15a The Prince and Betty Read online

  “Say, you’ve heard of Moosieer Blonk? Ask the old skeesicks if he’s ever heard of Mersyaw Blonk, Crump, the feller who started the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo.”

  Filtered through Mr. Crump, the question became intelligible to the President. He said he had heard of M. Blanc. Mr. Crump caught the reply and sent it on to Mr. Scobell, as the man on first base catches the ball and throws it to second.

  Mr. Scobell relighted his cigar.

  “Well, I’m in that line. I’m going to put this island on the map just like old Doctor Blonk put Monte Carlo. I’ve been studying up all about the old man, and I know just what he did and how he did it. Monte Carlo was just such another jerkwater little place as this is before he hit it. The government was down to its last bean and wondering where the Heck its next meal-ticket was coming from, when in blows Mr. Man, tucks up his shirt-sleeves, and starts the tables. And after that the place never looked back. You and your crowd gotta get together and pass a vote to give me a gambling concession here, same as they did him. Scobell’s my name. Hand him that, Crump.”

  Mr. Crump obliged once more. A gleam of intelligence came into the President’s dull eye. He nodded once or twice. He talked volubly in French to Mr. Crump, who responded in the same tongue.

  “The idea seems to strike him, sir,” said Mr. Crump.

  “It ought to, if he isn’t a clam,” replied Mr. Scobell. He started to relight his cigar, but after scorching the tip of his nose, bowed to the inevitable and threw the relic away.

  “See here,” he said, having bitten the end off the next in order; “I’ve thought this thing out from soup to nuts. There’s heaps of room for another Monte Carlo. Monte’s a dandy place, but it’s not perfect by a long way. To start with, it’s hilly. You have to take the elevator to get to the Casino, and when you’ve gotten to the end of your roll and want to soak your pearl pin, where’s the hock-shop? Half a mile away up the side of a mountain. It ain’t right. In my Casino there’s going to be a resident pawnbroker inside the building, just off the main entrance. That’s only one of a heap of improvements. Another is that my Casino’s scheduled to be a home from home, a place you can be real cosy in. You’ll look around you, and the only thing you’ll miss will be mother’s face. Yes, sir, there’s no need for a gambling Casino to look and feel and smell like the reading-room at the British Museum. Comfort, coziness and convenience. That’s the ticket I’m running on. Slip that to the old gink, Crump.”

  A further outburst of the French language from Mr. Crump, supplemented on the part of the “old gink” by gesticulations, interrupted the proceedings.

  “What’s he saying now?” asked Mr. Scobell.

  “He wants to know—”

  “Don’t tell. Let me guess. He wants to know what sort of a rake-off he and the other somnambulists will get—the darned old pirate! Is that it?”

  Mr. Crump said that that was just it.

  “That’ll be all right,” said Mr. Scobell. “Old man Blong’s offer to the Prince of Monaco was five hundred thousand francs a year—that’s somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars in real money—and half the profits made by the Casino. That’s my offer, too. See how that hits him, Crump.”

  Mr. Crump investigated.

  “He says he accepts gladly, on behalf of the Republic, sir,” he announced.

  M. d’Orby confirmed the statement by rising, dodging the cigar, and kissing Mr. Scobell on both cheeks.

  “Cut it out,” said the financier austerely, breaking out of the clinch. “We’ll take the Apache Dance as read. Good-by, Squire. Glad it’s settled. Now I can get busy.”

  He did. Workmen poured into Mervo, and in a very short time, dominating the town and reducing to insignificance the palace of the late Prince, once a passably imposing mansion, there rose beside the harbor a mammoth Casino of shining stone.

