# Terence O'Rourke/Part 2/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII
THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT
The tables were fairly well filled; the European element in Tangiers was amusing itself in the only way it knew. For there is nothing in particular to do in Tangiers, after the mail boat has come in and the home newspapers have been hungrily devoured—every blessed line of them, even to the advertisements.
There are, of course, pig-stickings and picnics; but after a while these pall upon one; and the small talk of the exiles is not exhilarating after one has learned all the noisome details that led up to this or that person's selection of Tangiers as a permanent residence.
And when one is tired, the tables are always open in the big, gilded salon—open and dispensing their opiate of feverish excitement that deadens one's sense of degradation and one's heartache.
O'Rourke strolled among the tables, watching the play, but without any great interest; his mind was filled with speculation about the Consul-General and the Countess of Seyn-Altberg; he was recalling the little scene out there on the piazza, and wondering what it all meant.
One thing was very evident to him,—that Senet was desperately and hopelessly in love with the Countess. But the whole affair was something of an enigma, and O'Rourke found himself vainly racking his brains to recall something that he had once heard, and forgotten, in reference to the ​countess—some bit of rumor, not entirely creditable to the woman's husband.
What was it? Faith, he couldn't nail it down, at all, at all; it was right there, on the tip of his tongue, so to speak, but it wouldn't form itself into coherency; something—
Impatient with himself for bothering his head over other people's business, O'Rourke sat him down in a big armchair, placed comfortably between two of the long French windows that opened out upon the piazza. He started a fresh cigar, and tried to put young Senet and his hopeless love affair out of his mind.
But he was not to be permitted to forget. For a gambling room, this salon was rather quiet; the patrons at the tables were mostly hardened habitués, who placed their stakes and accepted losses and gains with silent aplomb. Only the croaking of the croupier and the chatter of the chips sounded loudly.
So that it was an easy matter to accustom one's ears to outside noises. O'Rourke found himself attentive to the measured tread of a couple who were promenading the veranda—listening to their footsteps die out in the distance, and then gradually come to a crescendo as they approached and passed his windows.
They were a man and a woman—he knew that from the rustle of the woman's skirts and the heavy, steady tread of the man. And quite suddenly he knew the woman from her voice, when she spoke in passing.
It was the Countess of Seyn-Altberg.
And the man? O'Rourke grew impatient for their return, that he might place the fellow by his voice. When they did come back, however, he was disappointed; he did not recognize those guttural accents.
​But the words of the man startled him. They were speaking in German, to which O'Rourke was no stranger. And—
"Frankly, countess," he heard the man's voice, "it is the money that is of moment with me—"
The tone was insolent to an extreme—a triumphant sneer O'Rourke analyzed it. Unconsciously he held his breath when they again approached.
This time it was the woman who was speaking.
"But you have taken everything—everything!" she was saying drearily. "I have nothing left—"
"Five thousand pounds, English—or exposure!" interrupted the man.
They passed and returned.
"I am tired, tired!" cried the woman passionately. "I do not care—"
"Ah, countess; but think of the shame—"
"Don't—ah, don't!" she wailed.
"This," muttered O'Rourke, "begins to smell most damnably like blackmail—and the dirtiest kind, at that! Faith, 'tis hardly honorable, but 'tis meself that will listen—for Senet's sake," he soothed his conscience.
Again they passed.
"That," said the man, in accents of finality, "or marriage!"
"But—but I cannot marry you, Herr Captain!"
"Captain, eh?" said O'Rourke.
"Europe need never know that your husband lives, countess."
The woman stopped, and the man halted with her. O'Rourke could hear the hurried, desperate sound of her breathing. He fancied that he could see her, pale with rage and dread, as she faced the oppressor.
"I will not! I will not!" cried the woman. "You have gone too far,—too far, Herr Captain! I warn you—"
​"Countess," mocked the man, "pardon—a thousand pardons!" He laughed harshly. "I give you until to-morrow evening, my countess!" he said.
"Now to interfere," thought O'Rourke.
As his shadow fell across the light oblong cast by the French window, the man turned; their eyes met.
O'Rourke knew him instantly. "Ah!" he said, bowing mockingly. "Good evening, Captain von Wever!"
The German looked him up and down, twirling his mustaches.
"Good evening," he returned curtly, with a slight inclination of his head; and showed his back to O'Rourke.
The Irishman was no wise disconcerted. He remained standing in the window, inhaling the night air. For a moment the tableau held; then the woman took the initiative.
"Then," she said with a courteous little laugh,—the perfection of dramatic art,—extending her hand, "I may drop you a line to-morrow, Captain von Wever."
