THE GREAT NIGHT—DINNER AT THE “HÔTEL DE PARIS”—A LAST LOOK ROUND—THE SACK AND ITS INCIDENTS—FLIGHT

By five o’clock of that same afternoon—Friday, January 17th—we and our luggage were all safe on board the Amaranth.

Our luggage stowed away and our cabin arrangements made (rather a tight fit we found it), I took Lucy on shore to show her round, or give her a walk rather, as it was nearly dark; for now that Bailey Thompson was well out at sea, there was no danger of her being met and recognized. For the night, our plan of action briefly was, that at a quarter to eight we were all to dine together at the “HÔtel de Paris,” the ladies afterwards to return on board the yacht. At ten we gentlemen, with the six sailors, were to be in the rooms; at half-past, precisely, the start was to be made.

At ten-twenty the boats, two of them, were to leave the yacht and be ready at the spot I have indicated. They were not to start a minute earlier, for fear of exciting suspicions among any of the firemen or police who might be about on the terrace. For them, on Brentin’s suggestion, we had arranged a small pyrotechnic display—what he called “fire-crackers”—on the terrace not far from the band-stand. Parsons had purchased a “Devil among the Tailors” over at Mentone, and Jarvis, one of the sailors—the same, by-the-way, who had first accosted us on the pier at Ryde—was to light it one minute before the half-hour. We calculated it would explode and draw the firemen away, just about the time when they would otherwise be in demand to stop us in our rush down the terrace steps, and through the rickety gate on to the railway line.

Our dinner at the “HÔtel de Paris” was a very expensive and merry one. It was lucky, by-the-way, as it turned out, that I ate and drank a good deal more than usual, for it was almost four-and-twenty hours before I got anything approaching a proper meal again; through that idiot Teddy Parsons’ fault, as presently will plainly enough appear.

Soon after half-past nine we sent the ladies off in a carriage down to the Condamine to go on board the yacht. It was a solemn moment, for it was quite on the cards I might never see any of them again, and one was my sweetheart and one my sister. Indeed, so affected was I, that I bent into the carriage and kissed Miss Rybot by mistake, which made everybody but Arthur Masters laugh. I knew I had made the mistake directly my lips touched her cheek, for hers was hard and cold as an apple off wet grass, whereas dear Lucy’s was ever soft and warm as a sunny peach.

Then they drove away, laughing and kissing their hands; Lucy particularly merry, for she still knew nothing of what we were almost immediately going to do, and was quite gay at the thought of leaving Monte Carlo so soon—to which unhallowed spot, as most good and sensitive women, she had taken the supremest dislike.

We gentlemen sat a little time smoking, in somewhat perturbed silence, and just before ten we had a glass of old brandy each, paid our bill, and left. The others went on into the rooms, while Brentin and I walked down on to the terrace to have a last look at the gate, and see it was still open; or, rather, would open to a slight push.

The night was singularly mild, dark, and heavy; the terrace absolutely deserted. There was not a star in the dense, low sky; they all seemed fallen on shore, outlining the Condamine and heights of Monaco in the many regular pin-pricks of the gas-lamps. From the “CafÉ de Paris” came the swirl of the Hungarian band; from the Casino concert-room, the high notes of Madame Eames singing in the new opera; from the Condamine, the jingle of the omnibus bells. Not another sound of life from earth or heaven; but mainly the persistent jangle of those omnibus bells, as though sadly shaken by some dyspeptic Folly. The Mediterranean, as ever, was absolutely still.

I could have stayed there a long time, but—

“Come!” whispered Brentin, and taking my arm, walked me back up the steps towards the rooms. As we passed the end of the concert-room, I noticed that up against the outside balconies, at the back of the stage, ladders were reared, so that, in case of fire, the artistes might have some other chance of escape than the dubious one of fighting their way through the salle. I found myself fitfully wondering whether those ladders would be used.

“Come!” whispered Brentin, again, feeling, I dare say, the alarm in my elbow. “Courage!”

