Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  The Seer’s eye was grave; the Seer’s face was solemn; only about the corners of his imperturbable mouth could a faint curl have betrayed his inner feelings to the keenest observer. A System! oh, well, of course, that was altogether different. No one knew what a clever and competent mathematician might do with a System. Though, mark you, mathematicians had devised the tables, too; they had carefully arranged so that no possible combination could avoid the extra chances which the bank reserved to itself. However, experience⁠ — ⁠experience is the only solid guide in these matters. Let him try his System, by all means; and if it worked⁠ — ⁠with stress on that if⁠ — ⁠Mr Holmes would be glad for his own part to adopt it. If it didn’t, he could show him a trick worth two of that⁠ — ⁠a game where the players stood at even chances, with no rapacious bank to earn a splendid dividend and pay royally for the maintenance of a palatial establishment. And with that, he tucked himself up and subsided into his corner.

  All night through, on their way to Marseilles, they slept or dozed at intervals⁠ — ⁠and then woke up once more to discuss by fits and starts that enthralling subject of winning at Monte Carlo. The fumbling old lady and her invalid daughter, propped upright in the middle seats, got no sleep to speak of, with their perpetual chatter. Before morning, the two men were excellent friends with one another. Franz liked Mr Holmes. He was a jolly, outspoken, good-natured gentleman, very kindly and well-disposed, and he recommended him to a good cheap hotel at Nice, lying handy to the station, for a man who wanted to run over pretty often to Monte Carlo. Franz went there as he was bid, and found it not amiss; ’twas pleasant, after so long a stay in England, to discover himself once more amongst compatriots, or next door⁠ — ⁠to talk in his native tongue with Swiss porters, Swiss waiters, Swiss boots, and Swiss chambermaids. With the great bare mountains rising abruptly in the rear, Nice almost seemed to him like his beloved Fatherland. The strange longing for home which is peculiar to mountaineers came over him with a rush at sight of their lonely summits. Ach, Gott,⁠ — ⁠if it weren’t that he had his fortune to make at Monte Carlo, he’d have gone on, then and there, straight through to St Valentin!

  That first evening, he rested after the fatigues of the journey. He merely strolled about on the Promenade des Anglais, in the cool of the evening, and lounged along the Quays or through the Public Garden. It was a fine town, Nice, and Franz was very much pleased with it. He had given his name at the hotel as Herr Karl von Forstemann, a gentleman from Vienna; and as he sauntered along now through that gay little city, with five hundred pounds sterling in his trousers pocket, and twenty thousand awaiting him in the bank at Monte Carlo, he felt for the moment like the person he called himself. His strut was still prouder and more jaunty than ever; he stared at the pretty girls under the palm-trees of the parade as if they all belonged to him; he twirled his short cane by the arcades of the Place Masséna with a millionaire swagger. After all, it’s easy as dirt to win thousands at roulette⁠ — ⁠if only you have a System. Strange how people will toil, and moil, and slave, and save, at a desk in London, when, here by this basking tideless Southern sea, this Tom Tiddler’s ground of fortune, they might pick up coin at will just as one picks up pebbles!

  Franz broke a bottle of champagne at ten o’clock, discounting his success, with two awfully jolly fellows he’d come across in the smoking-room. Nice seemed to be just cram-full of awfully jolly fellows! Then he went to bed early, and slept the sleep of the just till morning. After a cup of fragrant coffee and a fresh French roll⁠ — ⁠so unlike that bad bread man gets in London⁠ — ⁠he lounged over to the station, and took a first-class return to Monte Carlo. Oh, that exquisite journey! How bright it was, how sweet, how fairy-fair, how beautiful! Like all Tyrolese, Franz Lindner was by no means insensible to the charms of Nature; and that man must be blind and seared and dull indeed who wouldn’t gaze with hushed delight, the first time he saw them, on those endless blue bays, those craggy cliffs, those towering heights, those jagged precipices. Villefranche, with its two promontories and its quaint white town; the Cap Ferrat and its twin lighthouses; the peninsula of St Jean, with its indented outline; the great bluffs of Beaulieu; the tunnelled headlands of the coast; green water breaking white on tumbled masses in the sea; Eza, perched high on its pinnacle of rearing rock; the bastions of Monaco, rising sheer like some basking whale from the purple waves beneath; the hanging gardens of La Condamine, the bare mountains in the background: Franz drank them all in with delight and enthusiasm. But all only sharpened his zest for the game he had in view; what an enchanted tract of coast it was, to be sure, this land that led him up to the Palace of Luck, where he was to woo and win his twenty thousand pounds sterling!

  He wouldn’t leave off till he had won it, every penny; on that he was determined. None of your beggarly ten or fifteen thousands for him! Twenty thousand pounds down was the goal he set before him. After that⁠ — ⁠well, who knows? He might perhaps stop . . . or⁠ — ⁠why this moderation?⁠ — ⁠he might perhaps go on, if he chose, and double it.

  In such heroic mood, like a winner already, Franz mounted the broad steps of the great white Casino. Its magnificence for a moment abashed and daunted him. He had never yet entered so splendid a building; never trod so fine a room as that gorgeous atrium. However, he reflected next instant that he came there that day armed with the passport which makes a man welcome wherever he may go the wide world over⁠ — ⁠the talismanic passport of money in his pocket. Regaining his usual swagger as he mounted the steps, he followed the crowd into the office where cards of admission were issued, and gave his name boldly once more, in a very firm voice, as Herr von Forstemann of Vienna. Then, provided with the necessary pasteboard which ensures admission to the rooms, he still followed the stream into the vast, garish hall which contains the gaming tables. Its size and its gorgeousness fairly took the man’s breath away. Though the hour was still early, as Franz now reckoned time in his cosmopolitanised avatar, he was surprised to find so immense a crowd of players gathered in deep rows round table after table, opening into long perspective of saloon after saloon in the farther distance. He drew up to the first roulette-board, and watched the play carefully for several minutes. Though he had studied the subject beforehand with books and diagrams, and had made sure, as he thought, of the truth of his System by frequent imaginary trials, it interested him immensely to see at last in real life, and with tangible actors, the scene he had so long contemplated in his feverish day-dreams.

  The result was in some ways distinctly disappointing. He hadn’t allowed to himself for so much bustle, so much noise, so many other players. In his mental picture, he had seen his own money only; he had staked and won, staked and lost, staked and won again incessantly, while croupiers and bank existed, as it were, for his sole use and benefit. But here in concrete reality, many complicating circumstances arose to distract him. Other people crowded round, row after row in serried order, to put on their own money without regard to his presence; and they put it all on in so many incomprehensible and ridiculous ways⁠ — ⁠backing dozens, or fours, or pairs, or columns, according to their Systems, which he had never thought of⁠ — ⁠that Franz for a stray minute or two felt thoroughly bewildered. He almost lost his head. The sweet simplicity of the little game he had played by himself on paper, against a bank which took no heed of any stake but his, now vanished utterly; in its place came chaos⁠ — ⁠a complex and distracting phantasmagoria of men and women flinging down gold pieces at cross-purposes on numbers and colours; sticking about their louis hap-hazard in reckless confusion on first or last dozens; raking in and grabbing up, with eager hands, in hot haste; till Franz’s brain began to reel, and he wondered to himself, amid so many rolling coins, how each could tell at each turn what had happened to his own money. In idea, he had confined himself to the System alone; in practice, he found all the rest of the world engaged in playing ten different games at once⁠ — ⁠rouge-et-noir, passe-et-manque, pair-et-impair, and the rest of it⁠ — ⁠wi
th distracting rapidity, at a single table.

  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.