MR. BAILEY THOMPSON GIVES US HIS INGENIOUS ADVICE—WE ARE FOOLS ENOUGH TO TRUST HIM—MISPLACED CONFIDENCE

“The very man!” cried Brentin. “Mr. Bailey Thompson, let me present you to my friends. You are just in time to give them assurance of the feasibility of the great scheme you and I have already had some discussion over.”

Now Bailey Thompson’s name had been cursorily mentioned during dinner as that of a gentleman who might look in in the course of the afternoon, and, if he came, would be able to give us some useful hints; but, beyond that, Brentin had kept him back as a final card, having already some notion of the wavering going on, and desiring to use him to clinch the business one way or the other.

Mr. Thompson bowed and smiled, and Brentin went on.

“There is some dissatisfaction in the camp, sir; there is some doubt and there is fear. Advice is badly needed. I look to you to give it us.”

“I shall be very glad to be of any use.”

“Then let me present you, Mr. Thompson. This powerful young man with the leonine head and cherry-wood pipe is Mr. Hines; next him, with the slight frame, tawny mustache, and Richmond Gem cigarette, is Mr. Parsons; opposite, with the clean, clear, and agreeable countenance and the cigar, is Mr. Forsyth; next him, with the sloping brow and thoughtful back to his head, is Mr. Masters, who doesn’t smoke. Vincent Blacker you know. Gentlemen, Mr. Bailey Thompson. There is your glass, sir; drink, and when you feel sufficiently stimulated and communicative, speak!”

Mr. Thompson darted his penetrating eyes over the company, smiled again, and took his glass of tepid punch.

“So you really mean it,” he said, sitting between us.

Mr. Brentin groaned. “Don’t let us hear that from you again, sir,” he said; “it is likely to breed bad blood. Take it from me, we really mean it, and only need advice how it should best be done. Mr. Bailey Thompson, we are all attention.”

“In the first place, then,” the little man remarked, amid dead silence, as he sipped his punch, “let me say you have, in my judgment, enormously underestimated the amount of money in the rooms.”

“Ah!”

“I know the place well, and speak with some authority.”

“Just what we want.”

“Now, there are nine roulette and four trente-et-quarante tables. Each, I am told, is furnished with £4000 to begin play on for the day; total, £52,000.”

“Mark this, gentlemen!” cried the agitated Brentin.

“But each table wins per diem, roughly speaking, about £400; so that, if you select, say, ten o’clock in the evening for your attempt, you may count on £5200 more—total, say, £58,000.”

“Make a note, gentlemen,” said Brentin, “that we select ten-thirty, to make sure.”

“That does not take into account the money lying there already staked by the players, which you may calculate as fully £3000 more.”

“Oh, go slow, Mr. Bailey Thompson, sir, go slow!”

“But where your underestimation is most marked,” said the impressive little man, sweeping his eyes round the attentive circle, “is in calculating the reserve in the vaults. In short, I have no hesitation in saying that, taking everything into consideration, there must be at least half a million of money lying in the Casino premises, at—the—very—least!”

In the dead silence, broken only by the taking in of breath, I could hear Lucy playing the piano down-stairs in the little room behind the bar.

Mr. Thompson sipped his punch again and looked at us calmly over the rim of his tumbler.

“And you think the money in the vaults is as easily got at as the rest?” Bob Hines asked, in a constrained voice.

“That I shouldn’t like to say,” Thompson cautiously replied. “I can tell you, however, that I have myself twice seen the bank broken; which only means, by-the-way, that the £4000 at that particular table had been won.”

“And what happened?”

“Play at that table was merely suspended while a further supply was being fetched from the vaults.”

“And where are the vaults?”

“Below the building somewhere, but precisely where I cannot tell you; but I have no doubt, once the rooms are in your possession, and, given the time, you would have no difficulty whatever in breaking into them.”

Impressive silence again, broken at last by Brentin. “And now, sir, will you be good enough to give us some idea of the amount of opposition we are likely to meet with?”

Bailey Thompson looked meditative, and, after a pause, proceeded. “Outside the building, at every twenty paces or so, you will find men stationed. They are merely firemen, whose chief duty it is to see no bomb is thrown into the rooms or deposited outside by the anarchists, who have frequently threatened it. They are not soldiers, and are not in any way armed.”

Teddy Parsons breathed heavily and murmured, “Capital!”

“And what force is there inside?”

“There are a great number of men about, attendants and so forth, but I cannot conceive them capable of any resistance.”

“You don’t imagine they are secretly armed?” asked the palpitating Teddy.

“Dear me, no, any more than the attendants at an ordinary club!”