For I do not mind confessing here in print that, as the hour approached, I began to feel frightened at the audacity of what we were going to do, and, if only I could—consistently with my honor—would willingly have withdrawn; nay, to put it plainly, turned tail and bolted. My revolver, loaded with blank cartridge only, in the pocket of my smoking-jacket beat remindfully against my hip as I walked up the Casino steps. Even now as I write, months after the occurrence, the tremor of that hour seizes me and my hand shakes so I can scarcely guide the pen.

Another moment, and we had walked through the hall, and passed the swing-doors into the stifling gambling-rooms.

It is extremely unlikely I ever visit Monte Carlo again; indeed, my conduct, on this the last occasion I entered the rooms, rather precludes me from ever even making the attempt; but if ever I do, they will never make the same impression on me as they did that warm January evening when Brentin and I strolled into them arm in arm.

Every incident of that memorable evening, every face I then saw, is photographed into my memory, still remains there distinct and indelible. The rooms, either because of the attraction of a new opera or because the night was so warm, were somewhat empty. The crowds were only round the table, and the parquet flooring between looked more than usually vacant and dull.

Dimmer they looked, too, and more than ever badly lit; and the air seemed even heavier charged with gamblers’ exasperation.

Now, in some slight particulars, we had modified our original plan. We had long given over all attempt to turn the light out, for one thing, since we had never been able to discover where the mains were; probably somewhere well out of sight, down below among the vaults, which also we had decided not to attempt. Nor did we intend to do anything towards securing the gamblers’ valuables, as at one time we had projected. It was very like vulgar robbery, to begin with, and next, as Thompson had pointed out, it would take too much time.

Directly we got inside, Brentin looked up at the clock over the door and set his watch by it; then we strolled off to find the rest, and, showing each of them the watch, saw that each had the precise time. Our six sailors were wandering about genteelly in pairs; to each Brentin whispered, “Got your bag all right?” and each nodded a reply. Each had a linen bag buttoned inside his short, respectable reefer jacket. One who, I fear, was not quite sober, a man named Barker, took his bag out with a stupid laugh to show us; whereupon his companion (Frank Joyce, from Sandown, in the Isle of Wight, who had him by the arm) said, “Now then, Barker, don’t be a fool, it ain’t time yet.”

It was then between the ten minutes and the quarter past ten.

When we had visited the rooms with Bailey Thompson the night before, and explained our plan in detail on the spot, we had, by his advice, and very wisely, reversed it. Previously, we had designed to begin at the first, the roulette tables, and drive the people gradually before us into the last room, towards the trente-et-quarante; but that, as he pointed out, would force us to work with our backs to the exit and bring us between two fires as it were; whereas, if we began in the farthest rooms and cleared the trente-et-quarante tables first, we should have our faces to the doors, and, by driving everybody before us, secure the further advantage of increasing the confusion that would arise from the people rushing in to see what was wrong and meeting the people rushing out. And through that surging, terrified mass we ought to have no difficulty in forcing a passage, if only we kept our unloaded revolvers up to the mark and frowned unflinchingly.

As for masking ourselves, which we had also at first designed, Thompson was strongly against it; it would all take time, and might only obscure our vision; for, as he truly pointed out, that sort of thing scarcely ever fits properly.... I gave a nervous glance at my watch, and found it nearly ten-twenty.

I was standing just by the last roulette table, and saw one or two little things that, as I have said, are still distinctly photographed in my memory. There were two young men standing behind me, and one said, “I’ll just chuck a louis on the table and see where it will fall.” It fell on the number eighteen, and eighteen actually turned up! He laughed excitedly as the croupier pushed him thirty-five times his stake. “That’s not bad for my one gentle little louis, eh?” he giggled.

Opposite, a brown-faced English yachtsman, over from Mentone, was steadily backing the colors with notes of five hundred francs. He was always right; he changed from side to side, and always hit the right red or black. He was watched by two common Englishmen, with long upper lips and ridiculous pantaloon beards, dressed in shiny broadcloth. “That feller’s won another twenty-pound,” said one of them, gaping. “We must bring Louisa in to see this.”

