Close behind his seat stood Argandeau, resplendent in a longtailed coat of delicate grey and trousers of a pale but brilliant blue; and the two of them whispered together, regardless of the crowd that surged around the tables a crowd of officers, fops and women whose dresses, slit to the knee and even to the thigh, seemed about to, and sometimes indeed did, slip from the shoulders that held them precariously suspended a crowd that screamed and chattered so shrilly as to drown in billows of clamor the staccato rattle of the roulette balls and the croupier's monotonous: "Make your plays, gentlemen and ladies. Rien ne ha plus."
"There it isl" Argandeau whispered. "Thirty-three! Four times this croupier has rolled it into the last dozen. He is in a groovel I say put it on the last eighteen, before he can escape from the groove!"
"The last eighteen," Marvin agreed, "but if we lose, we may be here the rest of the afternoon and all night as welll" He pushed twenty-five white plaques to a near-by section of the diagrammed table, rested his chin on his hand and stared up at the cluster of hanging lamps that burned dimly in the hot and smoky air. The ball whirred in the wheel, slowed, bumped against the nubbins, tripped on a slot and freed itself; then darted to its final resting place like a frightened mouse.
"Nineteen, red, uneven, last half," droned the croupier. He swept plaques from the board, reached over with his rake and knocked down Marvin's pile, counted it quickly and deftly pushed him an equal number of white counters.
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"There is another finished," Argandeau said gently. "The fourteenth this afternoon! It is a good time to start another, eh? He is getting away from that last dozen, and soon I think he will roll it into the first eighteen."
Marvin, his hands cupped around his pile of plaques, rose in his place and looked uneasily behind him. At Argandeau's elbow he saw a small pyramid of black curls and a pair of blue eyes that stared innocently into his.
She nodded to him. "I am here, you see."
Marvin divided his earnings and handed a part of them to Argandeau. "Play carefully," he warned him. "What you win will go into your pocket, but what you lose must come out of it, also."
With that he relinquished his seat and joined the black-haired girl, who slipped her hand eagerly beneath his arm and turned him toward the curtained booths that lined the passageway between the roulette hall and the refreshment room. When the curtain of the inclosure she selected had dropped behind them, she made a pretence of fixing her curls and, as she did so, looked up at him from under her elbow.
"Now you are a little boy again a sulky little boy. But it is not my fault. I came here as quickly as I could; not one moment sooner could I comer"
"You have no business here at all," Marvin said. "I believe every bad woman in Paris must come to this building."
She raised her eyebrows. "I do not know how to distinguish the good from the bad, and it would be interesting if you would tell me. It is the fashion to come here. You will see Madame de Stael here, and Madame de Senlis, as well as many of the laundresses, butchers' wives and cooks' daughters that Bonaparte has honored with titles. Ladies who come to our house for dinner come here to play; and some of them, I think, are quite, quite good, though I am not sure what you mean by 'good.' You are doomed to be an unhappy young man if you think that no woman is a good woman unless she has made no mistakes and had no desires, ever; and in case you wish that sort of good woman, you must be careful to marry a plaster saint out of a church."
"Well," Marvin said uncertainly, "well "
She dismissed the matter with a movement of her shoulder. "You tell me now about our system. I have seen enough to know that you have discovered one."
Marvin drew up a chair to the booth's table and fumbled in his pocket. "I'm sure of one thing," he said, "and that is there's no system
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at all by which you or anyone else can be sure of winning." He brought out a thin packet of bank notes. "Still, it's possible to be lucky for a while. I've won enough to buy food and get new clothes for Argandeau; so here's the money you loaned me, over and above my father's eleven dollars, plus 6 per cent interest for nineteen years."
"Pout for your 6 per cent and your nineteen yearsl" she cried. "Tell me how it was donel"
"Why," he said, "it's simple enough. Any child must quickly learn that his money will vanish like smoke at roulette, unless he plays the even chances the black or the red, the odd or the even, the first eighteen numbers or the last eighteen. To stake your money on a single number is like throwing it in the fire."