The German bent low as he took his dismissal. "I shall be desolated if I do not hear from you—by evening, Mrs. Dean," he said. "Good night." And he stalked down the steps and out to the street.
As for the woman, she hurried into the hotel. O'Rourke remained where he was, simulating admiration for the beauty of the night, but, in reality, busily trying to build a working hypothesis of the case out of the fragments he had overheard.
It was, admittedly, none of his affair. But the hunted look in the woman's eyes, as she had confronted her persecutor, had gone straight to O'Rourke's heart. She was a regally beautiful woman, worthily the bearer of her title; and she was in sore distress. As to that, there could be no doubt.
That fellow—this cashiered captain of the German army ​army—had some strong hold upon her. O'Rourke remembered him well—remembered his dishonorable discharge, two years previous, from the German army, on secret charges. He recalled having seen the fellow in the sok, or slave market, at Tetuan, shortly after his arrival in Morocco, and that he had heard an unpleasant rumor concerning the man's almost inconceivable brutality to the slaves he had purchased there.
That the woman whom young, clean-minded, gentlemanly Senet adored should be in the power of such a despicable character—the thought was insupportable to O'Rourke (though, indeed, such would have been the case with any other woman).
But, again, it was none of his business. If he should attempt to stir a finger into the unsavory mess it was more than likely that he would receive a rebuff for his pains.
He turned, with a sigh of regret, and made his way to the least frequented roulette table, determined to banish the whole unpleasant affair from his mind.
It was an hour later that he looked up from his somewhat listless and abstracted attention to the vagaries of the wheel and the ivory ball, and discovered the countess standing on the threshold of the salon. She seemed irresolute, undecided; twice she swayed forward as if to enter, and twice drew back, hesitant. But at length she got the bit of her determination between her teeth, and plunged boldly into the room, making for that table at which O'Rourke was seated.
At first the Irishman fancied that she recognized him; but later on he understood that, had she done so, she would have avoided him—that her reason for selecting his table was that it was the least crowded of any in the salon.
Into a vacant chair by the center, near the wheel, she slid, and resolutely opened her pocketbook. O'Rourke watched ​her narrowly out of the corner of his eye. She was plainly no novice at the game; and yet she conducted herself with that cautiousness which told him that she was unaccustomed to the atmosphere.
She was, for instance, of a vacillating mind in regard to which number she first should play. When finally she decided and placed a sovereign boldly on the 25, O'Rourke hid a smile.
"Twenty-five years of age, eh?" he commented inwardly. "Faith, madam, 'tis not yourself that looks it!"
For the next few minutes he rather neglected the game, the countess absorbing his entire regard. For, by hapchance, the 25 won for her; and, as she took the thirty-five sovereigns, the woman's color deepened, her lips parted, her eyes glowed, and for the moment she looked radiantly happy.
Nevertheless, "No, madam," the O'Rourke remarked silently; "'tis not the gambling fever that brings ye here—that makes ye glad to win. 'Tis the need of money, madam; and let me advise ye, 'tis to the most unlikely place in the world ye have come for it."
The woman had repeated her stake—a sovereign on the 25. It lost. She bit her lip nervously, and glanced guiltily about her at her fellow-players to find if one observed her. None did, it seemed; even O'Rourke was at that instant apparently drunk with the intoxication of chance-worship.
At first her luck held, however; for several turns she won, until her winnings attracted the attention of the croupier. He eyed this too fortunate madam with disfavor, and thereafter his keen, hawklike eyes paid her the honor of a constant regard.
Thereafter, also, the woman lost; luck, the fickle goddess, had deserted her. She played steadily, without display of ​emotion other than an occasional deep intake of her breath—an astonishingly pretty and delicate woman aping the stolidity of a hardened gambler.
O'Rourke smiled and shook his head sorrowfully. "Ah, madam!" he whispered, "had I but the right to advise ye!" But he had not; therefore, he, too, scrutinized madam's play with a respectful pertinacity. She was losing without a break; O'Rourke contented himself with an occasional small bet on the color that madam's coin did not cover—and, as a rule, he won.
Strangely enough, the coincidence angered him; his face hardened, his eyes acquiring a steely glitter, and the muscles on either side of his jawbone coming out into undue prominence as he set his teeth and bided his time.
For an hour he continued this careless system; it was growing late, and the frequenters of the tables were, one by one, forsaking their places. Eventually but half a dozen remained—O'Rourke and the countess having their table entirely to themselves.
