Читать книгу Andrew Tresholm - Adentures of a Reluctant Gambler - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Andrew Tresholm, an hour or so later, stood upon the steps of the hotel, looking out upon the gay little scene. A small boy, posted there for that purpose, rushed to the telephone to announce to the chefs de partie and officials of the Casino the impending arrival of this menace to their prosperity. There was a little stir in the hall, and everyone neglected his coffee to lean forward and stare. The Senegalese porter approached with a low bow and a smile.

"The Casino, sir," he announced, pointing to the stucco building across the way.

"I see it" was the somewhat surprised reply. "Darned ugly place, too!"

The man, who spoke only French, let it go at that. Tresholm pointed to a quaint little building perched on the side of the mountain overhead.

"What place is that?" he asked in French.

"The Vistaero Restaurant, sir," the man replied. "The Salles Priveés have been open since two o'clock. The Sporting Club will be open at four."

Tresholm showed no particular sign of interest in either announcement A moment later he descended the steps, and the four very prosperous-looking Frenchmen seated in the lounge rose to watch him.

"The battle commences," Gustave Sordel exclaimed, with a chuckle. But apparently the battle was not going to commence, for Tresholm stepped into a very handsome two-seated car which a chauffeur had just brought round, took his place at the wheel, and, skirting the gardens, mounted the hill.

"Ha, ha!" Monsieur Robert joked. "Your victim escapes, Gustave."

"On the contrary." was the complacent reply, "he mounts to the bank."

In less than half an hour, instead of dealing out his packets of mille notes to the ghouls of the Casino according to plan, Andrew Tresholm was leaning over the crazy balcony of the most picturesquely situated restaurant in Europe looking down at what seemed to be a collection of toy buildings out of a child's play-box. A waiter at his elbow coughed suggestively, and Tresholm ordered coffee. He stretched himself out in a wicker chair and seemed singularly content. The afternoon was warm, and Tresholm, who had ill endured the lack of ventilation in his so-called train de luxe the night before, dosed peacefully in his chair. He awoke to the sound of familiar voices—a woman's musical and pleading, a man's dogged and irritable.

"Can't you understand the common sense of the thing, Norah?" the latter was arguing. "The luck must turn. It's got to turn. Take my case. I've lost for four nights. Tonight, therefore. I am all the more likely to win. What's the good of going home with the paltry sum we have left? Much better try to get the whole lot back."

"Five thousand pounds isn't a paltry sum by any means," the girl protested. "It would make things much more comfortable for us even though you still had to go on at your job."

"Darn the job," was the vicious rejoinder.

Tresholm, who was now quite awake, rose deliberately to his feet and moved across to them.

"Do I, by any chance, come across my young friends of Angoulême once more in some alight trouble? Can I be of any assistance?"

The youth glanced across at him and scowled. The girl swung round.

"Mr. Tresholm!" she exclaimed. "Fancy your being here! Aren't we terrible people, squabbling at the top of our voices in such a beautiful place?"

Tresholm sank into the chair which the young man, with an ungracious greeting, had pushed towards him.

"I seem fated to come up against you two in moments of tribulation," he remarked. "At Angoulême, I think I really was of some assistance. You would never have reached the place but for my chauffeur, who fortunately knows more about cars than I do. A little pathetic you looked, Miss Norah—forgive me, but I never heard your other name—leaning against the wall by the side of that exquisite mountain road, wondering whether any good-natured person would stop and ask if you were in trouble."

She smiled at the recollection. "And you did stop," she reminded him gratefully. "You helped us wonderfully."

"It was my good fortune," he said lightly, but with a faint note of sincerity in his tone. "And this time? What about it? May I be told the trouble again? A discussion about gambling apparently. Well, I know more, about gambling than I do about motor-cars. Let me be your adviser."

"Much obliged. It's no one else's trouble except our own," the young man intervened.

"Or business, I suppose you would like to add," Tresholm observed equably. "Perhaps your sister will be more communicative.

"I told you that night at the hotel at Angoulême of my reputation. I am a meddler in other people's affairs. You young people have been disputing about something. Let me settle the matter for you."

"Why not?" the girl agreed with enthusiasm. "Let me tell him, Jack."

"You can do as you jolly well please," was the surly rejoinder.

The girl leaned across the little round table towards Tresholm. "We told you a little about ourselves at Angoulême during the evening of the day when you had been so kind to us," she reminded him. "We are orphans and we have been living together at Norwich, just on Jack's salary. Our name, by the by, is Bartlett We hadn't a penny in the world, except what Jack earned.

"Then two months ago, quite unexpectedly, a distant relative, whom we had scarcely ever heard of, died and left us five thousand pounds each. We decided to pool the money, have a holiday —Jack's vacation was almost due—and, for once in our lives, have a thoroughly good time."

"A very sound idea," Tresholm murmured.

