For a minute or two, he watched, with cat-like eyes, before venturing to risk one of his hard-saved louis. But presently the sequence of numbers and colours on the board reached a point which appeared to him specially favourable for his System. Trembling greatly within, but swaggering outwardly still, Franz leaned over between two stout players who sat close by in front of him, and, edging himself sideways, passed through the jostling crowd, till he had deposited twenty francs on rouge, with a beating heart. For a minute he waited. Other people put their stakes unpleasantly close to his; coins rolled in casually, here and there, and were fixed by the croupier with his stick as voices behind directed. But Franz kept his eyes fixed fast on his own good louis. Whr’r’r, rang the roulette; “Rien ne va plus!” cried the croupier. For a second or two, as the thing spun, Franz felt his heart come up in his mouth with anxiety. The ball jumped out; his quick eyes couldn’t follow it. Instinctively, he kept them fixed on his louis still. “Dix-sept gagne; impair, rouge, manque,” cried the croupier. A flush of triumph rose up all unbidden on Franz’s face. The System was justified then! he had won a louis!
By his side, the croupier raked in whole heaps of gold and silver. Then he began to pay out; here a beggarly five francs; there, ten broad yellow pieces. At last he came to Franz, and flung a louis carelessly by the side of the Tyroler’s stake. Franz picked it up with a sense of ineffable triumph. A louis all at once! If he went on like this, he would soon grow rich! Twenty francs for a turn of the wheel! it was splendid, splendid!
He played again, and played on. Fortune favoured the beginner. They say ’tis a trick of hers. The siren lures you. Time and again, he staked and won; lost a little; won it back again. He was five louis to the good now – eight – six – four – eleven again. Then, for awhile, he went up steadily – twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and so on to twenty. By that time, he grew elated. Why, the System was sure a royal road to riches. Lieber Gott, what fortune! He’d begun by thinking of twenty-franc stakes alone; he doubled them now, putting down at each time two napoleons together. Whr’r’r went the roulette afresh; black won; the inexorable valet raked in his two louis. Eighteen to the good now! never mind; try your luck again! Bravely he adventured another forty francs, this time on passe – so the System would have it. Twenty-two came out as the winning number! With joy and delight he saw his stake doubled; twenty to the good once more! Hurrah! this was splendid!
Stop now! The next coup demanded (by the System) that he should back a number – either twelve or twenty-four, as fancy dictated. With trembling fingers he laid down two louis on twelve. Once more, fortune favoured him. When he saw the croupier pay out seventy-two good gold coins on top of his own piece, Franz was almost beside himself. He clutched them up hurriedly, lest some grabber should snatch them, as often happens at the tables. While he did so, he felt a friendly tap on his shoulder from behind. He looked round suddenly. “So your System works well!” a cheery voice exclaimed, congratulatory. Franz nodded and smiled; ’twas his friend, Mr Holmes, that despiser of all Systems.
For the rest of that day, Mr Holmes hovered near, and kept an eye on Franz quietly. From time to time, to be sure, he followed some loser outside, and disappeared for half-an-hour in a mysterious way, after which little interval he somehow always turned up smiling. But whenever he came back it was to Franz’s side; and he reappeared each time with the self-same question, “How much to the good now? been winning or losing?” And each time Franz was able, on the whole, in spite of fluctuations, to report progress; – seventy louis, ninety three, a hundred and one, a hundred and twenty! People about began to mark Franz’s play by now. ’Twas another Mr Wells, they said; one would do wisely to follow him.
He played till evening. About seven o’clock, Holmes invited him to dinner at the Hotel de Paris. Franz strolled off, well content; why shouldn’t he dine in peace? A hundred and thirty-four louis to the good was now the reckoning.
The affable stranger wished to stand champagne. But no Viennese gentleman with a Von to his name could permit such a reversal of the rules of politeness, when he was winning heavily. Franz ordered it himself – Dry Monopole of the best brand – and drank the larger half of it. After dinner, they hurried back to the tables once more. Franz soon got a seat; he was playing high enough now for Monte Carlo to respect him. For in the salles de jeu you are respected in precise proportion to your stakes. Mr Holmes, too, put down a quiet five-franc piece now and again on colour. “Just like my luck!” he exclaimed, as black turned up each time. “I’m the unluckiest dog at games of chance, I declare, that ever was born. I never touch them, somehow, but I burn my fingers. There’s a fate in it, I think!” And so indeed it seemed. He lost every single silver piece he adventured.
