United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I'd like a single table, please." He was shown to a table to the left of the croupier's booth. The Atlas was a good bit dingier than the Class A parlor he had been in the night before; its electroluminescent light-panels fizzed and sputtered, casting uncertain shadows here and there.
The winner reached the centrally located rostrum. Alan looked at him. He was tall, fairly young in his thirties, perhaps with stooped shoulders and a dull glazedness about his eyes. He looked familiar. Steve. Feeling no excitement now that the quest had reached success, Alan slipped from his seat and made his way around the croupier's rostrum and down the far aisle.
But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong and the last two florins followed each other under the croupier's rake, as he cried out with his inexorable voice the winning colour and number. She gave a sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while.
The eager gamblers, who are generally all Chinese, bend forward with straining eyes to within a few inches of the croupier's stick, so that any cheating would be well-nigh impossible. One, two, three, four. Only a few more cash. The excitement is intense. One, two, three.... Three cash remain! Number three wins.
Not many hours ago she had placed her last louis on the table, and had seen it disappear under the traction of the croupier's rake. She had nothing left in her bedroom but the clothes which she had worn yesterday, a hairbrush, and a bottle of laudanum. The bottle that morning had been found in her hand, empty. The last incident of my visit to Monte Carlo was her burial.
"Oui, Madame," was the croupier's polite reply. "No single stake must exceed four thousand florins. That is the regulation." "Then there is nothing else for it. We must risk in gulden." "Le jeu est fait!" the croupier called. The wheel revolved, and stopped at thirty. We had lost! "Again, again, again! Stake again!" shouted the old lady.
Presently, though she won four times running when this occurred, she kept back her money until the last, staking only just before the croupier's "Rien ne va plus," to prevent Della Robbia from following her lead. At last, she got up impatiently. "I am tired!" she said, in a voice that trembled slightly. "I hardly know what I'm doing."
At this moment Sir Francis' valet came up to Larssen with a telegram in his hand. The latter opened and scanned it quickly. "What is it?" asked Olive. "A tip to gamble the limit on number 14," replied Larssen smilingly. Olive placed nine louis, the limit stake, on number 14, and two minutes later a pile of bank-notes aggregating 6300 francs came to her from the croupier's metal box.
The red and black wheel was already spinning, and the little ivory ball sent by the croupier's hand in the opposite direction was clicking quickly over the numbered spaces. Six hundred or more eyes of men and women, fevered by the gambling mania, watched the result. Slowly it lost its impetus, and after spinning about unevenly it made a final jump and fell with a loud click.
What an arrogant, greedy crowd it was! I pressed forward towards the middle of the room until I had secured a seat at a croupier's elbow. Then I began to play in timid fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gulden at a time. Meanwhile, I observed and took notes.
Word Of The Day