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But when the people she wanted to know would not know her, when Dauntrey's system did not work as it had worked on the toy roulette, when the servants stole, or left without notice, and when the guests quarrelled and complained, she began to feel that there was a curse upon the house.
In a half-charmed spell-bound state they had congregated in knots, standing, or sitting in hollow circles round the notorious oval tables marked with figures and lines. The eyes of all these sets of people were watching the Roulette. Somerset went from table to table, looking among the loungers rather than among the regular players, for faces, or at least for one face, which did not meet his gaze.
For Lanyard's chair at the table of chemin-de-fer had been filled by another and, too impatient to wait a vacancy, he wandered on to the salon dedicated to roulette, tested his luck by staking a note of five hundred francs on the black, won, and incontinently subsided into a chair and an oblivion that endured for the space of three-quarters of an hour.
"My goodness, child what a long column there was of words rhyming with 'ette." He laughed to himself as he mused: "You know, my dear, I had to let 'brevet' and 'fret' and 'roulette' go, because I couldn't think of anything to say about them. You don't know how that worries a poet."
To start with I had two, then I got interested in a game of roulette, and the last I remember I was learning to play poker. But I must have had more high-balls; the boys said afterwards they left me early in the evening with a new acquaintance; they couldn't get me to go home.
This part of the room was a gambling resort. Among the various methods of separating the prodigal from his money were roulette, faro, keno, chuckaluck, and poker tables. Around these a motley assemblage was gathered. Rich cattlemen brushed shoulders with the outlaws who were rustling their calves. Mexicans without a nickel stood side by side with Eastern consumptives out for their health.
"Why, he used to peddle vegetables and now he owns a swell place on Williams Street." "Gamble?" "Not that I know of. I never go into Pete's myself. It wouldn't be good business. But they tell me Warrington used to drop in once in a while, when he was a reporter, and choke his salary to death over the roulette table." "Doesn't gamble now?" "Not in any of the joints around town." "Drink?"
My conductors appeared to have the passion, for our course led from one method of hazard to another roulette, chuck-a-luck where the patrons cast dice for prizes of money and valuables arrayed upon numbered squares of an oilcloth covered board, keno where numbered balls were decanted one at a time from a bottle-shaped leather receptacle called, I learned, the "goose," and the players kept tab by filling in little cards as in domestic lotto; and finally we stopped at the simplest apparatus of all.
In the excursions I repeatedly undertook for this purpose I was frequently accompanied not only by Weisheimer but also by Dr. Stadl, the young lawyer who at Schott's house had proposed the charming toast which I have already mentioned. He was an extraordinary man, and I could only explain his very excitable nature by the fact that he was a passionate gambler at the roulette tables in Wiesbaden.
"What! you here?" both the lover and his mistress exclaimed. Saniel related why he was at Monaco, and what he had done since his arrival. "With my money! Ah! She is very well," Duphot cried. "And you will play no more?" the woman asked. "I have all I want." "Then you will play for me." He wished to decline, but they drew him to the roulette table, and each put a louis in his hand. "Play." "How?"
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