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Only once, leaning on Arthur's arm, she had passed through the room where the green tables were prepared for play, and the croaking croupiers were calling out their fatal words of Rouge gagne and Couleur perd.
In the licensed gambling houses groups of excited men and women crowd about gaming tables presided over by greasy, half-naked Chinese croupiers, and, when they have squandered their trifling earnings, hasten to the nearest pawnshop with any garment or article of furniture that is not absolutely indispensable to their existence in order to obtain a few more coins to hazard and eventually to lose.
The eight five-franc pieces which I annually devote out of my scanty store to the tutelary god of roulette have been snapped up, one after another, in breathless haste, by the sphinx-like croupiers, impassive priests of that rapacious deity, and now I am sitting, cleaned out, by the edge of the terrace, on a brilliant, cloudless, February afternoon, looking across the zoned and belted bay towards the beautiful grey hills of Rocca-bruna and the gleaming white spit of Bordighera in the distance.
Scobell's active mind had soared above the original idea of domestic coziness to far greater heights of ingenuity. Each of the rooms was furnished and arranged in a different style. The note of individuality extended even to the croupiers.
Each one of the banks in the large gaming-houses of Germany has forty or fifty croupiers standing in its service. Where does all the money come from? The whole world is robbed! What is most sad, there are no consolations for the loss and suffering entailed by gaming.
Probably many of the croupiers in the Casino and their families had houses there, and perhaps many were shopkeepers down in the Condamine, where the cheap hotels and lodging-houses were. Few of those hotels, or the more luxurious ones at Monte Carlo itself, would exist if it were not for the Casino, and the whole Riviera would be less prosperous.
Here sit the yellow-faced, sleepless, hard-eyed croupiers, spinning the fatal ball, and mechanically sweeping in with their rakes the piles of money staked and lost by the infatuated players. These are not limited to those seated at the table and who form but the front row. What a mixture they are!
A woman with gray hair and large diamonds in her ears picked up her winnings and added them to the stack of silver on the table in front of her, and the croupiers with wooden rakes raked in scores of coins that had been laid on losing numbers.
The treasures are swiftly swept from the gaming tables by the nimble-witted croupiers. Hardin and Valois are left with the unconscious fallen beauty. A couple of the lately organized city police enter and take charge. Even the blood stained gold is gathered from the floor. Light after light is turned out.
It is my opinion that though croupiers seem such ordinary, humdrum officials men who care nothing whether the bank wins or loses they are, in reality, anything but indifferent to the bank's losing, and are given instructions to attract players, and to keep a watch over the bank's interests; as also, that for such services, these officials are awarded prizes and premiums.
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