"Sometimes it is possible to win on a single number," she said. "It is exciting, thatl"
Marvin only laughed.
"To win by the even chances is too slowl" she objected, then.
"Of course it's slowl It's slow, and hard work; and you must be tireless, and keen in your judgment."
"You make it seem like a business rather than a game."
"So it isl So is everything else, if you want to win. I've been told there are some countries, even, where people make almost a business of love."
"Very well," she said impatiently. "We play on the even chances. What then?"
"Well," Marvin said, "when I studied the game I found that people met disaster most frequently from overreaching themselves. They'd become impatient, after many small winnings; so they'd bet largely and lose everything in two turns of the wheel. Therefore, it was necessary to find a method to prevent that a method that would aim to win a small amount of money in a short time, and to begin again whenever the small amount had been won."
He set down some marks on a sheet of paper and she came and leaned against his shoulder, watching him. "For convenience," he said, "we'll say we're playing with plaques of one franc each." On the paper were five upright marks, close together. "Each of these marks," Marvin continued, "represents one franc. It might easily represent five francs, or ten, or a hundred, but we'll call it one franc. Suppose, now, that you start to play, having in mind that you wish to win five francs, and that when five francs have been won, you must start from the beginning to win another five. You have a line of figures five ones five one-franc marks. You must play, always,
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the figures at each end of the line. That is, you play a one and a one two francs and you play them, say, on the red. If you win, you receive two francs from the croupier, and you cross off the two end figures. That leaves three ones. You still play the numbers on each end both ones. If you win, you receive two more francs and cross off the end figures. That leaves a single figure, which you play one franc on an even chance. If you win, you cross off the last number and receive one franc. Then you've won five units in this case, francs. If each unit had been ten francs, you'd have won fifty. So your venture is finished; your numbers are entirely crossed out. Therefore you set down five more ones and start over again."
She tossed her head. "And if I lose, I double, eh? That is no system!"
Marvin ignored her words. "Again you commence by playing the end numbers two ones. You lose. This time you cannot cross out a figure; instead you must add the Figure ~ to your row of ones a number greater by one than the last number. Then you play the two end numbers a one and a two three francs. If you lose you add the Figure 3 and again play the ends a one and a three. If again you lose, you add a four, and play a one and a four. This time you may win; if you do, you cross off the one and the four, and play the end figures of those that remain a one and a three. If you again win, cross off the one and the three, and play a one and a two; but if you should lose, add a figure larger by one than the last number not crossed off. When finally the numbers are entirely crossed out you'll again have won five units five francs so once more you write down your five ones for a new venture."
"Why," she said slowly, "I think there may be something in it. It seems simple, also." Her arm, resting on his shoulder, slipped around his neck, and with the impulsiveness of a child she pressed her cheek to his.
"Yes, it's simple," Marvin admitted, "but there's danger in it, none the less, as there is in almost everything that's exciting."
She withdrew her arm and stood a little away from him, arranging her hair and glancing at him from beneath her elbow.
"The danger," Marvin continued, "will come when you've lost repeatedly. There may come a time, then, when you're setting down larger and larger figures with each loss, and must stake thirty or forty or fifty francs on each play, again and again, in order to win only five francs eventually. It's not likely to happen often, but when it happens, I advise you to go cautiously to stop playing entirely when
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your wagers, on a single game, have become as large as your previous day's winnings."
"Poufl" she cried gaily. "Go cautiously, indeedl Come, we shall play your system and I shall show you there is no need for caution!" She seized him by the arm and tugged at him.
Marvin rose slowly. "Then you think you can win with this system?"
"But of courser You have won and I shall winl" She swayed against him, her blue eyes laughing up into his and her red lips a little parted.
Marvin put his arm about her. "Then you're satisfied with what I've done?" He lifted her and kissed her, kissed her a second time, and in the small and tawdry booth there was a moment of breathless silence.
At length she laughed softly. "We play now."