The woman was still consistently losing. She had gone quite pale—almost haggard. Her lips, that had been full and red, had become a firm, set line, well-nigh white; her eyes were filled with anxiety; and the short, sharp gasps with which she bade farewell to hope, as each coin was ruthlessly gathered in by the croupier's rake, showed how hard she was taking her ill fortune.
At length the end was very near; for the tenth time, perhaps, she had reopened her pocketbook; and by now its once plump sides were limp and flabby. Her slender, tapering fingers trembled nervously as she felt in the bare depths of the receptacle—searched tremulously, and found little.
She produced a solitary sovereign; intuitively, as well as ​by process of deduction, O'Rourke knew it to be her last. She had staked all—lost all. A wave of pity and compassion swept upon the man as he noted the nervous agitation of her hand, the dryness of her lips, the agony of suspense with which she awaited the verdict of the wheel. It was the last chance; should she win, it would mean a respite, a breathing space with the possibility of further winnings; it would mean that she might possibly recoup.
At least, thought the sympathetic Celt, it would mean that to her. As for himself, the world-worn and worldly wise, he thought he knew exceedingly well how matters were to turn out.
The countess had staked upon the 25 again—at the last as well as at first. She bent forward eagerly, perhaps breathing a little prayer as the croupier twirled the wheel and set the little pellet of fate whirling in its race.
As for the croupier—a faded Frenchman, on whose weary, seamed physiognomy was written large the history of dissipated days—he glanced at the clock, and delicately concealed a yawn with his white, elegant fingers. Then, as the wheel began to slacken in its revolutions, he made a careful mental note of madam's stake.
It was late—very. Monsieur le croupier was weary and quite agreeable that the play should have an early end. If madam lost, there would remain only the Irishman. And the tables are not kept open for one lone player.
The wheel gradually stopped; for an instant the ball was sliding smoothly in its ebony run; another, and it rattled madly over the compartments.
The countess's eyes refused to leave the ivory arbiter of her fate; she hung upon its maneuvers, fascinated. To all appearances O'Rourke was in like suspense; yet the Irishman's ​swift glance did not fail to record the fact that one of the croupier's hands had sunk beneath the level of the table.
Abruptly the ball hesitated; it seemed about to fall into the 25. Indeed, for the fraction of an instant it was in that compartment; and then it recoiled, slid gracefully out in a slight arc, and settled in the double zero.
Impassively the croupier took up his rake, announcing the result with merciless clearness. He glanced at the two stakes—madam's on the 25, black; O'Rourke's modest bet upon the red—and reached forth with the rake like a hungry, clutching claw.
Madame sank back with a half-suppressed cry.
O'Rourke put out his hand, and deflected the rake. "One moment," he said calmly.
"Monsieur!" expostulated the scandalized croupier.
"Oh, come now!" remonstrated O'Rourke pleasantly. "Ye're not meaning to do anything like that, now, are ye?"
"What does m'sieur mean?"
"M'sieur means," mimicked O'Rourke, still good-naturedly, "that ye're a trifle barefaced in your swindling, me lad. Steady, now! Don't shout! Ye'll only attract undesirable notoriety."
The croupier paused, his mouth open, his eyes glaring undying hate into O'Rourke's. The Irishman dropped his hand nonchalantly into the side pocket of his coat, and turned to the woman—but without taking his gaze from the gambler.
"One moment, if ye please, madam," he begged her, as, frightened and apprehensive, she was about to rise and take her leave. "There has been a trifle of a mistake here. This gentleman is about to make amends."
From the gentleman's expression, one would have said, ​rather, that he contemplated springing at O'Rourke's throat. Doubtless, in point of fact, nothing kept him from such an assault but that hand which remained negligently concealed in the coat pocket.
O'Rourke followed his glance, and nodded meaningly. "I should not hesitate," he assured the fellow, twisting the revolver upward so that its muzzle showed sharply through the cloth. "Be very careful that I do not forget meself."
The croupier's voice rattled huskily in his throat. "What does m'sieur mean?" he would know. "I do not understand—"
"Oh, yes, ye do!" contradicted O'Rourke. "But, as for that, I mean this."
He bent forward, very quickly, and seized the wheel by the cross, attempting to lift it; and it failed to budge to his strength.
"Ye see, madam," explained O'Rourke, "the wheel is fixed—likewise the game. Monsieur has cheated ye shamelessly. He will make restitution."
He nodded brusquely to the man. "Quick, monsieur," he warned him, sharply. "Repay madam what she has lost or—do ye wish all Tangiers to know your methods?"
So far the altercation had been conducted in tones discreetly modulated; the others in the salon were unaware that aught was amiss. The croupier assured himself of this fact with a hasty glance. Then—
"You will not tell, m'sieur?" he pleaded.
