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Reckless of this protest, the waves of play rolled on, and ere long sucked all our characters but Vizard into the vortex. Zoe hazarded a sovereign on red, and won; then two on black, and won; then four on red, and won. She was launched, and Fanny too. They got excited, and bet higher; the croupiers pelted them with golden coins, and they began to pant and flush, and their eyes to gleam.
Faro dealers from the Klondike, poker dealers from Nome, roulette croupiers from Leadville, were all here to reap the rich harvest to be made from investors, field workers, and operators. Smooth grafters with stock in worthless companies for sale circulated in and out with blue-prints and whispered inside information.
By a sort of tacit agreement among them, Le Gros acted as master of the ceremonies, the dispenser of that dread lottery of life and death, in which he himself was to take a share. Two or three of his fellows stood on each side of him, acting as aids or croupiers. Solemn and momentous as was the question to be decided, the mode of decision was simple in the extreme.
Members gather round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death.
She had won four maximums en plein within the last half-hour, and the crowd around the table noting her good fortune were now following her. It was easy for any novice in the Rooms to see that the handsome, dark-eyed woman was a practised player. Time after time she let the coups pass. The croupiers' invitation to play did not interest her.
With the rakes the croupiers collected the stakes of certain players; with these same rakes they doubled, separated, or even paid, in proportions of which he took no account, certain others, and that was all. But it mattered little. Having seen how the money was placed on the table, that was sufficient. He had five louis in his hand when the croupier said: "Messieurs, faites votre jeu."
So many successive seasons had he passed there before 1914 that across at the rooms the attendants and croupiers knew him as an habitué, and he was always granted the carte blanche the white card of the professional gambler. With nearly half the people he met he had a nodding acquaintance, for friendships are easily formed over the tapis vert and as easily dropped.
The cartwheel five-franc piece is nowhere permissible now, and at the rouge et noir tables hundred-franc notes are the smallest stake. There is a change in everything except in the croupiers and the chefs, and the actual tables and machinery over which they preside. Even the atmosphere is new. The old dry heat is no more.
In fact, in, view of the circumstance that she lost all day, the croupiers and other authorities of the Casino showed her every attention; and on her fame spreading through the town, visitors of every nationality even the most knowing of them, the most distinguished crowded to get a glimpse of "la vieille comtesse russe, tombee en enfance," who had lost "so many millions."
Everybody talked about her: the croupiers who spun her numbers or put on her stakes, and received her generous tips: the shopkeepers with whom she spent the money she won, buying expensive hats and furs, dresses and jewellery: clerks at the bank where she deposited her winnings: people of all sorts who frequented the Casino, and even those who were there seldom but heard what was going on through acquaintances at the many luncheon parties and "At Homes" which make up the round of life at Monte Carlo.
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