Loser Takes Al

“Forgetfulness like that only comes when you don’t care a damn about other people. None of us has a right to forget anyone. Except ourselves. The Gom never forgets himself. Oh hell, let’s go to the Casino.”

“We can’t afford to.”

“We are so in debt we may as well.”

That night we didn’t bet much: we stood there and watched the veterans. The young man was back in the cuisine. I saw him change a thousand francs into tokens of a hundred, and presently when he’d lost those, he went out—no coffee or rolls for him that evening. Cary said, “Do you think he’ll go hungry to bed?”

“We all will,” I said, “if the Seagull doesn’t come.”

I watched them playing their systems, losing a little, gaining a little, and I thought it was strange how the belief persisted—that somehow you could beat the bank. They were like theologians, patiently trying to rationalize a mystery. I suppose in all lives a moment comes when we wonder—suppose after all there is a God, suppose the theologians are right. Pascal was a gambler, who staked his money on a divine system. I thought, I am a far better mathematician than any of these—is that why I don’t believe in their mystery, and yet if this mystery exists, isn’t it possible that I might solve it where they have failed? It was almost like a prayer when I thought: it’s not for the sake of money—I don’t want a fortune—just a few days with Cary free from anxiety.

Of all the systems round the table there was only one that really worked, and that did not depend on the so-called law of chance. A middle-aged woman with a big bird’s nest of false blonde hair and two gold teeth lingered around the most crowded table. If anybody made a coup she went up to him and touching his elbow appealed quite brazenly—so long as the croupier was looking elsewhere—for one of his 200-franc chips. Perhaps charity, like a hunched back, is considered lucky. When she received a chip she would change it for two one-hundred-franc tokens, put one in her pocket and stake the other en plein. She couldn’t lose her hundreds, and one day she stood to gain 3,500 francs. Most nights she must have left the table a thousand francs to the good from what she had in her pocket.

“Did you see her?” Cary asked as we walked to the bar for a cup of coffee—we had given up the gins and Dubonnets. “Why shouldn’t I do that too?”

“We haven’t come to that.”

“I’ve made a decision,” Cary said. “No more meals at the hotel.”

“Do we starve?”

“We have coffee and rolls at a café instead—or perhaps milk—its more nourishing.”

I said sadly, “It’s not the honeymoon I’d intended. Bournemouth would have been better.”

“Don’t fret, darling. Everything will be all right when the Seagull comes.”

“I don’t believe in the Seagull any more.”

“Then what do we do when the fortnight’s over?”

“Go to gaol, I should think. Perhaps the prison is run by the Casino and we shall have recreation hours round a roulette wheel.”

“Couldn’t you borrow from the Other?”

“Bowles? He’s never lent without security in his life. He’s sharper than Dreuther and Blixon put together—otherwise they’d have had his shares years ago.”

“But there must be something we can do, darling?”

“Madam, there is.” I looked up from my cooling coffee and saw a small man in frayed and dapper clothes with co-respondent shoes. His nose seemed bigger than the rest of his face: the experience of a lifetime had swollen the veins and bleared the eyes. He carried jauntily under his arm a walking stick that had lost its ferrule, with a duck’s head for a handle. He said with blurred courtesy, “I think I am unpardonably intruding, but you have had ill-success at the tables and I carry with me good tidings, sir and madam.”

“Well,” Cary said, “we were just going…” She told me later that his use of a biblical phrase gave her a touch of shivers, of diablerie—the devil at his old game of quoting scripture.

“It is better for you to stay, for I have shut in my mind here a perfect system. That system I am prepared to let you have for a mere ten thousand francs.”

“You are asking the earth,” I said. “We haven’t got that much.”

“But you are staying at the Hôtel de Paris. I have seen you.”

“It’s a matter of currency,” Cary said quickly. “You know how it is with the English.”

“One thousand francs.”

“No,” Cary said, “I’m sorry.”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” I said, “I’ll stand you a drink for it.”

“Whisky,” the little man replied sharply. I realized too late that whisky cost 500 francs. He sat down at the table with his stick between his knees so that the duck seemed to be sharing his drink. I said, “Go on.”

“It is a very small whisky.”

“You won’t get another.”

“It is very simple,” the little man said, “like all great mathematical discoveries. You bet first on one number and when your number wins you stake your gains on the correct transversal of six numbers. The correct transversal on one is 31 to 36; on two 13 to 18; on three…”

“Why?”