But as for Franz, he won steadily. He had advanced his stake, now, with his advancing fortunes, to five louis a turn! When he saw five louis go, he hardly even noticed it. They came back again so soon – five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Oh, oh, but this was royal sport indeed! Three hundred louis one minute, then down again the next to two hundred and seventy, and up once more with a bound to two-eighty-five, two-ninety, three hundred. Coins became as counters to him: gold seemed to flow in and flow out like water. It was five louis lost, five won, five lost again. But as the rising tide first advances, then recedes, then once more advances, so, in spite of occasional temporary reverses, the tide of Franz’s fortune rose steadily, steadily. He played on till the croupiers were clearing the tables for the night. When he left off at last, perforce, at the final spin, he reckoned to the good three hundred and twenty-seven bright French gold pieces.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE BUBBLE BURSTS
Complacent Mr Holmes saw him safely off by the last train to Nice, before retiring for the night to his own snug quarters. ’Tis thus one prepares one’s pigeons for the plucking. When Franz arrived at the hotel, he called for more champagne, to celebrate his victory; and, failing other friends, shared drinks with the waiter.
Next morning, he was over again at Monte Carlo betimes, though with a chastening headache. He got a seat at once, and sat down to it like a man who means to win a fortune. His experience of yesterday had only strengthened his preconceived belief in the infallibility of his System. Encouraged by luck, he began playing from the outset now on the basis of staking five louis a time on each turn of the roulette wheel. For the first two or three twirls, fortune still went with him. He won as easily as he had won the preceding evening. But, after a few hazards, the chance began to change; he lost once, twice, thrice, as quickly as he had won at the outset of his playing. Presently, he was aware of Mr Holmes at his side, watching his play with a self-restrained smile of cynical indifference. That smile put Franz Lindner at once upon his mettle. He began to plunge desperately. Five louis on black; – they went like water. Five louis on manque were equally unsuccessful. Time after time Franz played; and time after time he lost again. His winnings had gone down now to two hundred louis. He began to reflect whether it mightn’t be wise to reduce his stake again for a while, during this run of ill-luck, from five louis to two. He even tried it once; but a disapproving murmur from a lady behind decided him to stick to the game he had so far been playing. “You should never change your stakes,” she said, “when you’re losing, you know; it’s an insult to chance, and it brings bad luck with it.” Franz was too good a Tyroler not to be thoroughly superstitious; so he accepted the bystander’s disinterested advice, and continued to put down his five gold pieces.
But still, luck was hard. If it’s easy to win three hundred pounds at a go, it’s easier still to lose them. And yet, Franz felt sure that, sooner or later, the System must win; the System was infallible; his friend the betting man had made all that so clear to him. Recklessly and desperately he hurried on with his game – five louis, five louis, five louis once more – lost, lost, lost, lost – till he was sick and tired of it. Now and again, luck varied, to be sure, for a time, as it had varied yesterday; but while yesterday with minor fluctuations it steadily rose, to-day with minor fluctuations it as steadily fell again. By two o’clock that afternoon, he had lost the whole of his last night’s winnings, and was reduced once more to his original capital.
He was going to stake yet again, somewhat haggard and feverish, when Joaquin Holmes, who had been watching him with the profoundest interest, tapped him lightly on the arm and invited him to luncheon. “You want food,” he said “ – and wine. After a good glass of Mumm, you’ll play better and stronger again!” In the altered state of the money-market, Franz felt himself less punctilious on the score of treats than the day before; he accepted the lunch, and the offer of champagne, with despondent alacrity. The Seer, ever prudent, stood a bottle of the best wine the cellar of the Hotel de Paris could produce. It was excellent and invigorating. As lunch proceeded, Franz’s spirits returned; the champagne supplied him with fresh sinews of war – Dutch courage for the onset. “If I were you, Von Forstemann,” the Seer said in his friendliest and most insinuating tone, “I wouldn’t play any more. You’re sure to lose in the end by it.” But Franz stood by his colours. “Ah, no,” he answered, smiling, “I can’t lose. I’ve got a System. It’s been tried before. A friend of mine, do you know, made twenty thousand pounds in these very rooms by it.”