"Not if ye repay madam's wagers, and that quickly."
"Nor madame?"
She shook her head in negation; not a word had she uttered from first to last of the little scene. Only her gaze, at first bewildered, then with dawning understanding, and later ​instinct with the light of gratitude, had searched O'Rourke's face.
"Very well, m'sieur," submitted the croupier meekly. "How much, madame?"
She stated the amount in a small, tremulous voice: "One hundred pounds." And, counting out the notes with care, the man handed them over.
"And now, madam," suggested O'Rourke, "if ye will be kind enough to leave us, I have a word or two to whisper in this gentleman's ear."
She rose. "I—I—" she faltered, at a loss for fitting phrases wherein to frame her gratitude.
"Later, if ye insist, madam," said O'Rourke. "'Tis but the bit of a minute."
She bowed slightly, and swept out of the salon. O'Rourke wheeled about, his eyes blazing, his anger at last out of leash.
"One word of this, ye scut!" he snapped, "and ye'll regret it to your dying day! Do ye understand me clearly?"
The man backed hastily away. "Yes, yes, m'sieur!" he implored. "I—I shall be discreet."
"See that ye are. And—mark me words!—if an attempt is made to do me an injury while I am in Tangiers, your life shall be the forfeit. Don't forget that!"
Contemptuously he turned his back and left the room. In the hall he found the woman waiting for him, and forestalled her protestations.
"'Tis nothing!" he told her lightly. "Madam, I beg of ye! The thanks are due from me; 'tis meself that has been waiting for that opportunity for several days. And will ye permit me to give ye a word of counsel? Then, don't ye risk another sou in Tangiers; there's not a table in the place that is run on the level."
​"But, sir," she insisted, "I must, must thank you. You—you cannot know what service you have done me! I—"
"Faith, madam, and I'd do the double of it in the twinkling of an eye if ye would do me the honor of asking me. 'Tis only to ask me, to tell me in what manner I may serve ye—and, I promise ye, 'twill be done!"
His offer was not made lightly, but in all earnestness; his tone was weighty with a meaning that brought home to the woman how greatly she stood in need of one who could do that which the Irishman boasted his ability to accomplish. She stepped back a pace, a flutter of hope in her eyes, a tremor shaking her. For a passing instant she even contemplated taking advantage of his offer. Perhaps she had a glorious glimpse of a vista of unharassed days stretching before her—of peace and quiet, and the liberty to live out her own life as she willed.
He bulked so big, so masterful, this Irishman who seemed to mean every word that he uttered; his bearing was so assured, his control of himself, as well as of others, so indisputable, that it seemed feasible for her to confide in him, to trust in him to rid her of the abiding horror of her days.
His silent sympathy, so evident, tempted her mightily; and yet she paused to think—when, all at once, hope was crushed, blotted out, buried in the depths of her heart.
The man was an utter stranger to her. She did not even know his name; what right had she to give into/his hands the weapon which von Wever held threateningly over her poor, distraught head—to confide in this stranger, when she dared not even breathe her secret to Senet, who, she knew, would give his life for her?
"No," she gasped, stepped back from him, as though the man personified the most alluring temptation of which her ​mind could conceive; "no, no, sir—I—I—you are very kind, indeed—but—I am so excited, nervous—you see— I will be able to thank you properly to-morrow."
He bowed gravely; she recovered her control sufficiently to smile ravishingly upon the Irishman; and then, "Good night, monsieur," she told him, and was gone—all but stumbling in her haste to be up the staircase, to be alone in the seclusion of her room and free to He awake, to plot, to plan, to scheme her endless futile schemes to rid herself of her crushing incubus.
O'Rourke, when she was out of sight, shrugged his shoulders with a whimsical smile. "'Tis yourself that would be the squire of dames, is it, O'Rourke?" he said. "Faith, but it seems that ye will not. Let us go out and think about this thing—for, if ever a woman stood in need of a man's strong arm, a man's honest generosity, 'tis this countess, and upon this very night—I'm thinking."
He wandered abstractedly out upon the veranda. "Seyn-Altberg, Seyn-Altberg!" he prodded his memory. "Now, what is it that I misremember? And what is the rôle of Herr Captain von Wever in this little drama? Let me think. What's that, eh?" He gazed up into the cloudless Mediterranean sky, brilliant with an infinity of stars that paled before the serenity of the high-sailing moon. Von Wever's words came back to him like an echo:
"Europe need never know your husband lives, countess!"
"And," added O'Rourke seriously, "'tis true that I have no overpowering love for this von Wever in me heart! Faith, now I begin to see a light!"