  Imposing as was the exterior, it was on the interior that Mr. Scobell more particularly prided himself, and not without reason. Certainly, a man with money to lose could lose it here under the most charming conditions. It had been Mr. Scobell’s object to avoid the cheerless grandeur of the rival institution down the coast. Instead of one large hall sprinkled with tables, each table had a room to itself, separated from its neighbor by sound-proof folding-doors. And as the building progressed, Mr. Scobell’s active mind had soared above the original idea of domestic coziness to far greater heights of ingenuity. Each of the rooms was furnished and arranged in a different style. The note of individuality extended even to the croupiers. Thus, a man with money at his command could wander from the Dutch room, where, in the picturesque surroundings of a Dutch kitchen, croupiers in the costume of Holland ministered to his needs, to the Japanese room, where his coin would be raked in by quite passable imitations of the Samurai. If he had any left at this point, he was free to dispose of it under the auspices of near-Hindoos in the Indian room, of merry Swiss peasants in the Swiss room, or in other appropriately furnished apartments of red-shirted, Bret Harte miners, fur-clad Esquimaux, or languorous Spaniards. He could then, if a man of spirit, who did not know when he was beaten, collect the family jewels, and proceed down the main hall, accompanied by the strains of an excellent band, to the office of a gentlemanly pawnbroker, who spoke seven languages like a native and was prepared to advance money on reasonable security in all of them.

  It was a colossal venture, but it suffered from the defect from which most big things suffer; it moved slowly. That it also moved steadily was to some extent a consolation to Mr. Scobell. Undoubtedly it would progress quicker and quicker, as time went on, until at length the Casino became a permanent gold mine. But at present it was being conducted at a loss. It was inevitable, but it irked Mr. Scobell. He paced the island and brooded. His mind dwelt incessantly on the problem. Ideas for promoting the prosperity of his nursling came to him at all hours—at meals, in the night watches, when he was shaving, walking, washing, reading, brushing his hair.

  And now one had come to him as he stood looking at the view from the window of his morning-room, listening absently to his sister Marion as she read stray items of interest from the columns of the New York Herald, and had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the beginning of the chapter.

  “By Heck!” he said. “Read that again, Marion. I gottan idea.”

  Miss Scobell, deep in her paper, paid no attention. Few people would have taken her for the sister of the financier. She was his exact opposite in almost every way. He was small, jerky and aggressive; she, tall, deliberate and negative. She was one of those women whom nature seems to have produced with the object of attaching them to some man in a peculiar position of independent dependence, and who defy the imagination to picture them in any other condition whatsoever. One could not see Miss Scobell doing anything but pour out her brother’s coffee, darn his socks, and sit placidly by while he talked. Yet it would have been untrue to describe her as dependent upon him. She had a detached mind. Though her whole life had been devoted to his comfort and though she admired him intensely, she never appeared to give his conversation any real attention. She listened to him much as she would have listened to a barking Pomeranian.

  “Marion!” cried Mr. Scobell.

  “A five-legged rabbit has been born in Carbondale, Southern Illinois,” she announced.

  Mr. Scobell cursed the five-legged rabbit.

  “Never mind about your rabbits. I want to hear that piece you read before. The one about the Prince of Monaco. Will—you—listen, Marion!”

  “The Prince of Monaco, dear? Yes. He has caught another fish or something of that sort, I think. Yes. A fish with ‘telescope eyes,’ the paper says. And very convenient too, I should imagine.”

  Mr. Scobell thumped the table.

  “I’ve got it. I’ve found out what’s the matter with this darned place. I see why the Casino hasn’t struck its gait.”

  “I think it must be the croupiers, dear. I’m sure I never heard of croupiers in fancy costume before. It doesn’t seem right.
I’m sure people don’t like those nasty Hindoos. I am quite nervous myself when I go into the Indian room. They look at me so oddly.”

  “Nonsense! That’s the whole idea of the place, that it should be different. People are sick and tired of having their money gathered in by seedy-looking Dagoes in second-hand morning coats. We give ‘em variety. It’s not the Casino that’s wrong: it’s the darned island. What’s the use of a republic to a place like this? I’m not saying that you don’t want a republic for a live country that’s got its way to make in the world; but for a little runt of a sawn-off, hobo, one-night stand like this you gotta have something picturesque, something that’ll advertise the place, something that’ll give a jolt to folks’ curiosity, and make ‘em talk! There’s this Monaco gook. He snoops around in his yacht, digging up telescope-eyed fish, and people talk about it. ‘Another darned fish,’ they say. ‘That’s the ‘steenth bite the Prince of Monaco has had this year.’ It’s like a soap advertisement. It works by suggestion. They get to thinking about the Prince and his pop-eyed fishes, and, first thing they know, they’ve packed their grips and come along to Monaco to have a peek at him. And when they’re there, it’s a safe bet they aren’t going back again without trying to get a mess of easy money from the Bank. That’s what this place wants. Whoever heard of this blamed Republic doing anything except eat and sleep? They used to have a prince here ‘way back in eighty-something. Well, I’m going to have him working at the old stand again, right away.”

