CHAPTER ONE
PROSPEROUS DAYS
“BY Goad!” said MacTaggart, sipping his second whiskey, “the auld man’s a wizard. He’s got me fair bamboozilt.”
It was evening, and he and Hugh were sitting in the Café de Paris.
“I thocht I knew something o’ roulette, but noo I maun jist go back tae Strathbungo and play dominoes. And you, young man, wi’ that canny wee smile on yer gub,—I’m thinkin’ ye ken mair aboot it than ye want tae tell.”
Hugh shook his head.
“No, I can’t grasp it. And yet I’m with the old man every day. The scientific explanation of it’s beyond me. A mathematical mystery. Your system and all the others are based on the laws of average, the equilibrium. It’s a calculation of chances, of probabilities. So far so good! The law of average does exist. It’s all rot to say that the coup that’s gone has no influence on the one that is to come. It has. It’s true that the slots are all the same size and so each has an equal claim to the ball, but it is because of this equal chance that they will each receive it an equal number of times. I’ve seen a number come up three times in succession, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to bet thirty-five to one, in thousands, that it won’t come up a fourth time. Mechanically, maybe it has an equal chance with the others, but by the law of average, no.”
“That’s elementary,” said MacTaggart.
“Yes, but it’s as deep as the most of us get. We’re all in the kindergarten class. We grope vaguely. We fumble with probabilities. As far as we go we are right; but we don’t go far enough. We reach a point where our system breaks down. The law of average is too big for us to compress into a formula. In its larger workings it eludes us; we cannot regulate it. Our observations of it are too limited.”
“I’ve got a record of over two hundred thousand consecutive coups,” said MacTaggart.
“The professor has a record of over two million. The amount of work he has done is colossal. He has studied the numbers in their relation to one another; he has classified, co-ordinated, condensed. His system is one of correspondence and elimination. He has used the resources of mathematics to put it on a working basis. He has gone above and behind all the rest of us. His comprehension is larger; he has grasped the wider workings of the law of average. He has narrowed down and focussed the probability, and reduced the phenomena by the magnitude of his calculations to a minimum. The day of the year and the hour of the day has a bearing on the application of his system. That red note-book of his is full of algebraic formula. By looking at the last dozen numbers that have come up and referring to his formulæ, he has a hint how to play. But even then he is never quite sure. Sometimes he is only within eight numbers, sometimes within four. But that’s good enough. He has been lucky in hitting the precise number one time out of three; but scientifically speaking he considers he ought to strike it only one time out of five.”
“I’ve seen him strike it every day for the last month. He must hae averaged over sixty thoosand francs a day, I’m thinkin’. I expect the members o’ the board are losin’ lots o’ sleep them days. It’s no’ a question of him winnin’, but how much is he goin’ tae win. They’ve got old Bob Bender watchin’ him every time he plays. If it wisna that you were everlastingly doin’ the watch dog some one would get a graup o’ that wee book he’s forever keekin intae. Though I don’t suppose they’d mak’ much o’ it, wi’ a’ thae queer, crabbed letters an’ figures. I’m sure they’d be gled tae gi’ him a year’s profits if he’d stop. Aye, or pay a fortune tae any one that wad stop him. But then he’s got you for a bodyguard.”
“Yes, he never goes out without me.”
“Aye, ye’re a cautious young man. I’m sometimes thinkin’ ye’ve got a touch o’ the Scot in ye. I hope ye’ve no’ been an’ squandert that money ye were sae lucky as tae win?”
“No, the most of it’s in the bank. I won’t touch it for gambling purposes. In fact, I think I’ve finished.”
“I’m wishin’ I wis masel’. I’m sick o’ the place, but I must stay until I mak’ enough to go home no’ lookin’ like a tramp. Ye ken I still believe in ma system.”
“I tell you what,” said Hugh, “why don’t you play with a bigger unit? You play with five franc stakes and you make from four to eight pieces every day. Why not increase your unit to a hundred francs, and then you’ll make from four to eight hundred francs a day.”
“I hav’ nae the capital.”
“Suppose I lend you a thousand francs.”
“I micht lose it.”
“I tell you.... You play with my thousand francs, playing hundred franc stakes, and I’ll take the risk of you losing. When you win you can pay me a quarter of your gains.”
