The Smart Set Volume 18 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...which the events of the last half-hour had opened up before him. He wondered why it was that Fortune should so favor those who stood the least in need of her smile. For four nights during the last seven, he knew, the prince had won, and won heavily, both in the Casino and in the Club Prive. Yet, on the other hand, there was the little Bulgarian princess with rooms just across the corridor from his own, and the rightful possessor of the plain little diamond with which he had just cut his way into this more sumptuous chamber. For a week past now, down at the Casino, she had been losing steadily, as of course the vast and undirected majority always must lose. Even her solitaire earrings had been taken to Nice and pawned, Durkin knew. Three days before that, too, an ever-necessary maid had been tearfully discharged. At the Trente et Quarante table, as well, Durkin had watched her last thousand-franc note wither away. "And this, my dear, will mean another three months with my sweet old palsied Due de la Houspignolle," she had laughingly yet bitterly exclaimed, in excellent English, to the impassive young Oxford man who was then dogging her heels. She was a wit, and she had a beautiful hand, even though she was no better than the rest of Monte Carlo, ruminated the safebreaker easily, as he squinted, under the flare of a match, at the ward indentations in his wax-covered key-flange. His thoughts went back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected scene at the stair-head, two hours before. There he had helped a slim young femme de cltambre support the princess to her room, that royal lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and American highballs--which, he knew, was ever an impossible combination. She had...