of the ladies of our party.”

“There’s a very pretty girl here,” Parsons ventured. “I wish she could be persuaded—”

Forsyth nudged him, while I cried “Order!” savagely.

“There will be ladies in our party,” Masters went on. “It would be a terrible thing if they were to be frightened or in any way injured.”

“I yield to no man,” declaimed Brentin, “in my chivalrous respect for the sex. But there are certain places and times when the presence of ladies is highly undesirable. The Casino rooms at Monte Carlo, when we are about to raid them, is one. That’s the reason which has determined me to leave Mrs. Brentin behind, in complete ignorance of what we are about to do. I do not presume to dictate to other gentlemen what their course of action should be, but I must say our chances of success will be enormously magnified if no ladies are permitted to be of the party.”

“Hear! Hear!” murmured Hines, who from a certain gruffness of manner is no particular favorite with the sex.

“Perhaps it would be enough,” urged Masters, “if, on the actual day of our attempt, the ladies of our party undertook not to go into the rooms?”

“Perhaps it would,” Brentin replied, “but for myself I should prefer they remained altogether in England, offering up a series of succinct and heartfelt prayers for our safe return.”

Bob Hines gave a snort of laughter, whereupon Brentin fixed him inquiringly.

“Englishwomen have prayed for the safe return of heroes before now, Mr. Hines.”

“I am aware of it.”

“Then why gurgle at the back of your throat?”

“I have a certain irrepressible sense of humor.”

“That is remarkable for an Englishman!”

Whether Mr. Brentin were deliberately bent on rubbing us all up the wrong way, I don’t know, but he was most certainly doing it, so I thought it judicious to interpose. It was just at that moment Mr. Bailey Thompson stepped into the room.