“All right. That’s fair enough. I’ll start to-morrow if ye like.”
Hugh gave MacTaggart a mille note, and every evening MacTaggart hunted him up and handed over a hundred and sometimes two hundred francs.
For weeks the great system of the professor had been successful. His bank book showed a credit of over two million francs. Every day accompanied by Hugh, he made his triumphal entry into the Casino surrounded by an excited and admiring throng. He made no other public appearance and was a storm centre of curiosity. Hugh acted as the old man’s manager and saw to it that his mystery was preserved. He interviewed reporters, and kept off the curious; for the professor was fast becoming a character of international fame. The great press agencies chronicled his success; the great dailies paragraphed him; his portrait graced the picture page of the Daily Mail. There were articles about him in the illustrated weeklies; and even the monthly journals devoted to science began to consider him seriously. He and Hugh were snapshotted a dozen times a day. All the well-known roulette players, Speranza, Dr. Ludus, Max Imum and Silas Doolittle wrote long letters to the papers diagnosing his famous system. Never had the Casino had such advertising—yet it was costing them too much.
The old man never broke the bank. There was nothing sensational about his play. It was almost monotonous in its certitude; it had the air even of a commercial transaction in which he had come to collect a daily debt. It was this cold-blooded, business-like precision that alarmed them. It was almost cynical; it seemed to say: “Look out. I’m letting you off easy now, but when I proceed to tighten up the cinch, God help you.”
An imaginative reporter had said that Hugh was the professor’s nephew, and they both agreed to adopt this suggestion. Indeed, as time went on, Hugh himself began to think of the old man as a real uncle. At times it seemed almost impossible that they were not related.
Hugh had taken to smoking excellent cigars. Why not? MacTaggart was turning in over a thousand a week. He felt some compunction in accepting this; but MacTaggart was making three times as much for himself, and was more than satisfied. He could well afford to be extravagant in other directions as well. There was Mrs. Belmire, for instance. He took her to dinner a great deal, and out motoring as well. Apart from that he and Margot still lived in the same simple way.
One morning as Hugh sat smoking in the professor’s den, he observed the old man closely.
“He’s easily good for another ten years,” he thought. “Looks rather like Karl Marx, burly shoulders, clear, shrewd eyes. A sane man except for his fanatic obsession to down the Casino.”
The professor interrupted his reflections by saying:
“My boy, I’ve come to a great decision.” He paused impressively. “I’m an old man, and I am afraid that death may come on me unawares, my life work unfinished. I have decided that you are to carry it on. You shall begin where I leave off. I am going to instruct you in the system. You shall take the avenging sword from my failing grasp.”
Hugh made a gesture of protest. “I say, professor, it’s awfully good of you. I assure you I’m humbly grateful; but really I’m quite unworthy.”
“I know of no one so worthy.”
“Oh, no, the honour’s too great. Besides, I’ve made up my mind never to play again. A resolution’s a resolution, you know.”
“I know. You have force of will. But think.... You are not playing for yourself but for humanity. Yours will be a mission, the ridding society of a dangerous pest. In destroying the Casino you will be God’s avenger.”
“But, professor, I’m just a common ordinary sort of chap. I don’t want to be anybody’s avenger. As for the Casino, I don’t bear it any ill will. If I had lost, perhaps I might, but it has treated me well. Of course, I know it’s a plague spot, a menace to mankind and all that sort of thing, but that’s none of my business as far as I can see.”
The professor looked both grieved and shocked. “But don’t you want to be a benefactor to mankind? Don’t you want to fulfil a great destiny, to be a reformer, the leader of a new crusade?”
“No, professor, I admit with shame I don’t want to be any of those things. All I want is to live a quiet life and make a comfortable living. There’s a cottage with a garden and a second-hand Panhard I have my eye on. Between them I can rub along. Then on off days, I’ll paint. I’ve just begun to get the feeling of the place, and I think I can do good work. But there! You’re not an artist. You won’t understand.”
The professor seemed quite crushed. He sat silent and thoughtful. Finally he said:
“No, I’m not an artist. I’m a man of science, and for that reason I don’t want to see my life work lost to the world. Well then, if you refuse to be my disciple, will you be my trustee? You refuse to play for me,—will you see that the system is published after my death? It is a contribution to science; at the same time by its divination of the laws of chance, it will destroy the spirit of gambling. Not only the Casino of Monte Carlo, but gambling institutions all over the world will fall. The Casino is only an item in my programme. I destroy chance; I replace it with certitude. My work is not complete, but others will follow. They will perfect it. Will you then do this much for me? Will you see my great work in print?”
