Читать книгу Felo de Se? - R. Austin Freeman - Страница 5

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AS the taxi pursued its unimpeded way westward through the half-populated streets, I reflected on the curious circumstances that had made me the guest of a man who was virtually a stranger to me, and I was disposed to consider what I knew of him. I use the word "disposed" advisedly, for, in fact, my mind was principally occupied by my late experiences, and the considerations which I here set down for the reader's information are those that might have occurred to me rather than those that actually did.

I had now been acquainted with John Gillum for some six months; ever since, in fact, I had been transferred to the Gracechurch Street branch of the bank. But our acquaintance was of the slightest. He was one of the bank's customers and I was a cashier. His visits to the bank were rather more frequent than those of most of our customers and on slack days he would linger to exchange a few words or even to chat for a while. Nevertheless, our relations hardly tended to grow in intimacy; for though he was a bright, gay, and rather humorous man, quite amusing to talk to, his conversation persistently concerned itself with racing matters and the odds on, or against, particular horses, a subject in which I was profoundly uninterested. In truth, despite our rather frequent meetings, his personality made so little impression on me that, if I had been asked to describe him, I could have said no more than that he was a tallish, rather good-looking man with black hair and beard which contrasted rather noticeably with his blue eyes, that he spoke with a slight Scotch accent and that two of his upper front teeth had been rather extensively filled with gold. This latter characteristic did, indeed, attract my notice rather unduly; for, though gold is a beautiful material (and one that a banker might be expected to regard with respectful appreciation), these golden teeth rather jarred on me and I found it difficult to avoid looking at them as we talked.

Yet even in those days I felt a certain interest in our customer; but it was a purely professional interest. As cashier, I naturally knew all about his account and his ways of dealing with his money, and on both, and especially his financial habits, I occasionally speculated with mild curiosity. For his habits were not quite normal, or at least were not like those of most other private customers. The latter usually make most of their payments by cheque. But Gillum seemed to make most of his in cash. It is true that he appeared to pay most of his tradespeople by cheque, but from time to time, and at pretty frequent intervals, he would present a "self" cheque for a really considerable sum—one, or even two or three hundred pounds, and occasionally a bigger sum still—and take the whole of it away in pound notes.

It was rather remarkable, in fact very much so when I came to look over the ledger and note the fluctuations of his account. For at fairly regular intervals he paid in really large cheques—up to a thousand pounds—mostly drawn upon an Australian bank, which for a time swelled his account to very substantial proportions. But, by degrees, and not very small degrees, his balance dwindled until he seemed on the verge of an overdraft, and then another big cheque would be paid in and give him a fresh start.

Now there is nothing remarkable in the fluctuation of an account when the customer receives payment periodically in large sums and pays out steadily in the small amounts which represent the ordinary expenses of living. But when I came to cast up Gillum's account, it was evident that the great bulk of his expenditure was in the form of cash. And it seemed additional to the ordinary domestic payments, as I have said; and I found myself wondering what on earth he could be doing with his money. He could not be making investments, or even "operating" on the Stock Exchange, for those transactions would have been settled by cheque. Apparently he was making some sort of payments which had to be made in cash.

Of course it was no business of mine. Still, it was a curious and interesting problem. What sort of payments were these that he was making? Now when a man pays away at pretty regular intervals considerable sums in cash, the inference is that he is having some sort of dealings with someone who either will not accept a cheque or is not a safe person to be trusted with one. But a person who will not accept payment by an undoubtedly sound cheque is a person who is anxious to avoid evidence that a payment has been made. Such anxiety suggests a secret and probably unlawful transaction; and in practice, such a transaction is usually connected with the offence known as "demanding money with menaces." So, as I cast up the very large amounts that Gillum had drawn out in cash, I asked myself, "Is he a gambler, or has he fallen into the clutches of a blackmailer?" The probability of the latter explanation was suggested by certain large withdrawals at approximately quarterly periods, and also by the fact that Gillum not only took payment almost exclusively in pound notes, but also showed a marked preference for notes that had been in circulation as compared with new notes, of the serial numbers of which the bank would have a record. Still, the two possibilities were not mutually exclusive. A gambler is by no means an unlikely person to be the subject of blackmail.