Now it was past the ten-twenty, and I moved off into the trente-et-quarante rooms.

Every one who has been to Monte Carlo knows that the four trente-et-quarante tables are in the two end rooms, two in each.

In the right-hand room were to be stationed Brentin, Parsons, and I, with three of the sailors; in the left, Forsyth, Masters, and Hines, with the other three. Brentin was to give the signal in our room—“Levez les mains!”—and Hines in the other, while the immediate discharge of the “Devil among the Tailors” outside on the terrace would, we hoped, increase the confusion and alarm within. It was rather awkward that we were forced to go to work a little out of sight of each other; for, though there is an opening between the rooms, we meant to begin well at the back, and the opening did not so far reach as to bring us in sight of each other.

It was close on the twenty-five minutes past ten, and so alarmed was I at the difficulties which, now we were actually on the spot ready to overcome them, loomed so desperately large, that I would willingly have sacrificed half my income to be allowed to leave without even making the attempt.

On one side of me was Brentin; on the other a very pretty, smart young Englishwoman, standing with a purse in her hand, watching the run on black. As in a dream, I noticed all the details of her dress, the white facings of her dark jacket on the cuffs and pockets, the piquant spots on her veil. Quietly, as though she were paying for a pair of gloves, she staked all the gold she had left, about twenty pounds, and lost that. She searched her purse, found it quite empty, snapped it leisurely, and sauntered away. Brentin whispered me he had seen her stake roll after roll of notes, and lose them all. Beautifully dressed, with a hanging, jewelled little watch and many neat gold bracelets, I had often seen her strolling about the gardens, neither speaking to nor looking at any one; now I found myself stupidly wondering who she was, even envying her, notwithstanding her totally cleaned-out condition.

The relentless minutes stole on. I looked piteously at Brentin, glaring with resolution straight in front of him, his hand in his pocket fingering his revolver; at Parsons, white as this paper, his legs bending under him.

Piteously I looked at the table in front of me; at the croupiers, with their cropped black heads and emotionless faces; at the chef sitting above them, his bored, round back towards me; at the delicately pretty, demure Italian, olive-skinned and colorless, leaning her arm, in its long white glove, over the back of his chair; at the young Frenchman staking his thousand-franc notes, his forehead and eyes twitching with excitement, or some nervous complaint; at the gaunt English girl—

Bang! from the terrace outside. Bang! bang!

I gave a jump like a terrified horse. It was the “Devil among the Tailors,” set off a minute or two too soon by our friend and accomplice, the sailor.

The confusion and alarm it caused was nothing compared to what followed. I had just time to see the Italian lady’s frightened profile, as she turned and put her white glove up to her smooth cheek, when the bold Brentin gave a hoarse shout—“Levez les mains!”—and produced the revolver. Then, indeed, a panic set in! comparable, I imagine, to nothing but the sudden striking of a ship.

At first a dead pause, and then immediately a rushing to and fro, as of rats in a pit, the haggard looking in each other’s fallen, discomposed faces. And then the noise! the overthrow of chairs and the dragging of them along the parquet floor, caught in screaming women’s dresses as they scudded away like sea-shore birds, bent low, with their hands up to their ears, while the shouting, swearing, groaning men clutched at their money, and tried to thrust it in their pockets, as they leaped and huddled themselves away, the louis falling and tinkling on the floor.

I saw before me a hideous, moving frieze of terror, of distorted faces—Russian, French, German, Italian, English, American, Greek—all reduced to the same monotony of look under the overmastering influence of the same passion—abject fear. The English were no better than the rest; they were a little quicker in getting away, perhaps, and that was all. The confusion of tongues was as complete as though, on the Tower of Babel, some one had screamed the foundations were giving way, and all must save themselves as best they could.

As in a battle the soldier knows only incidents, the faces he sees as frightened or determined as his own, the eyes peering into his through smoke he mostly himself seems to make; so, out of this action—so famous and yet so little known—can I only report the events that met me in my narrow section of the struggle, a section drawn almost in parallel straight lines from the point I started at to the point of exit at the farther end of the rooms.