Flushed and fired by his wine, he went back to the tables. The Seer paid the bill for their lunch, and followed him. Franz had found another seat, and was deep in his play. But he lost, lost, lost – won a little – then lost again. All the afternoon long, he kept on losing. The Seer walked about, exchanging a word or two at times with friends and with ladies of his acquaintance (some of whose faces Franz fancied he had seen before at the London Pavilion), but came back again to his side after each such excursion, with friendly persistence.
“How much have you lost now?” he asked each time.
And Franz, very shamefaced, yet proud in a way that he could own to such losses, made answer again and again, as the case might be, “A hundred and twenty,” “Two hundred and thirty,” “Three hundred and twenty-seven.” Ach Gott, it was pitiful!
At last, about six o’clock, the Tyroler found himself reduced to a hundred and fifty pounds of his original capital. He couldn’t understand it; this was strange, very strange; the System somehow didn’t seem to work as it ought to do. In his despair, he almost began to disbelieve in its virtues. Just then, the Seer strolled casually by once more, chatting gaily to a lady. He paused, and looked at Franz. In the thirst for human sympathy we all feel at such times, Franz beckoned him up with one hand, and confided to him in a hoarse whisper the painful state of his exchequer. “Come out and have a drink,” the Seer said, bending low, with his most courteous manner. “Let’s work this thing out. Just you show me your System?”
Franz followed him blindly across to the café opposite. The Seer ordered two cognacs and a syphon of soda-water. “Now, tell me how you do it,” he said, in a very grave voice. And, with some little reluctance, looking down at the table, Franz proceeded to disclose to his attentive listener the main points of his System.
It was a transparent fallacy, of course. Such systems always are; and the Seer, who was no fool at the doctrine of chances, saw through it at a glance. His lip curled lightly. “You’re a good mathematician?” he asked, with a well-suppressed sneer.
And Franz was obliged perforce to admit, in this critical moment, that he had got no further in that abstruse science than the first four rules of arithmetic.
The Seer assumed his kindliest and most didactic manner. “Now, you look here, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, leaning over towards his new friend confidentially; “you’ve allowed yourself to be duped; you’ve been grossly imposed upon. I can show you in a minute your System’s all bosh. The bank stands always its regular chance to win, no matter what you do, and it dodges you exactly where you think you’ve dodged it.”
He took out a pencil and paper, and began with great show of care and patience to make the fallacy as clear as day to his unwilling pupil. Franz leant over him and looked. Step by step the clever American unravelled before his eyes all the tangled mass of false assumptions and baseless conclusions Franz called his System. Poor Franz stood aghast; the demolition was patent, irresistible, crushing. Joaquin Holmes was in his element; he was a specialist on games of chance; he demonstrated with loving care that in this case, as in all others, the bank had exactly thirty-seven chances for itself, against thirty-six for the players. Franz saw it with his own eyes: sorely against his will he was forced to see it. He couldn’t gainsay it: it was clear as mud; he could only murmur in a feebly illogical way, “But my friend made twenty thousand pounds in these rooms right off with it.”
The Seer was remorseless. “Accident!” he answered, calmly, with a bland wave of the hand. “Pure luck! Coincidence! And if it happened once, by a mere fluke, to pull itself off so well, all the less reason to believe such a wonderful sequence of happy shots would ever manage to repeat itself. The bank stands always its fixed chance to win in a certain proportion; by good fortune you may circumvent it, by calculation, never!”
Franz was convinced against his will. But the blow was an appalling one. He had lost three hundred and fifty pounds already; he saw no hope of recovering it. And, what was far worse, he had practically lost twenty thousand into the bargain. During all those years while he had been saving and scraping, he had considered his fortune as good as made, if he could but once go to Monte Carlo with five hundred pounds of ready money in his pocket. In five short minutes the affable stranger had knocked the bottom out of his drum – demolished the whole vast superstructure of false facts and bad reasoning Franz had reared so carefully; and now, like a house of cards, it had tumbled about his ears, leaving the poor duped Tyroler blankly hopeless and miserable.
