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Updated: June 29, 2025
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.
He had gone but a step or two, his head half gaily turned to the table where the dwindling onlookers stood watching the wheel spin round, when suddenly the croupier's cry of "Zero!" fell upon his ears. With cheerful nonchalance he had come back to the table and picked up the many louis he had won won by his last throw and with his last available coin.
Jean looked round to see if Marcus Stepney was present, hoping that he had witnessed the exchange of courtesies, but Marcus at that moment was watching little bundles of twelve thousand franc notes raked across to the croupier's end of the table which is the business end of Monte Carlo. Jean was the last to leave the car when it set them down at the Villa Casa. Mordon called her respectfully.
Occasionally, also, young fellows about town, of different social rank, but brought together by a pursuit of amusement in common, met here on neutral ground, where, after a certain hour, the supper-table was turned into a gaming-table, enlivened by the clinking of glasses and the rattle of the croupier's rake, and where to the excitement of good cheer was added that of high play, with its alternations of unexpected gains and disastrous losses.
The actress, petulant with persistent ill fortune, got up muttering, and pushed back her chair. Mechanically Mary dropped into it. A pile of money, notes and gold, was moved toward her by the croupier's rake. People were staring. She was young and beautiful, and evidently half fainting with excitement. Besides, she had won a large sum. It was always a good thing to win on a number en plein.
Your bottle last time; my bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army! the great Napoleon! the present company! the croupier! the honest croupier's wife and daughters if he has any! the Ladies generally! everybody in the world!" By the time the second bottle of Champagne was emptied, I felt as if I had been drinking liquid fire my brain seemed all aflame.
Mary could not look, could not have seen if she had looked: but her whole soul listened for the croupier's announcement. "Vingt-quatre, noir, pair et passe." She trembled all over, as if she were going to fall. She could hardly believe that she had heard aright, until Madame d'Ambre exclaimed close to her ear: "You have won! I told you that I would bring you luck!"
Some seven or eight onlookers stood by way of an audience, awaiting a drama composed of the strokes of chance, the faces of the actors, the circulation of coin, and the motion of the croupier's rake, much as a silent, motionless crowd watches the headsman in the Place de Greve.
And love had caused it to rage. If this had been entirely his own affair it is probable that the croupier's frigid calm would have quelled him and he would have retired, fermenting but baffled. But it was not his own affair. He was fighting the cause of the only girl in the world. She had trusted him. Could he fail her? No, he was dashed if he could. He would show her what he was made of.
Sweat stood out upon the forehead of the heavy-paunched proprietor as with a flabby-faced grin he set out the bottle. But the Texan caught the snake-like flash of the eyes with which the man signalled to the croupier across the room. Gun in hand, he whirled: "No, you don't, Toney!" An ugly blue-black automatic dropped to the floor and the croupier's hands flew ceilingward.
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