  Miss Scobell looked up from her paper, which she had been reading with absorbed interest throughout tins harangue.

  “Dear?” she said enquiringly.

  “I say I’m going to have him back again,” said Mr. Scobell, a little damped. “I wish you would listen.”

  “I think you’re quite right, dear. Who?”

  “The Prince. Do listen, Marion. The Prince of this island, His Highness, the Prince of Mervo. I’m going to send for him and put him on the throne again.”

  “You can’t, dear. He’s dead.”

  “I know he’s dead. You can’t faze me on the history of this place. He died in ninety-one. But before he died he married an American girl, and there’s a son, who’s in America now, living with his uncle. It’s the son I’m going to send for. I got it all from General Poineau. He’s a royalist. He’ll be tickled to pieces when Johnny comes marching home again. Old man Poineau told me all about it. The Prince married a girl called Westley, and then he was killed in an automobile accident, and his widow went back to America with the kid, to live with her brother. Poineau says he could lay his hand on him any time he pleased.”

  “I hope you won’t do anything rash, dear,” said his sister comfortably. “I’m sure we don’t want any horrid revolution here, with people shooting and stabbing each other.”

  “Revolution?” cried Mr. Scobell. “Revolution! Well, I should say nix! Revolution nothing. I’m the man with the big stick in Mervo. Pretty near every adult on this island is dependent on my Casino for his weekly envelope, and what I say goes—without argument. I want a prince, so I gotta have a prince, and if any gazook makes a noise like a man with a grouch, he’ll find himself fired.”

  Miss Scobell turned to her paper again.

  “Very well, dear,” she said. “Just as you please. I’m sure you know best.”

  “Sure!” said her brother. “You’re a good guesser. I’ll go and beat up old man Poineau right away.”

  CHAPTER III

  JOHN

  Ten days after Mr. Scobell’s visit to General Poineau, John, Prince of Mervo, ignorant of the greatness so soon to be thrust upon him, was strolling thoughtfully along one of the main thoroughfares of that outpost of civilization, Jersey City. He was a big young man, tall and large of limb. His shoulders especially were of the massive type expressly designed by nature for driving wide gaps in the opposing line on the gridiron. He looked like one of nature’s center-rushes, and had, indeed, played in that position for Harvard during two strenuous seasons. His face wore an expression of invincible good-humor. He had a wide, good-natured mouth, and a pair of friendly gray eyes. One felt that he liked his follow men and would be surprised and pained if they did not like him.

  As he passed along the street, he looked a little anxious. Sherlock Holmes—and possibly even Doctor Watson—would have deduced that he had something on his conscience.

  At the entrance to a large office building, he paused, and seemed to hesitate. Then, as if he had made up his mind to face an ordeal, he went in and pressed the button of the elevator.

  Leaving the elevator at the third floor, he went down the passage, and pushed open a door on which was inscribed the legend, “Westley, Martin & Co.”

  A stout youth, walking across the office with his hands full of papers, stopped in astonishment.

  “Hello, John Maude!” he cried.

  The young man grinned.

  “Say, where have you been? The old man’s been as mad as a hornet since he found you had quit without leave. He was asking for you just now.”

  “I guess I’m up against it,” admitted John cheerfully.

  “Where did you go yesterday?”

  John put the thing to him candidly, as man to man.

  “See here, Spiller, suppose you got up one day and found it was a perfectly bully morning, and remembered that the Giants were playing the Athletics, and looked at your mail, and saw that someone had sent you a pass for the game—”

  “Were you at the ball-game? You’ve got the nerve! Didn’t you know there would be trouble?”

