An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay, - [digital e reader TXT] 📗

Next round, Charles dealing and banking, the poet staked on his card, unseen as usual. He staked like a gentleman. To our immense astonishment he pulled out a roll of notes, and remarked, in a quiet tone, "I have an inspiration now. Half-hearted will do. I go five thousand." That was dollars, of course; but it amounted to a thousand pounds in English money—high play for an author.

Charles smiled and turned his card. The poet turned his—and won a thousand.

"Good shot!" Charles murmured, pretending not to mind, though he detests losing.

"Inspiration!" the poet mused, and looked once more abstracted.

Charles dealt again. The poet watched the deal with boiled-fishy eyes. His thoughts were far away. His lips moved audibly. "Myrtle, and kirtle, and hurtle," he muttered. "They'll do for three. Then there's turtle, meaning dove; and that finishes the possible. Laurel and coral make a very bad rhyme. Try myrtle; don't you think so?"

"Do you stake?" Charles asked, severely, interrupting his reverie.

The poet started. "No, pass," he replied, looking down at his card, and subsided into muttering. We caught a tremor of his lips again, and heard something like this: "Not less but more republican than thou, Half-hearted watcher by the Western sea, After long years I come to visit thee, And test thy fealty to that maiden vow, That bound thee in thy budding prime For Freedom's bride—"

"Stake?" Charles interrupted, inquiringly, again.

"Yes, five thousand," the poet answered dreamily, pushing forward his pile of notes, and never ceasing from his murmur: "For Freedom's bride to all succeeding time. Succeeding; succeeding; weak word, succeeding. Couldn't go five dollars on it."

Charles turned his card once more. The poet had won again. Charles passed over his notes. The poet raked them in with a far-away air, as one who looks at infinity, and asked if he could borrow a pencil and paper. He had a few priceless lines to set down which might otherwise escape him.

"This is play," Charles said pointedly. "Will you kindly attend to one thing or the other?"

The poet glanced at him with a compassionate smile. "I told you I had inspirations," he said. "They always come together. I can't win your money as fast as I would like, unless at the same time I am making verses. Whenever I hit upon a good epithet, I back my luck, don't you see? I won a thousand on half-hearted and a thousand on budding; if I were to back succeeding, I should lose, to a certainty. You understand my system?"

"I call it pure rubbish," Charles answered. "However, continue. Systems were made for fools—and to suit wise men. Sooner or later you must lose at such a stupid fancy."

The poet continued. "For Freedom's bride to all ensuing time."

"Stake!" Charles cried sharply. We each of us staked.

"Ensuing," the poet murmured. "To all ensuing time. First-rate epithet that. I go ten thousand, Sir Charles, on ensuing."

We all turned up. Some of us lost, some won; but the poet had secured his two thousand sterling.

"I haven't that amount about me," Charles said, in that austerely nettled voice which he always assumes when he loses at cards; "but—I'll settle it with you to-morrow."

"Another round?" the host asked, beaming.

"No, thank you," Charles answered; "Mr. Coleyard's inspirations come too pat for my taste. His luck beats mine. I retire from the game, Senator."

Just at that moment a servant entered, bearing a salver, with a small note in an envelope. "For Mr. Coleyard," he observed; "and the messenger said, urgent."

Coleyard tore it open hurriedly. I could see he was agitated. His face grew white at once.

"I—I beg your pardon," he said. "I—I must go back instantly. My wife is dangerously ill—quite a sudden attack. Forgive me, Senator. Sir Charles, you shall have your revenge to-morrow."

It was clear that his voice faltered. We felt at least he was a man of feeling. He was obviously frightened. His coolness forsook him. He shook hands as in a dream, and rushed downstairs for his dust-coat. Almost as he closed the front door, a new guest entered, just missing him in the vestibule.

"Halloa, you men," he said, "we've been taken in, do you know? It's all over the Lotus. The man we made an honorary member of the club to-day is not Algernon Coleyard. He's a blatant impostor. There's a telegram come in on the tape to-night saying Algernon Coleyard is dangerously ill at his home in England."

Charles gasped a violent gasp. "Colonel Clay!" he shouted, aloud. "And once more he's done me. There's not a moment to lose. After him, gentlemen! after him!"

Never before in our lives had we had such a close shave of catching and fixing the redoubtable swindler. We burst down the stairs in a body, and rushed out into Fifth Avenue. The pretended poet had only a hundred yards' start of us, and he saw he was discovered. But he was an excellent runner. So was I, weight for age; and I dashed wildly after him. He turned round a corner; it proved to lead nowhere, and lost him time. He darted back again, madly. Delighted with the idea that I was capturing so famous a criminal, I redoubled my efforts—and came up with him, panting. He was wearing a light dust-coat. I seized it in my hands. "I've got you at last!" I cried; "Colonel Clay, I've got you!"

He turned and looked at me. "Ha, old Ten Per Cent!" he called out, struggling. "It's you, then, is it? Never, never to you, sir!" And as he spoke, he somehow flung his arms straight out behind him, and let the dust-coat slip off, which it easily did, the sleeves being new and smoothly silk-lined. The suddenness of the movement threw me completely off my guard, and off my legs as well. I was clinging to the coat and holding him. As the support gave way I rolled over backward, in the mud of the street, and hurt my back seriously. As for Colonel Clay, with a nervous laugh, he bolted off at full speed in his evening coat, and vanished round a corner.

