If Sinners Entice Thee

by William Le Queux

spanking pace,but in front the road to Monte Carlo rose steeply, and soon they wereonly travelling at walking pace.

  "Quicker!" he cried, impatiently to the driver; and with an oath added:"Whip your horses! Quicker!"

  "Impossible, m'sieur," the man answered without turning towards him.

  The moments that went by during that slow ascent seemed hours. Eachinstant he expected to hear loud cries and demands as the police boredown upon him. He knew that his face must betray the deadly terror thatheld him paralysed. Like a fox going to cover he had headedinstinctively for Monte Carlo, but knew not how he was about to act, orwhither he was going. He knew that he must fly to save his liberty andlife, and had a vague idea that if he crossed into Italy the pursuitwould thereby be delayed.

  "Where to, m'sieur?" inquired the driver, when at last they gained thebrow of the hill.

  "The Casino! Quick!" he answered, after an instant's reflection. Thento himself, he muttered behind his set teeth: "One throw. My lastchance. Life or death!"

  He sprang from the cab, tossed the man a ten-franc piece, and ran up thered-carpeted steps to the atrium, showed his white ticket to the twodoorkeepers, and entered the hot, garish gaming-rooms.

  The atmosphere was troubled, faint with the thousand perfumes exhaledfrom the tightly-laced corsets of the women. Charming and pretty asmany of the latter are, they are, nevertheless, designedly orunconsciously, the most active and dangerous companions at the tables.Their influence upon their fellow-players is always on the side of thebank.

  Queen Roulette is the most absorbing and most imperious of allmistresses. The most determined, young or old, audacious or timid, findthemselves powerless to resist her, for when the fatal fascinationcreeps upon them she engages their brain, saps their spirit, holdscaptive their senses, breaks asunder their resolutions, and lures themto their ruin. She is indeed an enchantress infernal.

  The jingle and chatter jarred upon his unstrung nerves. For a moment hestood nauseated, half-dazed by the thousand memories, hideous spectresof a guilty past, that crowded upon him.

  But again he walked forward blindly, on past several of the tablesencircled by their hot, eager crowds, until he came to the Moorish room.As he was passing a man rose wearily from the roulette-table with aroll of notes in his hand, and instantly he took his chair. He cast afurtive glance around the circle of faces, pale beneath the green-shadedoil lamps suspended from the long brass chains. The emotions of hope,disgust, anxiety, or greed were displayed on each of the perspiringcountenances ranged around that table. Next him was a beautiful womanwell-known in Riviera society, winning, and therefore a little excited,her cheeks burning with two bright spots, her eyes shining like lamps;and she looked like a girl as she now and then heaved a deep sigh. Nexther a blotchy-faced man, smelling strongly of rank cigars, was playingand losing heavily, his countenance betraying nothing more than ahalf-hearted smile, while opposite a staid matron made room for herdaughter, and handed her money to put on, believing, as so many believe,that innocence is a kind of "mascot."

  He lowered his gaze. The deathly pallor of his own cheeks had attractednotice. It seemed as though these people, many of them personally knownto him, held him in suspicion.

  He paused in hesitation, holding his breath the while, trying to calmthe wild tumultuous throbbing of his heart.

  "_Messieurs, faites vos jeux_!"

  The red and black disc in the centre of the table was revolving, themoney was already placed within the squares, and the little ivory ballhad already been launched when, with sudden resolve, he drew from hispocket a louis and tossed it carelessly upon the scarlet diamond.

  "Gain, I fly!" he murmured to himself. "Lose, I remain."

  In flinging the coin his hand had lost its deftness, for instead offalling flat, it fell upon its edge and rolled from the "red" over theline into the "impair."

  At that instant sounded the monotonous wearying cry,--

  "_Rien ne va plus_!"

  Then there was a moment's hush, the ball fell with a click into itssocket, and the croupier's rake came swiftly before his fevered eyes andswept away the coin he had staked.

  He had lost, and would remain.

  Glancing round, his lips curled in a bitter smile; at the same moment,however, he placed his trembling hand to his mouth, as if to stifle animprecation.