  “Old man,” said John frankly, “I could no more have turned down that pass— Oh, well, what’s the use? It was just great. I suppose I’d better tackle the boss now. It’s got to be done.”

  It was not a task to which many would have looked forward. Most of those who came into contact with Andrew Westley were afraid of him. He was a capable rather than a lovable man, and too self-controlled to be quite human. There was no recoil in him, no reaction after anger, as there would have been in a hotter-tempered man. He thought before he acted, but, when he acted, never yielded a step.

  John, in all the years of their connection, had never been able to make anything of him. At first, he had been prepared to like him, as he liked nearly everybody. But Mr. Westley had discouraged all advances, and, as time went by, his nephew had come to look on him as something apart from the rest of the world, one of those things which no fellow could understand.

  On Mr. Westley’s side, there was something to be said in extenuation of his attitude. John reminded him of his father, and he had hated the late Prince of Mervo with a cold hatred that had for a time been the ruling passion of his life. He had loved his sister, and her married life had been one long torture to him, a torture rendered keener by the fact that he was powerless to protect either her happiness or her money. Her money was her own, to use as she pleased, and the use which pleased her most was to give it to her husband, who could always find a way of spending it. As to her happiness, that was equally out of his control. It was bound up in her Prince, who, unfortunately, was a bad custodian for it. At last, an automobile accident put an end to His Highness’s hectic career (and, incidentally, to that of a blonde lady from the Folies Bergeres), and the Princess had returned to her brother’s home, where, a year later, she died, leaving him in charge of her infant son.

  Mr. Westley’s desire from the first had been to eliminate as far as possible all memory of the late Prince. He gave John his sister’s name, Maude, and brought him up as an American, in total ignorance of his father’s identity. During all the years they had spent together, he had never mentioned the Prince’s name.

  He disliked John intensely. He fed him, clothed him, sent him to college, and gave him a place in his office, but he never for a moment relaxed his bleakness of front toward him. John was not unlike his father in appearance, though built on a larger scale, and, as time went on, little mannerisms, too, began to show themselves, that reminded Mr. Westley of
the dead man, and killed any beginnings of affection.

  John, for his part, had the philosophy which goes with perfect health. He fitted his uncle into the scheme of things, or, rather, set him outside them as an irreconcilable element, and went on his way enjoying life in his own good-humored fashion.

  It was only lately, since he had joined the firm, that he had been conscious of any great strain. College had given him a glimpse of a larger life, and the office cramped him. He felt vaguely that there were bigger things in the world which he might be doing. His best friends, of whom he now saw little, were all men of adventure and enterprise, who had tried their hand at many things; men like Jimmy Pitt, who had done nearly everything that could be done before coming into an unexpected half-million; men like Rupert Smith, who had been at Harvard with him and was now a reporter on the News; men like Baker, Faraday, Williams—he could name half-a-dozen, all men who were doing something, who were out on the firing line.

  He was not a man who worried. He had not that temperament. But sometimes he would wonder in rather a vague way whether he was not allowing life to slip by him a little too placidly. An occasional yearning for something larger would attack him. There seemed to be something in him that made for inaction. His soul was sleepy.

  If he had been told of the identity of his father, it is possible that he might have understood. The Princes of Mervo had never taken readily to action and enterprise. For generations back, if they had varied at all, son from father, it had been in the color of hair or eyes, not in character—a weak, shiftless procession, with nothing to distinguish them from the common run of men except good looks and a talent for wasting money.

  John was the first of the line who had in him the seeds of better things. The Westley blood and the bracing nature of his education had done much to counteract the Mervo strain. He did not know it, but the American in him was winning. The desire for action was growing steadily every day.

  It had been Mervo that had sent him to the polo grounds on the previous day. That impulse had been purely Mervian. No prince of that island had ever resisted a temptation. But it was America that was sending him now to meet his uncle with a quiet unconcern as to the outcome of the interview. The spirit of adventure was in him. It was more than possible that Mr. Westley would sink the uncle in the employer and dismiss him as summarily as he would have dismissed any other clerk in similar circumstances. If so, he was prepared to welcome dismissal. Other men fought an unsheltered fight with the world, so why not he?