The reaction was painful and piteous to behold. From a potential millionaire, Franz descended at once to be the owner of a paltry hundred and fifty pounds in English money. The Seer did his best in these straits to console and comfort him. He pointed out that while no man can ensure a fortune at games of chance by trying to play on a system, any man may have the good luck to win large sums if he treats it frankly as a question of fortune, not of deliberate planning. “Only,” he added, with a significant glance towards the Casino, “it’s foolish to play where one backs one’s luck against a public bank which stands to win, by its very constitution, a certain regular proportion of all money staked against it.”
His words fell on stony ground. Franz was simply inconsolable. The longer he looked at those irrefragable calculations, the more clearly did he recognise now that the Seer was right, and the System on which he had staked his all was a pure delusion. But Mr Joaquin Holmes extended him still the most obtrusive sympathy. “I’m awfully sorry for you, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, over and over again, regarding his figures sideways. “This has been a hard trial to you. But you mustn’t give up because you’ve been bitten once. Sooner or later, luck must turn. You’ve lost a great deal; all the sooner, then, must it change for you. Give me the pleasure of dining with you at the restaurant round the corner. You’ll see things in a truer light, you know, when you’ve digested your dinner.”
Franz followed him mechanically. He had no heart for anything. The Seer ordered a choice repast, and plied his pigeon well with the best wines in the cellar. All the while, as they dined, he harped still on three chords – his own persistent ill-luck at all games of chance; the folly of playing where the odds are against you, no matter how little, at a public table; and the certainty of winning back, on the average, what you’ve lost, if only you play long enough at even betting.
Emotions, once well roused, tend to flow on unchecked, in spite of temporary obstacles, in an accustomed channel. As the dinner digested itself, and the Dry Monopole fired Franz’s brain once more, the thrasonic mood of the gambler came over him yet again as strong as ever. Like a born braggart that he was, a true Tyrolese Robbler, he began to boast in thick tones of how he would get the better still of those swindling tables. The Seer encouraged him to the echo in this gallant resolution, but thought ill of his chances at the unfair roulette-board, against the certain dead-weight of a mathematical calculation. “Come up with me to my room after dinner,” he put in, carelessly, “and I’ll show you a little game I learnt when I went buck-shooting in the Rockies some years ago. It’s perfectly fair and square, with no sort of advantage to one side over the other. None of your beastly zeros: all even chances. I won’t play it with you myself – or at least, only for a turn or two, just to show you how it’s done – I’m so deuced unlucky. But there are lots of fellows around who’ll be glad enough to give you a chance of your revenge; and, in my opinion, it’s just about the very evenest game a sensible man ever put his money down upon.”
Franz submitted to be taught with a very good grace. He was ready enough now for anything on earth that would help him to win back his solid lost sovereigns. They went round to a large hotel in the direction of La Condamine. People were moving in and out of the doorway by degrees, for it was just after dinner, and the town was crowded. Franz followed the Seer upstairs to a nicely furnished bedroom on the second floor, arranged as a salon, with an alcove for the bed, after the continental fashion. Nobody took much notice of them; come and go is the rule at Monte Carlo everywhere; and, besides, Mr Joaquin Holmes, that affable new-comer, was very much in the habit of taking strangers to play in his bedroom.
They sat down at the table, and the Seer, after much show of fumbling in his box, produces at last a pack of English cards, the cover still unbroken. With an innocent air of very slight acquaintance with the game he had proposed, he shuffled and cut them. “Let me see,” he said, knitting his brows, and pretending to recollect. “It’s like this, I think. Ah, yes, I remember.” And he dealt out a card to himself, and another to Franz, with most ingenious carelessness.
Then he went on to explain in very glowing terms the simplicity of this game, and its peculiar guilelessness. “You back your card for what you like, and if I choose, I double you. You see, it’s even chances. We each stand to win equally. It’s easy as A.B.C. But my luck’s so bad, I won’t play you for money. Let’s stake an imaginary five pounds on the turn-up.”