"The place we both wanted to come to," she went on, "was Monte Carlo. We bought a little motor-car—you know something about that—and we reached here a few days ago. It was lots of fun, but, alas, ever since we arrived Jack and I have disagreed. His point of view——"

"I'll tell him that myself." her brother interrupted. "Ten thousand pounds our legacy was—nine thousand we reckoned, when our holiday's paid for, and the car. Well, supposing I invested it, what would it mean? Four hundred and fifty a year. Neither one thing nor the other. It's just about what I'm earning. It wouldn't have helped me to escape, I should have had to go on just the same, and I hate the work like poison."

"Four hundred and fifty a year would have made life very much easier for us, even though you had to go on working," she remarked wistfully.

"Thinking of yourself as usual," he growled. "Well, anyhow, you agreed at first."

"Agreed to what?" Tresholm inquired.

"To taking our chance of making a bit while we were here," he explained. "We decided to risk a couple of thousand pounds and see if we could make enough to live quietly somewhere in the country, where there was golf and a bit of shooting."

"It wasn't my idea," she ventured.

"Of course, it wasn't," he scoffed. "You're like all women. You're too frightened of losing to make a good sportsman."

"Well, we have lost" she rejoined drily—"not two thousand but four."

"That seems unfortunate," was Tresholm's grave comment "What is the present subject of your dispute?"

"Simply this," the young man confided. "We have spent or shall have spent, by the time we get home, a thousand pounds of the legacy. We have lost at the tables four thousand, and sold the little car we bought for half what we gave for it We have five thousand left Norah wants me to promise not to go into the Casino again, and to leave for home at once with five thousand pounds in the bank. I want to go, neck or nothing—win back at least our five thousand—perhaps a good bit more. The luck must turn."

"Quite so," Tresholm agreed. "There's a certain amount of reason in what your brother says, Miss Norah."

She looked at him almost in horror.

"You don't mean to say that you're going to advise him to risk the rest of our legacy!" she exclaimed.

Tresholm made no direct reply. He passed around his case and lighted a cigarette himself.

"Well," he pronounced, "I have a certain amount of sympathy for your brother's point of view. If I were in his position and had lost as much as you say, I think I should want a shot at getting some of it back, but," he added, checking the young man's exclamation of delight and the girls little cry of disappointment with the same gesture, "I should want to know that the odds were level"

"Roulette's a fair enough game," the young man protested. "One chance in thirty five against you—and zero, of course."

"You may call that fair," Tresholm said calmly; "I don't. I am assuming that with your small capital you're backing the numbers. Very well. The bank has the pull on you the whole of the time to the extent of five or six percent If you play chemin de fer, the cagnotte amounts to about the same thing.

"I am with you in spirit, my young friend, but gambling at Monte Carlo isn't what I call gambling at all. You're fighting a man of equal ability a stone heavier than yourself. It can't be done. It's automatic. You must lose."

"That's what I say," the girl declared triumphantly. "We're simply foolish to dream of throwing away the last of our money."

"But people do win," her brother insisted There's that Hungarian who won half a million francs the night before last."

"The Casino takes pretty good care to advertise it when anything of that sort happens," Tresholm pointed out. "He'll probably be in again tonight and lose the lot, and more besides. Now listen to me, Bartlett" he went on. "I'm not against you in spirit I'm against you in this particular proposal because you want to take on an impossibility.

"The people who win here are just the people who play to amuse themselves, and who go away when they've had their fun. People in your position, with a few thousand pounds left over from a legacy and nothing else to fall back upon in the world, are the people who inevitably lose."

The young man thrust his hands into his trousers pockets.

"It's no good trying to be scientific in gambling," he said. "If you want to have a plunge, you always must have a bit up against you, of course. What's it matter so long as you win? I never mind backing a horse at odds on, so long as it's a certainty."

"There is such a thing as fair gambling," Tresholm pointed out. "I'll toss you for your five thousand pounds, if you like. That's a level affair—no cagnotte, no zero. You can choose the coin."

The girl gave a little cry. Her brother gasped.

"You're not serious?" he exclaimed.

"Mr. Tresholm!" she remonstrated.

"I'm perfectly serious," he assured them both. "You seem to think that I know nothing about gambling. On the contrary, I am described in the police records of this principality as a professional gambler. I must live up to my reputation. I will toss you for five thousand pounds. Shall I send for a coin?"

"No!" the girl almost shrieked.

Tresholm shrugged his shoulders.

"Very well," he acquiesced. "You would like to prolong the agony. Dine with me, both of you, tonight at the Hotel de Paris at half past eight We will either toss, or play any game you like where the odds are level, for whatever sum you like up to five thousand pounds."

The girl looked at him reproachfully through a mist of tears. Her brother was exuberant.

"You're a sportsman," he declared. "I wanted to dine at the Paris once more before we left. We'll be there at half past eight."