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"My dear. . . . So thrilling. . . . He means wholesale murder. . . . Told us so. . . . And there was a man close by, watching him all the time. . . . A Government spy probably. . . . Do you think I shall be arrested? . . . If only he allows Bill and me to escape when it comes. . . . The revolution, I mean. . . . I think Monte is the place. . . . But one never knows. . . . Probably the croupiers will be armed with pistols, or something dreadful. . . . Except that if it's the labouring classes who are rising, we ought to shoot the croupiers. . . . It is so difficult to know what to do."
Every one has heard the adventure of the gambling-house, when he tore up the cards, upset the furniture, and beat both bankers and croupiers, to indemnify himself for the loss of his money; and the worst of it was, he was at that very time Governor of Paris. This might have been, from the sequel, taken as a prediction; for the unfortunate general died at last in a fit of mental aberration.
There are, if I have observed exactly, eight chances against you, and the fool, for believe me he is a fool, who is fortunate enough to win is paid seven times his stake. The man who tries to make money in that way must be generous and a fool." "The bank must win to pay for the croupiers and keep the place going," I said.
He watched from a corner the players, and greedily coveted the masses of gold and silver piled in pyramids behind the croupiers. He heard the violins playing Suppe's overture, and the remembrance came vividly to him of the Paradiso and the fair girl with whom the Englishman talked. The exciting events following that evening passed before him a lurid panorama.
We had only fifteen minutes to spare so we began playing briskly with two shilling pieces Cecil with indifferent fortune and Somers losing But I won every time and the croupiers gave me strange notes of the Bonco de Portugal which I put back on the board only to get more of a larger number I felt greatly embarrassed as I was not a real member of the club and I hated to blow in out of a hurricane and take their money and sail away again So I appealed to one of the sad eyed Englishmen and he assured me it was all right, that they welcomed the people from the passing steamers who generally left a few pounds each with the bank.
In the room where the croupiers spun the wheels, the color scheme was profligate. Benton idled at one of the tables, his eyes searching the crowd in the faint hope of discovering some thread which he might follow up to definite conclusion. Beyond the wheel, just at the croupier's elbow, stood a woman, audaciously yet charmingly gowned in red, with a scale-like shimmer of passementerie.
It was such a queer imitation of Aix and Monte Carlo There were chasseurs and footmen in magnificent livery and stucco white walls ornamented with silk SHAWLS. Also a very good band and a new roulette table Coming in out of the night and the rain it was like a theatre after the "dark scene" has just passed There were some most dignified croupiers and three English women and a few sad English men and some very wicked looking natives in diamonds and white waistcoats.
Will you stay here till I can get some money from my hotel the Hôtel de Paris?" She spoke with some vehemence. How could the creature expect her to remain in his debt? But the creature only passed his fingers through his upstanding hair and smiled wanly. "Please don't say anything more about it. It distresses me. The croupiers don't return the stake, as a general rule, unless you ask for it.
They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque de Noirbourg: they had their croupiers and punters, even as Lenoir had his: they had their rouleaux of Napoleons, stamped with their Contrebanquish seal: and they began to play.
There was but little chatter. The hundreds of well-dressed idlers escaping the winter were too intent upon the game. But above the click of the plaques, blue and red of different sizes, as they were raked into the bank by the croupiers, and the clatter of counters as the lucky players were paid with deft hands, there rose ever and anon: "Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!"
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