“How much did you start wis?” Franz inquired, eagerly; for a Plan was rising up in indefinite outline before his mind’s eye as they stood there. “Oh, I took across five ’underd,” the bookmaker replied, with easy confidence, as though five hundred pounds were to him the merest flea-bite. “I wouldn’t advise anybody to try and work his luck on less than that. You want the _capital_, that’s where it is; the fly ’uns know that; outsiders go smash through not startin’ with the capital.” He took Franz’s arm in his own. Luck makes men generous. They lunched together at Simpson’s, at the winner’s expense, after he had deposited his gains at the bank in the Strand. The lobster salad was good; the asparagus was fine; the iced champagne made glad the heart of the bookmaker. Expanding by degrees, he waxed warm in praise of his infallible System. It was fallacious, of course—all such Systems are; but its inventor, at any rate, implicitly believed in it. Little by little, with the aid of a pencil and paper, and a diagram of a roulette table, he explained to his eager listener the nature of his plan for securing a fortune offhand at Monte Carlo. Franz drank it in open-mouthed. This was really interesting! How could any man be such a fool as to sing for a miserable pittance six nights a week in smoky, grimy London, when a turn of fortune’s wheel could bring him a hundred pounds every time the table spun in cloudless Monte Carlo? It was clear as mud how to win; the bookmaker was right; no fellow could fail to pull off five strokes out of nine with this infallible martingale! Visions of untold wealth floated vague before his eyes. He saw his way to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. But it wasn’t avarice alone that inflamed Franz Lindner’s desire; it was love, it was revenge, it was wounded vanity. At once the idea rose up clear in his mind that if he could go to Monte Carlo and win a fortune, as the bookmaker had done, he might come home and lay it all at Linnet’s feet, with a very good chance of final acceptance. His experience at the London Pavilion had led him to believe that women in general, and theatrical stars in particular, had all their price, and might all be bought, if you only bid high enough. He didn’t doubt that Linnet was like the rest of her kind in this matter. She didn’t love Andreas; she couldn’t love Andreas. If a good-looking man, with a very fine figure and a very black moustache, laid the untold gold of Monte Carlo at her feet, could Linnet resist? Would she care to resist him? Franz opined she would not. He didn’t think it likely. There was only one thing needed to break the slender tie that bound her to Andreas. That one thing he would get—money, money, money!