THEN began the great struggle of Margot Leblanc to regain the money she had lost. It was a pitiable, pathetic struggle, full of desperate hope. Starting with ten francs, she sought to win back the two thousand needed to buy the shop with Jeanne. She kept her room at the pension, but gave up taking her meals there. Instead she had a cup of coffee and a roll in a cheap café in the Condamine. She would do without sleep, she told herself; she would be shabby and shiver with cold ... but she would win back that money!
Every morning she took her place among that weird and shabby mob of women who storm the Casino doors at opening time, and scramble for places at the tables, hoping to sell them in the afternoon to some prosperous player. The Casino, which had been the cause of their ruin, lets them thus eke out a miserable existence. Threadbare creatures with vulturish faces, they hang over the tables, quick-clawed to clutch up the stakes of the unwary.
Margot was glad of every opportunity to make a little money by selling her place. It meant the price of a square meal: spaghetti, and salad and cheese, in a cheap Italian restaurant in Beausoleil. Otherwise, when an increasing dizziness warned her that she had not yet broken her fast, she had to seek a quiet corner of the gardens, and lunch on a bit of chocolate and some bread. Then she would hurry back to the Casino, fearful that in her absence a chance had come up to make a few francs.
It was a weary, anxious existence. Sometimes indeed she got down to her last five francs before a sudden turn of luck exalted her again to the heights of hope. The effect on her nerves was terrible. Her nights became haunted. Roulette wheels whirled before her closed eyes and she often dreamed of a mighty one that turned into a great whirlpool, in which she and all the other players were spinning around helplessly. And always, just as she was being sucked down into the vortex, she awoke.
One evening as she sat in a corner of the gardens, silent and absorbed, a man approached her. He was dark and weedy, and his eyebrows twitched up and down continually. She recognized him as one of her fellow-lodgers at the pension, and she had heard him addressed as Monsieur Martel. After looking sharply at her, he took a seat by her side.
“Had any luck lately?” he asked with that freemasonry of gamblers that permits of a promiscuous conversation.
Silently she shook her head.
He lighted a cigarette. “It’s a cruel game,” he observed. “God help the poor pikers who haven’t enough capital to defend themselves. I had a hard fight to-day. I was obliged to play a martingale up to five thousand francs, all to win a wretched louis. But I got out all right. I imagine you have not been very successful yourself lately. I have seen you losing.”
She nodded. He drew comfortably nearer.
“Well, that’s too bad. By the way, if I can be of any help to you, give you any advice.... I have a considerable knowledge of the game....”
She laughed bitterly. “I, too, Monsieur, have a considerable knowledge of the game. But there ... that is all the capital I have in the world, ten francs.”
She held out two white chips in her shabby, gloved hand. He noted the smallness of the hand, and the glimpse of milk-white wrist between the glove and the threadbare jacket. He drew nearer still.
“Ah! it’s hopeless,” he said, “when one gets down so low. Why not let me make you a loan? I shall never miss it. You can repay me out of your winnings. Let me lend you a trifle, say five hundred.”
She looked at him steadily for a moment. “But I have no security to give you,” she said at last.
He laughed easily. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. Of course, we are speaking as one Monte Carloite to another. We understand each other. If I am nice to you, you will be nice to me. My room at the pension is number fourteen. If you come down and see me this evening I have no doubt we can arrange matters.”
She rose. In the shadow he could not see the loathing in her eyes. These men ... they were all alike. Beasts! She left him without a word.
He waited in his room that night, wondering if she would come. She did not. He went off to the Casino laughing comfortably. Life was a great game.
“If it isn’t to-night,” he said to himself, “it will be to-morrow or the day after. A little more hunger, a little more despair. I have but to wait. She will come to me. If she doesn’t, what matter? There are lots of others.”
Some days later she sat in her room staring at her face in the cheap mirror. There were dark circles around her weary eyes. Her cheeks were thinned to pathetic hollows, her mouth drooped with despair and defeat. The Casino had beaten her. She was sick, weak, nervously unstrung. Try as she would she could not get back her old healthy view of life; that was the worst of it. Gambling had poisoned the very blood in her veins.
She had no money to take her back to Paris, even if she were willing to go, and she felt she would rather die than write and ask for help. Then to take up the burden of labour again, the life of struggle without hope and with misery to crown it all, ... Ah! she knew it so well. She had seen too many of her comrades fight and fall. Must she too work as they worked, until her strength was exhausted and she perished in poverty?
There was death, of course! Only last week a young girl, after pawning all her trinkets, shot herself under the railway bridge. She would do better than that; she had some little white powders.
Then there was the compromise. Why not? Who under the circumstances would dare to tell her that death was better than dishonour? And yet ... she hated to think of doing it. She preferred to steal. Funny, wasn’t it? Her sense of morality was curious. She would rather be a thief than a harlot.
But she had no chance to be a thief. It would have to be the other thing. Rising she put rouge on her ghastly cheeks then rubbed it off again. No, not just yet! She would ask the young man for the five hundred francs. If he demanded the quid pro quo she would beg him to wait until to-morrow. Then she would go to the Casino and risk all. If she won she would return him his money, and say she had changed her mind. If she lost ... well, there was the white powder....
She would ask him at once. How dark and silent the house was. Room fourteen was on the floor below. Softly she crept down the shabby stairs. She had to put on her cloak; she shivered so.
That was his door. She hesitated, inclined to turn back. Perhaps he had gone out. Her heart was beating horribly and the hand she put out trembled. She knocked. There was no answer. Softly she tried the handle of the door.
END OF BOOK ONE