“Yes, I’ll do that. I promise. But hang it all, professor, you’ve got another thirty years to live.”
“One never knows. There have been no attempts on my life lately, but I must take no chances. I will begin now and teach you all there is to know.”
The professor opened his safe and took from it a thick folio bound in limp leather.
“Voila! My treatise. It’s all there, the condensed result of the labour of thirty years. The red note-book contains the application of my system to roulette; but in this folio is the result of all my researches, the scientific explanation of the invention by which I annihilate chance. Look at it.”
“But it’s all in cypher.”
“Yes, all. Not one cypher but many. For the alphabet alone I have three different sets of characters; for the figures, six. You will have to learn over a hundred symbols before you can translate this. And these must not be put on paper; they must be carried in the head. I will teach them to you but you must promise never to write them. I have protected myself well. Without the cypher keys that folio is valueless.”
So Hugh spent the next few days committing to memory the hundred odd cypher characters of the professor’s great discovery.
When he was not engaged with the professor, he occupied most of his time dangling after Mrs. Belmire. She had definitely attached him to her train of admirers and he had fallen in line, not without a certain ill grace. The life she led was at variance with his tastes; and while he submitted to her charm, he was constantly on the point of rebellion. He was like a man who chafes at his chains but cannot break them. He resented the easy way in which she took his homage for granted. There were moments when he almost hated her. What rotten luck to fall in love with a woman so far beyond and above him! If it had only been June Emslie, or even Margot. But who can help these things? In the end he decided to let himself drift,—with a certain regard to the direction of his drifting.
Perhaps Paul Vulning was to some extent responsible for his subjection. He detested the man cordially and was jealous of the friendship between him and Mrs. Belmire. When he saw them together he was possessed by an irresponsible rage and tortured by all sorts of jealous imaginings. If it had only been Fetterstein or the old General.... But Vulning!
She had not borrowed any money from him lately, although she was always urging him to play again. The last time she had borrowed from him had set him thinking. He had suffered so much from the want of money that now he was painfully aware of its value. At all costs he was determined to hang on to his fifty thousand francs. He would lend her another thousand but no more. That was the breaking point, he told himself.
“In any case,” he thought, “I have only to tell her my position and she’ll chuck me ignominiously. She thinks I’m a rich somebody. When she learns I’m a poor nobody then.... But I won’t tell her yet awhile. I enjoy very much being with her, and undoubtedly I am learning a good deal from her. ‘Sophisticating me,’ she calls it. Well, I suppose that sort of thing is part of a chap’s education. I will have to regard it as a return for the money I have lent her, and which, poor thing, I am sure she will never return. Confound the woman! I don’t know what’s got into me. I can’t get her out of my head.”
One day he would vow he was finished with her, the next he would be crazy to see her again. Even when he was with her, his irritation sometimes drove him to the point of rebellion. For instance, there was the evening that they had supper at the High Life.
It was she who had suggested that they go there, and rather gloomily he had complied. They had gone first to the Casino and spent some time in the private room, for Mrs. Belmire disdained the ordinary one. After watching the play for awhile she had suggested:
“Why don’t you try your luck? It’s stupid to look on and not risk anything.”
“No, thanks, I don’t care to.”
“Oh, come on. You always win. Even if you lose, what do a few thousands matter to you when you have won so enormously? Even I saw you.”
“Yes, you saw me win but—you didn’t see me lose.”
“Of course, poor boy, I know one can’t always win. If you won’t play, give me some money and I’ll play for you.”
He took a hundred franc note from his pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it with a surprised contempt that nettled him. As if it were dirt she threw it on the first table. Of course it was swept away.
“There!” she said pettishly, “that’s gone. Well, it’s no use staying here if we don’t play. It’s tiresome. Let’s go where there’s music and dancing.”
They went to the High Life, a place he disliked. It had a rakehell atmosphere, and suggested debauch. He also resented the obvious fact that she was quite at home there.