First it was the chef, on his high chair facing me, who fell over backwards, ridiculous enough at such a time of tragic import. One of the croupiers, in jumping horrified to his feet, gave him a tilt and over he went. He was a youngish man, with round, fat, clean-shaven cheeks, and a small, bristling, black mustache. His arms and legs waved and kicked like an impaled insect; his mouth opened with a stupendous screaming oath, and as he fell—strange how at all times one notices details!—I saw he wore half-shoes and blue socks.

In another minute we were at the vacant table, the chef crawling away under a sofa-seat against the wall, and two of our gallant sailors were stuffing the notes and coins into their linen bags. The second table was equally deserted, and there the not-quite-sober sailor, Barker, with empty, delighted laughter, was already scratching the notes out of the metal stand they are always kept in. Suddenly I saw he nearly fell; some one under the table had him by the leg. He clutched the chef’s empty high chair, and, with a mighty oath and mighty random kick, released himself.

“Hurry up, men! hurry up!” chanted Brentin, as we moved forward irresistibly over the bare floor.

Bang! suddenly went Teddy’s revolver off, in his nervousness, close to my ear. It was a mistake, but not altogether a disastrous one; it showed we were in earnest, and soon cleared some of the people away from the space between the roulette rooms and the trente-et-quarante. Like a wave that breaks against the shore and then returns, so these broken people, spent against the struggling mass round the swing-doors, had gushed back again and almost reached the point they started from.

From the room on the left, where Hines and his party were at work, I suddenly heard Arthur Masters shout, “Look out, Forsyth!” At what, I know not; I just gave a look in their direction, and their room seemed as vacant of opposition as ours.

“Forward!” cried Brentin. “Hurry up! hurry up!”

The sailors, with their bags, fell behind us, and forward we three charged. As we came through the sort of ante-chamber dividing the rooms, there, through the other door, at the same moment, came Hines, Forsyth, and Masters, hurrying.

“Bravo!” screamed to them the excited Brentin. “The left-hand table, gentlemen!”

Right and left the tables were absolutely deserted. As the sailors pounced on and proceeded to clear them, I had an unobstructed view down the length of the remaining rooms right to the exit.

Such a scene of terrified, shouting, screaming confusion I never saw; nor ever shall, unless my lurid evil star should one day carry me into the hot heart of a theatre-panic, the uncontrollable frenzied meeting of a fighting pit, gallery, dress circle, and stalls. They say a man will give all he hath for his life, and here were innumerable men and women, believing their precious lives in peril, giving all their fiery energies play in their efforts to best their neighbor and reach the door. Often, by-the-way, as I have heard of people wringing their hands, this was the only occasion on which I ever really saw it done. One of the footmen, in his absurd, ill-fitting livery, was standing on one of the side sofas, a chap with laughable long whiskers, a discolored beak of a nose, and a rabbit mouth; there he stood, dancing up and down, his face all puckered with terror, actually wringing his hands in his misfitting long sleeves. Then he suddenly fell over and crawled away, yelping like a frightened lap-dog, and for the life of me I couldn’t help a spirit of laughter.

“Gracious!” yelled Brentin, above the indescribable din, “I hope no one will be injured. Loose off your gun, friend Parsons.”

Bang! went Teddy’s revolver. I looked at him; his face was still dead white, while his mouth was working and distorted with a dreadful grin. Bang! it went again, while Teddy gave a silly laugh. Like a shot in a mine that clears the air, or like the blowing out of a candle at ten paces, the blank discharge had its due effect. The tortured mass heaved and groaned, yielding irresistibly to the pressure of their terrors; irresistibly they began to pour and gush out through the swing-doors at the end. Every second, so fast they went, our road to safety was notably being cleared for us.

“Forward! Forward!” Brentin sang.

