The Guests Of Hercules Part 9

"That is right. You have temperament, Mademoiselle. Already you listen to your feelings. I too, have a strong feeling. It is, that we shall be friends. My name is Madame d'Ambre--Madeleine d'Ambre. And yours?"

"Mary Grant."

"Madame or Mademoiselle?"

"Mademoiselle, of course." Mary blushed.

It seemed almost shocking that any one could even fancy she might be married, she who was just out of the cloister, almost a nun.

"Ah, here one is so often Madame while still quite young. Now, let us follow that tall, _chic_ Monsieur who has but one eye and one ear. If we can play what he plays, we are sure to win. Often, when near him, I have prayed that even one five-franc piece might come my way, for since he lost an eye and an ear he never loses money. It was different when he was here a few years ago, before he went out to the east, where he had his mysterious bereavement, no one knows quite what, but it is said that he loved an eastern girl, and was smuggled into a harem. In old days he did nothing but lose, lose."

Mary glanced at the person indicated--a tall man in evening dress, whose features would have been agreeable if it had not been for a black patch over one eye and, on the same side of the head, a black pad over the ear, fastened on by a thin elastic cord. Then she glanced away again, feeling faintly sick. "No, I can't follow him," she said. "Not to win a thousand pounds."

The lady with the pretty name smiled her sad, tired little smile. "You must not turn pale for so small a thing," she laughed. "There are a hundred people in these rooms to-night far stranger than he. I could tell you things! But see, three Germans are going from the table in front of us. When three Germans move, they leave much room. Keep close to me; that is all you need do."

Mary obeyed in silence. She was grateful to her guide, yet somehow she was unable to like her as well as at first. Fragile as Madame d'Ambre appeared, she must have had a metallic strength of will, if not of muscle, for quietly yet relentlessly she insinuated herself in front of other people grouped round the table. Mary would have retreated, abashed, if she had not feared to hurt her new friend's feelings; but rather than be ungracious, she clung, soon finding herself wedged behind a chair and in front of two German ladies.

VIII

"It is a triumph to seize an advantage from a German!" whispered the Frenchwoman, beginning to look flushed and expectant. "You see that woman in the chair you are touching? She was one of the greatest actresses of the world, Madame Rachel Berenger. Now she is too old and large to act, so she lives in a beautiful villa, across the Italian frontier. She is always coming to Monte Carlo to do this."

"This" was scattering gold pieces all over the table, as if she were sowing peas, then changing her mind about them, and reaching wildly out to place them somewhere else. She was dressed in deep mourning, and had a very white face which might once have been beautiful. Now she was like a dissipated Greek statue draped in black.

"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs," said one of the six extraordinarily respectable and intelligent-looking men who Mary saw at a glance were employes of the Casino. They were in neat black clothes, with black neckties. Peter had told her that the four who spun the roulette wheel and paid the players were called croupiers, and that they were allowed to have no pockets in the clothes they wore when at work, lest they should be tempted to secrete money. But perhaps this was a fable. And there was so much money! In all her life Mary had not seen as much money as lay on this one expanse of green baize.

The man who called on the gamblers to begin staking put out his hand to a large wheel sunk into the middle of the oblong table. This wheel was the same, in immensely exaggerated form, as the toy with which the Dauntreys had played in the train. It was a big disc of shiny metal, set in a shallow well, rimmed with rosewood. All around its edge went a row of little pockets, each coloured alternately red and black. The expanse of green baize was marked off with yellow lines into squares, numbered with yellow figures. The two lengths of yellow patterns going outward from the wheel were facsimiles of each other, and only sixteen players could sit round the table, but eight or ten times that number crowded in double or treble ranks behind the seated ones. The high chairs of the two inspectors who sat opposite one another were usurped by tired women who leaned against them, or tried to perch on the edges; and as the croupier leaned forward to turn the wheel, arms were stretched out everywhere, scrabbling like spiders' legs, staking money selected from piles of notes or gold and silver.

The statuelike woman in black dashed on twenty or thirty louis, some on numbers, some on a red lozenge, some on the words _Pair_ and _Manque_.

"She cannot possibly win," mumbled Madame d'Ambre. "She has lost her head and staked on so many chances that if one wins she must lose much more on the others. It is absurd. Watch her this time, and next spin I will tell you what to do for yourself."