"It's what you wanted?" he persisted. "What you expected?"
"Yes, it is something new, and so easy that I cannot understand why nobody has discovered it before."
"Then there's still time today for you to go with me to see Mr. Barnet at the Legation; and with good luck I can be in Calais tomorrow."
"But we must playl" she protested. "Today you remain with me; tomorrow will be time enough to see this ambassador of yours."
Marvin shook his head. "There's my brig to be got ready. I've waited and waited until I'm near bursting from doing nothing. There were two American privateer captains in here yesterday, but today they've gone to Lorient, and tomorrow they're putting to sea. How
do you think I felt, sitting here and elbowing all the all the well,!
sitting here in Paris when they were starting out to comb the Channet for British ships?"
"British shipsl" she exclaimed. "I think there is something in your mind besides British ships."
He nodded. "There's the loan you're making me, and the 300 per
cent profit I've promised to pay you on it. I've got that to think about, l
and other things as well." Seemingly as an afterthought, he added, "The sooner I get to sea, the sooner I'll be back with your gold."
"And the sooner you get to sea, the sooner you'll catch up with the lady who left you for another man, oh?"
Marvm took her hands in his. "A lady who has a husband of her own, and an uncle as affectionate as one I could mention, should never bother her pretty head about a lady I haven't seen for many a long week and may never see again." He kissed her almost roughly,
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threw back the curtain of the booth and drew her after him into the crowd that surged and gabbled between the roulette tables. On his way to the door, he tapped Argandeau on the shoulder and motioned to him to follow.
Argandeau clasped his forehead in despair. "It is against met" he whispered hoarsely. "I am playing forty-two francs at one throw, and these buzzards have one hundred and thirty-seven francs of my moneyl"
"Leave it and be ready to start for Calais," Marvin told him. "we'll be on shipboard at this time tomorrow!"
1
XXVIII
Tree outer room of the Legation of the United States of America was a small and dingy cubicle, presided over by a contemptuous lady with green eyes and hair the color of untended brass, and it seemed to Marvin, standing humbly before her with the black-haired girl beside him, that she was filled with the need of supplying the grandeur that her surroundings lacked, and of upholding, by means of haughtiness and pride, the dignity of the country that she thought she represented.
"Mr. Barnet is engaged," she told Marvin disdainfully. "You can sit down and wait" she nodded her head toward an inner room "but you should have come earlier. I think it's too late for him to see anyone else."
"But I must see him today," Marvin protested. "If you'll tell him it's important - "
The contemptuous lady eyed him coldly. "Leave your card, and ids possible you can see the secretary."
Marvin looked helplessly at his companion, who sighed gently. "I seem to recall," she said to the contemptuous lady, "that Mr. Barnet was brought here from Havre in order to act and to think on behalf of Mr. Barlow, who has gone to Russia. Perhaps I am mistaken."
The voice of the contemptuous lady was hard. "No, you're not mistaken."
"In that case," the black-haired girl said softly, "it will be interesting to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to learn that there is yet another who is thinking and acting on behalf of Mr. Barlow. He will be pained, I have no doubt, to know that the thinking for your great country is done in a room" she touched a finger tip to the windowpane that overlooked the dickering street lights of the Rue St. Honore "where the outlook is so obscured."
"Obscured!" the green-eyed lady cried indignantly. "Obscured! I'll have you know that window was washed last week, ma'aml"
"In that case," the black-haired girl said, "you can doubtless see the advisability of going at once to Mr. garnet, regardless of who is with
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him, and telling him that Comtesse Edmond de Perigord, Duchesse de Courland, must see him at once. At once, you understand!"
The green-eyed lady stared at her unbelievingly; then rose suddenly to her feet and hurried from the room. As for the black-haired girl, she made adjustments in the curls under her bonnet of yellow silk, glancing quickly at Marvin beneath her elbow as she did so a way she had, and not an unpleasant one either, he thought. "You see," she said, "how often it is that even a woman may help a man."