“Faugh! a den of gilded corruption!” he was thinking, when an insinuating head-waiter presented a wine card and suggested a certain expensive brand of champagne.
“I know it’s the kind madam prefers,” he murmured.
“Do order a bottle,” said Mrs. Belmire carelessly.
Hugh ordered, and at her further suggestion he demanded a homard American; the bill came to two hundred francs. He was annoyed.
“Damned robbers,” he thought. “Well, they won’t get ahead of me on the champagne. I’ll finish the bottle.”
As he drank the place became more and more cheerful. He felt very strong and very playful. He clutched Mrs. Belmire’s arm; once even he pinched her cheek and called her Marion. She looked at him curiously. There is no saying to what further indiscretions his exhilaration might have prompted him, had not there at that moment occurred the episode of the Nouveau Riche and the Sick Soldier.
The Nouveau Riche was all a nouveau riche should be, big, bloated and boastful. He had been a cobbler before the war, but had made a fortune in shoe contracts. The Soldier should never have been there at all. Some friends, however, had dragged him in; and he sat looking thin, pale, and wretchedly out of place.
The Nouveau Riche was playfully emptying a bottle of champagne over a small palm tree. The manager expostulated. It was doubtful if palms, however thirsty, would appreciate the virtue of Chateau Margaux, but the Nouveau Riche waved him aside.
“Put your damned palm on the bill,” he said, “and bring me a fresh bottle.” He was proceeding to pour this, too, on the unfortunate plant when the Sick Soldier sprang up.
“I’ve had enough,” he cried, and his black eyes flashed in his white face. He wrenched the bottle from the man’s hand. “You swine, you! Where I come from there are men who would give their heart’s blood for a mouthful of that wine you’re wasting like filthy water.”
The Nouveau Riche got purple in the face; the Soldier was gripping the loose flesh of his throat and pouring the rest of the champagne over his head.
“Here you sit and swill and guzzle,” he went on, “while my comrades out there in the desert are dying from hunger and thirst. In Syria.... Yes, I come from Syria where we crawled on our bellies on the sand, crawled to the water tanks to steal a few precious drops and were shot for it like mad dogs. We buried a dead horse and dug it up a week later and ate it. Half of us died in agony, the rest are wrecks—like me. And now when I see a pig like you squandering and wasting, and think of my pals out there, suffering, starving, panting with thirst, I tell you it makes me sick.... Oh, if I only had you out there, you rotten hog....”
There seemed every prospect of a row, but the Man from Syria suddenly collapsed and his friends led him away.
“This is a beastly hole,” said Hugh abruptly. “Let’s get out of it.”
There was something hard and cynical in Mrs. Belmire’s laugh as she replied: “Why should we? I think it’s rather amusing.”
“Amusing!” he retorted savagely. “You seem to think of nothing but being amused. One would think you lived for amusement.”
“Why, so I do, I believe. What better is there to live for? What do you live for?”
As he could not think of any worthy object that inspired his life he did not reply, and they sat in silence. Their drive home was silent also, but at the door of the Pension Pizzicato she held his hand.
“We haven’t quarrelled, have we?”
“No, why?”
“You’re so queer. Not a bit nice. I say, won’t you come up to my room and smoke a cigarette? It’s so late we can slip upstairs without meeting any one.”
An instinct of danger warned him. At the moment, too, she really repelled him.
“No, I’m tired. I want to go home.”
But she still held his hand with a soft pressure.
“Can’t I coax you? Please come. There’s something very important I want to talk to you about.”
“What is it? Can’t you tell me here?”
“Yes, but ... I was thinking about that man who spilled the champagne. Of course, he was an awful brute, but what heaps of money he must have. What a nuisance money is! It’s so sordid and yet one’s just got to have it.”
He knew what was coming.
“I say, you’re the best pal I’ve got here. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’m in awful difficulties. Debts all round. Horrid people keep pressing me to pay their wretched bills. Oh, I’m only a lonely, unprotected woman....”
Here Mrs. Belmire began to cry.
“Can’t you lend me ten thousand francs, dear boy?”
“No.”
He was surprised at the explosive vehemence of his tone. The lady was even more surprised. Her tears ceased suddenly. With a kind of pained dignity she drew herself up.
“Good-night,” she said icily and then turning sharply, left him alone with the sea and the stars.