To the right we went again into the next room, in the same irreproachable order, with the same sublime results. Arthur Masters, in all the energetic glory of battle, was waving his revolver, trying to crack it, beating it against his thigh, as though it were a whip, cheering on his men like hounds. He is master, as I have mentioned, of a pack of harriers in Hertfordshire, and all the time he was at work in the last two rooms he was musically crying, “Melody! Harmony! Trixie! Hie over, lass, hie over!” And once, as one of his sailors bent on the floor over a few scattered louis, he roared at him, “’Ware trash!” When safe in England, I told him of it afterwards. He laughed and declared he hadn’t the slightest recollection of doing anything of the sort.

Now will it be believed that, so universal was the panic, at one of the tables only, at the bottom one in the room before the last, was there anybody found to receive us! And that not so much, I fancy, in the spirit of opposition as of curiosity, or perhaps inability to move.

For there we found an English lady tranquilly seated—elderly, perhaps sixty, with a shrewd, not unpleasant face. To this day I don’t know her name, but I know her quite well by sight, having often seen her driving in Piccadilly and Bond Street. At the back of her chair her husband was standing, eye-glass in eye; a tall man with a large head, rather of the empty House of Commons air of importance, coolly watching us.

“You will be good enough not to touch this lady’s money,” he said, as our men pounced on the table. Then, as a sort of after-thought, he added, “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Write to the Times,” chuckled Brentin, impudently.

The old lady looked hard at me, as much as to say, “I’ve seen you somewhere before, more respectably engaged than this.”

And, before I forget, it is an odd thing that, only a week or so ago, I again met her driving in Piccadilly; I was in a cab with Lucy, and we met her victoria face to face. We stood side by side for quite three minutes in a block, and she recognized and stared at me in astonishment. I returned her stare, not rudely, I hope, and then positively couldn’t help beginning to laugh; she didn’t laugh back, but I could see quite well she was very near it.

There still remained the end room of all and our exit through the doors. Now was the time for all our nerve, all our resource.

Breathlessly, I glanced up at the clock, and saw it was just over the twenty-five minutes to eleven. We had taken only some six or seven minutes to clear eleven tables; there still remained the two last and our rush for the yacht.

Our friends on the left hurried up to us, we having been slightly quicker on the right; and then, strangely enough, there was a moment’s dead silence, at any rate, in the rooms. In the pause we could hear the dull, frightened roar from the hall outside, and then, suddenly and faintly, the short, sharp, defiant call of a bugle.

The gamblers and croupiers, still massed struggling round the exit, turned, many of them as though by an understanding, and faced us, some of them even crying “Silence!” “Silence!” The valets, clambering on the side seats, leaned towards us expectantly. It seemed as though they were looking for us to make them a speech, some kind of an apology for our inexplicable and outrageous conduct. It was a sort of “Gentlemen of the French Guard, fire first!” and though I don’t suppose it lasted more than a second, it seemed an age.

Then Brentin stepped forward, and sweeping his revolver along the line of their expectant faces, said in his ordinary voice—and all the more authoritative and effective it sounded—“Retirez-vous!”

My gaze was fixed on a tall croupier, a man I had often seen walking about in a straw-hat with his little daughter; indeed, once I had stopped and kissed the child, she was so pretty. Then he had been delighted; now he was staring at me with hard, frightened eyes, grinding his teeth.

As Brentin stepped forward, we stepped forward too.

“Close up behind us, you men!” Masters called to the sailors. “Use your fists if they try to stop you!”

Instantly the screaming and shouting began again. As we moved briskly and irresistibly forward, the seething crowd at the swing-doors melted away before us like wax before the fire. Men and women began to steal behind us and run back frantically into the vacant rooms we had just stripped and left.

“Retirez-vous!” cried Brentin, in a higher key.

I kept my eye on the tall croupier, clearly meditating mischief, and then suddenly covered him with my unloaded revolver. His face fell like a shutter; all at once he seemed to be struck imbecile. Death was staring at him, he fancied, down the stubborn, steel tube—death! and he had never made his salut—would die in the gambling-rooms! He fell back with the rest, using his elbows viciously, and out we went with a rush, like uncorked soda-water opened by an unskilful hand at a picnic.