The croupier had picked a little ivory ball out of one of the pockets before setting the wheel in motion. Then, as it began to revolve, with a deft turn of the wrist he launched the ball in a whizzing rush along a narrow shelf inside the rosewood rim, and in a direction contrary to the whirl of the disc.

For several seconds, which seemed long and tense to Mary, the wheel revolved, the ivory ball dashing wildly around until the croupier proclaimed in his calm, impersonal voice: "Rien ne va plus!" Some people reluctantly ceased their feverish staking of louis, notes, and five-franc pieces, but others dashed on money up to the last instant.

The wheel slackened speed; the ball lost momentum, and, rolling down the slope, struck one of a lozenge-shaped row of obstacles. It rebounded, almost sprang out of the wheel, hesitated over a pocket, and leaped into the next, where it lay still.

"Vingt-quatre, noir, pair et pa.s.se," announced the calm voice.

"Twenty-four! My age and my ticket number! I meant to stake on it!" Mary cried out aloud in her excitement. "Now it is too late."

Her regret was so keen as to be agonizing. It seemed that a serious misfortune had befallen her. Something in her head was going round with the ball. She felt as if she ought to have won all the money lying there on the table, as if she had a right to it.

People who had won and were having their winnings paid to them were too busy to notice what went on behind their backs; but some of those who had lost and had nothing to do till the time to stake again, t.i.ttered faintly and craned their heads round to look at the girl who was almost crying because she had not staked on twenty-four, her age. But Mary did not realize that she was the object of any one's attention, for the statuelike woman in black was shrilly insisting that she had had the maximum, nine louis, on the number 24. "_En plein_, I tell you, _en plein_!"

"But no, excuse me, Madame, you had money on black and the second dozen, on pair, and on the _carre_ of twenty-four; but nothing on the number itself. Your maximum was on twenty-six," the croupier explained firmly.

"I tell you it was on twenty-four!" shrieked the actress.

"Madame is mistaken. You staked in so many different places, it is impossible for you to remember."

"It is still more impossible for you. Do you intend to pay me?"

"But certainly, for everything you won."

"And the maximum on twenty-four?"

"Not that, Madame."

"I will complain to the management!"

"As Madame pleases."

"I will stop the game till I am paid!"

One of the two inspectors left his high chair, came to the enraged lady and attempted to soothe her. She looked magnificent in her pa.s.sion, ten years having fallen like a mask from the marble face.

The croupier, who had paid her for several bets won, attempted to go on with his duties. People, some delighting in the "row," others annoyed at the delay, placed their stakes, but she, a lioness at bay, stared furiously without putting a piece on the table. As the disc turned, however, she pounced. She threw a louis into the wheel. But the croupier, without changing countenance, took out the coin, pushed it back to her, and began spinning again. In went another louis and again the croupier stopped the wheel. Voices rose in complaint: Russian voices, German voices, English voices. "Is this going on all night?"

"Pay Madame," said one of the inspectors.

Quietly and with incredible quickness nine times thirty-five louis were counted out, payment for a maximum on a number. As the croupier pushed the notes and gold across the table, a beautiful white hand, blazing with rings, thrust it proudly back again. "That is all I wanted," the actress said, with the air of Lady Macbeth. "The acknowledgment that I was right. Keep the money."

The croupier shrugged his shoulders, and spun the wheel, with a bored air.

"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs."

"Shall I put something for you on twenty-four?" hastily asked Madame d'Ambre.

"But it has just come."

"It may come again. Often a number repeats. Shall I or not? An instant, and it will be too late."

With her heart in her throat, Mary handed the Frenchwoman a hundred-franc note crushed in a ball. Madame d'Ambre asked a croupier near where she stood to stake the money. He did so, just in time. The ball slipped into the pocket of number 21. "Too bad! But better luck next time. Will you try a simple chance, red or black, for instance? Or one of the dozens?"

"No, twenty-four again," answered a voice that Mary hardly knew as her own. "I must!" With a trembling hand, she gave her friend nine louis.

"That's the maximum for a number, you said," she faltered. "Please put it on."

"But all your money will soon be gone at this rate. A louis would bring you thirty-five----"

"No, no, the maximum!"

Madame d'Ambre, aided by her croupier-neighbour, obeyed.

A strange golden haze floated before Mary's eyes. She could not see through it. She tried to tell herself, as the big wheel spun, that this was not important at all; that it did not really matter what happened: yet something inside her said, "It's the most important thing in the world, to win, to win, to make all these people envy you. It isn't the money, it's the joy, the triumph, the ecstasy."