“In short,” said Mr. Brentin, “you feel pretty confident that neither inside nor outside we are likely to encounter a single weapon of offence?”

“Perfectly confident. Perfectly confident, gentlemen.”

“And what about the army?” Parsons asked. “I understand the Prince of Monaco has an army of seventy men.”

“Quite correct,” Bailey Thompson replied, “but it is stationed up in Monaco, at least a mile away.”

“Then it would be some time before they could be mustered.”

“Besides,” Mr. Brentin dryly observed, “they are not likely to be of much use unless they can swim. We propose to escape on board the Amaranth.”

“That’s your best chance, gentlemen,” said Mr. Thompson—“in fact, your only practicable one.”

“And you think six of us are enough for the business?” asked Masters.

“You will be the best judges of that, perhaps, when you see the place. My own feeling is that, to make it all perfectly safe, you should be at least a dozen.”

“If necessary,” said Mr. Brentin, “we can always impress half a dozen of our crew. Nothing like a jolly Jack-tar for a job of this kind.”

“If you do,” smiled Bailey Thompson, “you will have to fig them out in what they call tenue de ville convenable. They won’t let them into the rooms in their common sailor dress. Why, gentlemen, they refused me admission once because my boots were dusty. Clean hands don’t so much matter,” he added, in his sly fashion.

Then he rose and remarked, “I must now be returning to Wharton; my poor old friend Crage is in low spirits, and I have undertaken not to be more than half an hour away from him. If there is any further information wanted, however—”

“Just this,” said Hines; “taking it at its worst, and supposing we are all, or any of us, captured, what do you imagine will be our fate?”

Mr. Thompson shrugged his shoulders. “You will be treated with every courtesy; you will undoubtedly be tried, but—if only from the fact of your failing—you will, I should think, be let off easily. If you succeed, and all of you get clear away, I do not imagine there will be any serious pursuit, for policy will close the authorities’ mouth; they will not care to advertise to the world how easily the place can be looted. In fact, from what I know of them, they will most likely take particular pains to deny it has ever been done at all. You see, gentlemen, the entire Continental press is in their pay.”

“There is, no doubt, a criminal court and a prison at Monaco?”

“Oh yes; and if, unfortunately, you are caught, you will all be sentenced for life, I imagine.”

“I don’t call that being let off easy,” grunted Teddy.

“Perhaps not in theory, but in practice, yes; for in a year or so you will find yourselves free to stroll about the town, and even down to Monte Carlo.”

“In fact, bolt?” said Masters.

“Exactly; more especially if your relatives pay due attention to the jailers and see they want for nothing. In conclusion, gentlemen, I drink to your enterprise, and wish you all well through it. Au revoir!” And with a courteous bow and wave of his gloved hand (he wore dogskin gloves the whole time), Mr. Bailey Thompson, accompanied by the jubilant Brentin, withdrew.

“Well,” I said, “what do you say now?”

There was a brief silence, and then Teddy Parsons observed, “It seems to me we may as well go.”

“Half a million of money!” murmured Forsyth, meditatively, “and most of it for hospitals.”

“I think, out of that, you might manage to stand me a swimming-bath as well as a gymnasium, eh?” whispered Bob Hines.

Mr. Brentin returned to us radiant. “Well, gentlemen, what do you think of it all now?”

“They are coming,” I ventured to say, and the band of brothers nodded.

“But, I say!” spluttered Masters, who had for the most part kept silent—“who is Mr. Bailey Thompson? Who knows anything about him? Who can guarantee he won’t give us away to the Monte Carlo people, and have us all quodded before we can even get a look in?”

Mr. Brentin frowned. “I will answer for Mr. Thompson with my life!” he cried. “He is a gentleman of the most royal integrity. I have studied him in every social relation, and I never knew him fail.”

“Oh, well, that’ll do,” interrupted Bob Hines, who had all along shown some impatience at Brentin’s long speeches. “We only want to know somebody is responsible for his not selling us, that’s all.”

A responsibility Mr. Brentin undertook with the greatest cheerfulness and readiness, and that, mind you, for a man who turned out to be Scotland Yard personified—who, but for his inane jealousy of the French police and his desire to effect our capture single-handed, would have been the means of casting five highly strung English gentlemen, and one excitable American, into lifelong chains; and who, on the very morning after his interview with us (as he afterwards confessed to me), was actually at Whitehall concerting plans with the authorities there how best to catch us in flagrante delicto!

How, on the contrary, we caught him, and had him deported to the southernmost point of Greece, forms one of my choicest memories, and will now soon be related at sufficient length.