“Just fancy Cynthia as a stepmother!”
MURDER AT MONTE CARLO, OR WOLVES AMONGST THE HONEY
CHAPTER I
Paul Viotti tapped with the tips of his finger nails the five cards which lay face downwards before him upon the green baize table. His four companions took the hint and prepared to listen. This was no ordinary card room in which the five men had met. It was the Holy of Holies in the most famous gambling club of New York. He would be a brave man who sought entrance there while a séance was being held.
“To-night,” he said, “we are to speak of serious things. Perhaps I am more careful of my health than you others. Anyway, I know when the going is good. One gang against us was dangerous enough. We had all we could take care of when Tim Rooney brought his boys out. Now there are two. I am for fighting when I think that we’ll win. Now I am sure that we shall lose if we go on, I say let us get away.”
His four companions listened in absorbed interest. The game was momentarily forgotten. The cards lay untouched, the chips uncounted. Each seemed to have adopted a different attitude. Marcus Constantine—he was known under a different name in Paris and on the French Riviera—a long, graceful-looking youth, pale of complexion, with dark eyes and a curiously sensitive mouth, slouched across the table, his head supported between his hands, his eyes fixed upon his chief as though afraid of missing a single word. Matthew Drane, a good-looking, elaborately dressed man with smoothly brushed brown hair, pink-complexioned, with a humorous mouth and a right hand which was reputed to be the quickest in the world at drawing a lethal weapon from the obscurity of a hidden pocket, listened with equal interest but more geniality. Tom Meredith, his neighbour, the flamboyant beau of the party, a pudgy-faced, narrow-eyed man of early middle age, dressed in imitation Savile Row cut tweeds, a shirt of violent design and a shameless tie, grunted his impartial approval of the scheme, whilst Edward Staines opposite, a tired-looking man who had the appearance of a successful but hard-working lawyer, listened with the slightly cynical air of one predisposed towards pessimism.
“That’s all very well for you, Paul,” the latter remarked. “You’ve got a country to go to where you can buy a mountain or two and an old castle and live like a lord for a few dollars a year. What the hell are we going to do, fussing about Europe? I’ll admit we’re up against a tough proposition here with this gang of Tim Rooney’s hanging about after our territory, but what about lying low for a few months?”
“No damn’ good that,” Tom Meredith objected. “While we are lying low, Tim would be organising and we should never get our feet in again. Seems to me we’re about through with this racket. We’ve got to either split up or find some place where the Star Spangled Banner doesn’t flutter. We’ve had the cream. Let’s leave the slops for Tim.”
Paul Viotti, a swarthy, black-haired Corsican, expensively dressed, clean-shaven and perfumed, shook a fat forefinger at them all, a forefinger upon which flashed a wickedly assertive diamond.
“I’ve got a hunch for you,” he announced. “There’s only one place for us in the world. Money there for the picking up and a clear field.”
Marcus Constantine looked swiftly across the table.
“Where’s that?” he demanded.
“The South of France,” was the prompt and triumphant reply. “Listen, I got a brother there and I know something. Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo—why at the baccarat there there’s millions, millions you can handle, mind, in good mille notes, changes hands every night. Suckers there by the thousands and not a nursemaid to look after them. Hauling liquor round here has been a good-enough job while it lasted, but the shooting’s getting a bit too free and easy for me.”
The long young man, Marcus Constantine, tapped a cigarette upon the table and lit it. There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes.
“I’ll say that Paul is dead right,” he declared. “As you fellows know, I’m over there every year. I’ve got crowds of friends and I know the runs. Matthew isn’t exactly a stranger there, either.”
Paul Viotti smiled upon them all beneficently with outstretched hands.
“You hear Marcus?” he exclaimed. “He knows what he talks about. My brother over there, too. He knows. He’s not in the game, but he knows. What I say is that we wander over there separately, take our time about it, mind; look at Paris and London first. Wait until people have forgotten what they may have heard about us out here. Time enough if we