It was some seconds before I had sufficiently recovered my breath to pick myself up again, and examine my bruises. By this time Charles and the other pursuers had come up, and I explained my condition to them. Instead of commending me for my zeal in his cause—which had cost me a barked arm and a good evening suit—my brother-in-law remarked, with an unfeeling sneer, that when I had so nearly caught my man I might as well have held him.

"I have his coat, at least," I said. "That may afford us a clue." And I limped back with it in my hands, feeling horribly bruised and a good deal shaken.

When we came to examine the coat, however, it bore no maker's name; the strap at the back, where the tailor proclaims with pride his handicraft, had been carefully ripped off, and its place was taken by a tag of plain black tape without inscription of any sort. We searched the breast-pocket. A handkerchief, similarly nameless, but of finest cambric. The side-pockets—ha, what was this? I drew a piece of paper out in triumph. It was a note—a real find—the one which the servant had handed to our friend just before at the Senator's.

We read it through breathlessly:—

"DARLING PAUL,—I told you it was too dangerous. You should have listened to me. You ought never to have imitated any real person. I happened to glance at the hotel tape just now, to see the quotations for Cloetedorps to-day, and what do you think I read as part of the latest telegram from England? 'Mr. Algernon Coleyard, the famous poet, is lying on his death-bed at his home in Devonshire.' By this time all New York knows. Don't stop one minute. Say I'm dangerously ill, and come away at once. Don't return to the hotel. I am removing our things. Meet me at Mary's. Your devoted, MARGOT."

"This is very important," Charles said. "This does give us a clue. We know two things now: his real name is Paul—whatever else it may be, and Madame Picardet's is Margot."

I searched the pocket again, and pulled out a ring. Evidently he had thrust these two things there when he saw me pursuing him, and had forgotten or neglected them in the heat of the m�l�e.

I looked at it close. It was the very ring I had noticed on his finger while he was playing Swedish poker. It had a large compound gem in the centre, set with many facets, and rising like a pyramid to a point in the middle. There were eight faces in all, some of them composed of emerald, amethyst, or turquoise. But one face—the one that turned at a direct angle towards the wearer's eye—was not a gem at all, but an extremely tiny convex mirror. In a moment I spotted the trick. He held this hand carelessly on the table while my brother-in-law dealt; and when he saw that the suit and number of his own card mirrored in it by means of the squeezers were better than Charles's, he had "an inspiration," and backed his luck—or rather his knowledge—with perfect confidence. I did not doubt, either, that his odd-looking eyeglass was a powerful magnifier which helped him in the trick. Still, we tried another deal, by way of experiment—I wearing the ring; and even with the naked eye I was able to distinguish in every case the suit and pips of the card that was dealt me.

"Why, that was almost dishonest," the Senator said, drawing back. He wished to show us that even far-Western speculators drew a line somewhere.

"Yes," the magazine editor echoed. "To back your skill is legal; to back your luck is foolish; to back your knowledge is—"

"Immoral," I suggested.

"Very good business," said the magazine editor.

"It's a simple trick," Charles interposed. "I should have spotted it if it had been done by any other fellow. But his patter about inspiration put me clean off the track. That's the rascal's dodge. He plays the regular conjurer's game of distracting your attention from the real point at issue—so well that you never find out what he's really about till he's sold you irretrievably."

We set the New York police upon the trail of the Colonel; but of course he had vanished at once, as usual, into the thin smoke of Manhattan. Not a sign could we find of him. "Mary's," we found an insufficient address.

We waited on in New York for a whole fortnight. Nothing came of it. We never found "Mary's." The only token of Colonel Clay's presence vouchsafed us in the city was one of his customary insulting notes. It was conceived as follows:—

"O ETERNAL GULLIBLE!—Since I saw you on Lake George, I have run back to London, and promptly come out again. I had business to transact there, indeed, which I have now completed; the excessive attentions of the English police sent me once more, like great Orion, "sloping slowly to the west." I returned to America in order to see whether or not you were still impenitent. On the day of my arrival I happened to meet Senator Wrengold, and accepted his kind invitation solely that I might see how far my last communication had had a proper effect upon you. As I found you quite obdurate, and as you furthermore persisted in misunderstanding my motives, I determined to read you one more small lesson. It nearly failed; and I confess the accident has affected my nerves a little. I am now about to retire from business altogether, and settle down for life at my place in Surrey. I mean to try just one more small coup; and, when that is finished, Colonel Clay will hang up his sword, like Cincinnatus, and take to farming. You need no longer fear me. I have realised enough to secure me for life a modest competence; and as I am not possessed like yourself with an immoderate greed of gain, I recognise that good citizenship demands of me now an early retirement in favour of some younger and more deserving rascal. I shall always look back with pleasure upon our agreeable adventures together; and as you hold my dust-coat, together with a ring and letter to which I attach importance, I consider we are quits, and I shall withdraw with dignity. Your sincere well-wisher, CUTHBERT CLAY, Poet."

"Just like him!" Charles said, "to hold this one last coup over my head in terrorem. Though even when he has played it, why should I trust his word? A scamp like that may say it, of course, on purpose to disarm me."

For my own part, I quite agreed with "Margot." When the Colonel was reduced to dressing the part of a known personage I felt he had reached almost his last card, and would be well advised to retire into Surrey.

But the magazine editor summed up