  Glaring, rigid and desperate he sat, his dark eyes, the eyes that hadbeen so admired by the women, fixed upon the ever-revolving disc ofblack and red now holding him in fascination. Suddenly, as another gamewas being played, a spasm of excruciating pain caused him to clap bothhands to his brow and utter a low groan. It was the gasp of a dyingman, but amid the terrible excitement of play it passed unnoticed, andnone dreamed the truth until a moment or two later when, with a wild,despairing shriek which rang through the hot gilded rooms and caused aninstant's hush, he half-rose from his chair and fell forward upon thetable lifeless, scattering the gold, silver and notes staked by theplayers, and causing a terrible scene of alarm and confusion.

  His heart had always been weak, and the sudden excitement of play hadcaused a rupture which had proved fatal.

  Such was the official account of the affair given in the papers, for theadministration of the Casino were careful not to let the public knowthat in the dead man's pocket was found a tiny bottle labelled"Quinine," containing several white tabloids which, on analysis, werefound to be of strychnine.

  Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the public remained in ignoranceof this last-mentioned fact, when it is remembered that theAdministration of the Cercle des Etrangers spends some hundreds ofthousands of francs annually among the journals and journalists in orderto conceal the many suicides which take place in their world-famouscombination of paradise and hell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

  CONCLUSION.

  George and Liane, fervent in their newly-found happiness, were marriedshortly afterwards in the village church of Stratfield Mortimer, the oldtime-worn place where for generations his family had been christened,married, and placed to rest, each latter event being recorded upon thetarnished monumental brasses. By Mariette's refusal he received the sumstipulated by his father's will, and for a year they lived high up onSydenham Hill, in a house which set its face towards the deep valleywherein murky London lies ever beneath its smoke-pall, George journeyingeach day to his gloomy chambers into which no ray of sunlight had everbeen known to penetrate.

  By the death of his elder brother, the result of an accident whilehunting last winter, he, however, suddenly found himself the possessorof Stratfield with its handsome income, and to-day both he and Lianelive at the Court, and are prominent figures in the county. Liane'ssweet, beautiful face, graceful bearing and vivacious _chic_, cause herto be admired everywhere, and among the many charming young hostesses ofBerkshire no one is so popular.

  Mariette, no longer known as "The Golden Hand," has married MaxRichards, and still lives in her pretty villa where the salon windowsopen upon the blue Mediterranean. Each spring Liane and George spend afew weeks with them, while they, in return, come to England in summer,and are welcome guests at Stratfield.

  Through many months it was a profound mystery how old Sir John becameaware of Mariette's existence, but this was cleared up quiteunexpectedly one day by George, who, in turning over some of hisfather's papers, discovered a letter written by his unknown brotherCharles, who informed the old Baronet that he had lost a considerablesum at cards to a certain Captain Brooker, and also stated that he wasabout to marry, and gave Mariette's name and some facts concerning her.From this letter the old gentleman would no doubt suspect her to be anadventuress, and therefore, in his paroxysm of anger at George's refusalto renounce Liane, he made a provision in his will that this unknownwoman should marry him, instead of the son he had discarded, and ofwhose death he was unaware.

  In the great oak-panelled drawing-room at Stratfield, with its quaintdiamond panes, deep-set mullioned windows and polished floor, there nowhangs Cosway's beau
tiful miniature of Lady Anne, and each time husbandand wife glance at it they remember how very near they once were toeternal separation and blank despair. But devoted to one another, theirlife is now one of unalloyed happiness. The clouds have lifted, andtheir days are as bright and joyous as they once long ago imagined intheir day-dreams. The Captain is back in his old-fashioned iviedcottage in the village, but dines each evening at the Court, where thecigars are choice and the wines well-matured. Only once have George andLiane walked together to that fateful spot beyond the railway bridge inCross Lane. But for both of them its sight brought back memories sobitter that by mutual agreement they now always avoid passing thatunfrequented way.

  To that estimable body of men, the Berkshire Constabulary, the motive ofthe assassination of Nelly Bridson and the identity of her assassinremain still a mystery, as they will for ever.

  The End.