They tried a deal or two, for love, on this imaginary basis, and Franz won twice out of three times. He wished it had been for sovereigns. He tried again and again, the Seer manipulating his pack all the time with conspicuous awkwardness, and managing to lose with surprising regularity. What a pity the man was so shy of tempting fate, Franz thought; though, to be sure, it was no wonder. For he lost, lost, lost, with almost incredible persistence. Still, Franz was annoyed to think that so many lucky shots, at so even a game, should all go for nothing. And he himself – why, he could win at this play like wildfire. If only he could find such a pigeon to pluck! He’d drain his man dry of all he had at a sitting!
“Come, put a louis on it!” he exclaimed at last, with a “Who’s afraid” sort of air, to the reluctant stranger.
The Coloradan hesitated. He pulled out a purse full of notes and gold. “No; I can’t go to a louis,” he answered, gingerly, after a pause. “I’ve such beastly bad luck. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll lay you ten francs on it!”
His air was candid enough to disarm the most suspicious mind. He played, and lost. Franz picked the coins up nimbly. “Try it again,” he said, with a broad smile; and Joaquin Holmes tried it. Four times running Franz won; then the American lost patience. “I’ll go you a louis,” he cried, warming up, and drawing a coin from his purse. Franz took him, and won it. At that, Holmes, as the Robbler thought, lost his head and grew frantic. He plunged; he doubled; he lost; he cursed his luck; and once more he boldly plunged again. Now and then, to be sure, he won; but ’twas always on the times when he omitted to double. This was a first-rate game, Franz thought; he was winning back his own again.
After a while, the Seer pulled up his chair, and settled down to it seriously. “I’m a devil of a gambler,” he said, with a smile, “when once I get well into it. I won’t leave off now till you’ve broken my bank, and got my bottom dollar. I’ve eight hundred pounds here” – which was a simple trade lie – “and I won’t stop now till I’ve lost every penny of it.”
Ha, ha; that was game! They buckled to in earnest. Franz played with a will. He won, won, won; he laughed loud; he picked up gaily; then, suddenly, strange to say, he lost, lost, lost again. All at once, the Seer’s fingers seemed to go like lightning. He dealt fast and furious; he doubled every time; luck had somehow changed; he was winning now heavily. Franz didn’t think quite so well of the game as it proceeded; he began to regard it, in fact, as little short of a swindle. But, as his pile diminished, the Seer gave him scant time to reflect between deals. “Stake! I double you!” Flash went the card; the Seer raked in the money. That was very strong champagne, and Franz’s head was reeling. Still he played, played, played, lost, lost, lost, yet played again. His pile was dwindling now with appalling rapidity. He took a pull at the brandy and soda the Seer had obligingly placed by his side. What was this? The affable stranger was clearing him out every time. Franz began to suspect a plant. Could the man be a swindler?
He glanced at his little heap. A cold thrill coursed through him. Only seven louis left! When those seven were gone – why, then he would be penniless!
The Seer dealt again. With a loud German oath, Franz seized his hand and stopped it. “I saw you do it,” he cried. “You rogue, I’ve found you out! You felt one card, changed it, and then pushed out another.”
The Seer sprang up angrily. “That’s an imputation on my honour,” he cried, standing up and facing him with an air of indignant virtue. “I’m an English gentleman. If you insult me like that – ”
But before he could say another word, – quick as thought, a knife flashed in the air with unspeakable swiftness. The Seer’s hand darted into his pocket for the trusty six-shooter. It was dagger against pistol, Tyroler against Westerner. But Franz was too sharp for him. Before the Coloradan’s deft fingers could reach the trigger of the revolver, that keen blade was buried deep in his exposed left breast – buried deep and gurgling. Without a word, without a groan, the American dropped back short into the easy-chair he had that moment quitted. Blood spurted from the wound – spurted fast in little jets. It had penetrated his heart. He was dead in a second.
In less time than it takes to say it, Franz realised what he had done, and pulled himself together from his paroxysm of passion. Leaving the notes where they lay, he crammed his own gold hastily into his waistcoat pocket. He let the knife stop in the wound; it was in no way compromising. Then he opened the door, and walked calmly out, and down the broad stone steps, and into the streets of Monte Carlo.