An arm reached out at me from behind the door as I darted through, and caught my coat. I gave myself a vigorous wrench and swore (the first and only time that night), while my pocket came tearing off in the villain’s grasp. He was very welcome to it, if only as a souvenir.

The hall was pretty empty, for most people who had escaped from the rooms had rushed wildly out into the night, in their terror. When the “Devil among the Tailors” first went off on the terrace, there had been shouts and cries of “Les Anarchistes!” and all who heard it thought the building was about to be blown to atoms with a bomb, and flew, like sand before the wind.

Still, numbers were beginning to pour into the far end of the hall out from the concert-room, where the alarm was just spreading and playing the deuce with the new opera. As we ran through and down the steps to the right, I could hear the band still playing and some one singing. Then, evidently, the alarm reached the instrumentalists, for they stopped suddenly with a wheeze, like a musical box run down.

Down the steps we rushed, knocking some few of both sexes, I am ashamed to say, over and aside in our stride. Out of the watchful corner of my right eye I saw the waiters come running out of the “CafÉ de Paris,” in their white aprons.

Outside, as we turned the corner of the building, to the left down on to the terrace, one or two firemen came bounding up the steps to meet us. One of them faced us, holding out his arms and saying something in French I didn’t catch.

It was addressed to Barker, whose only reply was to grunt and knock the man head over heels into a heap of cactus. Hating violence as I do, I am pleased to report it was absolutely the only blow struck the whole time, and was a singularly efficient one.

At the bottom of the steps to the right we darted, so close together we might have been almost covered with a pocket-handkerchief, of the larger Derby-winner type.

“Get in front, you men!” panted Brentin, in a sibilant whisper. “Take the first boat, this way!”

The sailors plunged in front as Brentin pulled the gate open. Down the steps they clattered. One of them, as he passed me, I saw was trying to tie the tape round the neck of his linen bag with his teeth.

And now furious steps were rushing after us over the gravel of the terrace; menacing dark figures, many of them, were making for our gate.

“Give ’em a fusillade!” hissed Hines, and turning we fired, each of us, pretty nearly the whole of our six blank barrels.

From that moment our retreat, which had hitherto been conducted in such beautiful order, became as loose and streaming as the tail of a comet. As for me, I fired most of my six barrels as I ran down the steps, straight over my head, anywhere. I can feel now the soft kick of my revolver as I held it loosely in my left hand.

Now I don’t know it is exactly to my credit, but it certainly says something for my physical condition, that I was first down. I plunged panting across the railway lines, and simply hurled myself down the embankment, on to the shore.

The first boat with the sailors already in it, the boodle in its linen bags gleaming ghostily in a tumbled heap at the bottom, was just pushing off. I tore through the water up to my waist, and they soon had me on board, pulling me in excitedly by the arms. The night was so dark that, a dozen strokes from the shore, there was nothing to be seen but the yacht’s lights, fifty yards ahead. We flew over the water, the men talking, swearing, panting, and helping one another push at the oars. We were alongside almost immediately, and I was the first up on deck.

“All safe, sir?” cried the captain, as I swung myself up.

“Get her ready,” I panted, “the others will be here in a minute.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

My sister ran up and kissed me. Miss Rybot was standing at the taffrail, glaring like a young eagle over the black water, and drumming her fingers on the rail. A few heavy raindrops were beginning to fall.

“Where’s Lucy?”

“We sent her below; she’s reading a book.”

I paused to listen for the other boat, and could hear the tearing of the oars, the thud of the rowlocks. Away down from Monaco came the stern and menacing beat of a drum. Through the open lighted windows of the Casino concert-room I could see dark figures preparing to descend the ladders I had noticed considerately placed there against the balconies.

And then, suddenly, for the first time since we had been aboard, just as the other boat came tearing alongside and I stumbled off breathlessly below, it began to rain in earnest, a seething, hissing downpour; what my old Derbyshire nurse used picturesquely to call, whole water.

By the time I reached Lucy’s cabin door we were well under weigh, shouldering our way swiftly and sturdily through the still, wet night.