Such, then, were the reflections that might have occupied my mind had it not been fully engaged with my recent adventure. As it was, the short journey was beguiled by brief spells of scrappy and disjointed conversation which lasted until the taxi drew up opposite the brilliantly lighted entrance of the restaurant and a majestic person in the uniform of a Liberian admiral hurried forward to open the door. We both stepped out, and when Gillum had paid the taxi-driver—extravagantly, as I gathered from the man's demeanour—we followed the admiral into a wide hail where we were transferred to the custody of other and less gorgeous myrmidons.

Giamborini's Restaurant was an establishment of a kind that was beyond my experience, as it was certainly beyond my means. It oozed luxury and splendour at every pore. The basin of precious marble in which I purged myself of the by-products of the London atmosphere was of a magnificence that almost called for an apology for washing in it; the floor of delicate Florentine mosaic seemed too precious to stand upon in common boots; while as to the dining-saloon, I can recall it only as a bewildering vision of marble and gilding, of vast mirrors, fretted ceilings and stately columns—apparently composed of gold and polished gorgonzola—and multitudinous chandeliers of a brilliancy that justified Dick Swiveller's description, lately quoted by Gillum. I found it a little oppressive and was disposed to compare it (not entirely to its advantage) with the homely Soho restaurants that I remembered in the far-off pre-war days.

A good many of the tables were unoccupied, though the company was larger than I should have expected, for the hour was rather late for dinner but not late enough for theatre suppers. Of the guests present, the men were mostly in evening dress, and so, I suppose, were the women, judging by the considerable areas of their persons that were uncovered by clothing. As to their social status I could form no definite opinion, but the general impression conveyed by their appearance was that they hardly represented the cream of the British aristocracy. But perhaps I was prejudiced by the prevailing magnificence.

"What are you going to have, Mortimer?" my host asked as we took our seats at the table to which we had been conducted. "Gin and It, cocktail, or sherry? You prefer sherry. Good. So do I. It is wine that maketh glad the heart of man, not these chemical concoctions."

He selected from the wine list the particular brand of sherry that commended itself to him and then gave a few general directions which were duly noted. As the waiter was turning away, he added: "I suppose you haven't got such a thing as an evening paper about you?"

The waiter had not. But there was no difficulty. He would get one immediately. Was there any particular paper that would be preferred?

"No," replied Gillum, "any evening paper will do." Thereupon the waiter bustled away with the peculiar quick, mincing gait characteristic of his craft; a gait specially and admirably adapted to the rapid conveyance of loaded trays. In a minute or two he came skating back with a newspaper under his arm and a tray of hors-d'oeuvres and two brimming glasses of sherry miraculously balanced on his free hand. Gillum at once opened the paper, while I fixed a ravenous eye on the various and lurid contents of the tray. As I had expected, he turned immediately to the racing news. But he did not read the column. After a single brief glance, he folded up the paper and laid it aside with the remark, uttered quite impassively: "No luck."

"I hope you haven't dropped any money," said I, searching for the least inedible contents of the tray.

"Nothing to write home about," he replied. "Fifty."

"Fifty!" I repeated. "You don't mean fifty pounds?"

"Yes," he replied calmly. "Why not? You can't expect to bring it off every time."

"But fifty pounds!" I exclaimed, appalled by this horrid waste of money. "Why, it would furnish a small library."

He laughed indulgently. "That's the bookworm's view of the case but it isn't mine. I've had my little flutter and I'm not complaining; and let me tell you, Mortimer, that I have just barely missed winning a thousand pounds."

I was on the point of remarking that a miss is as good as a mile, but, as that truth has been propounded on some previous occasions, I refrained and asked: "When you say that you have just barely missed winning a thousand pounds, what exactly do you mean? How do you know that you nearly won that amount?"

"It is perfectly simple, my dear fellow," said he. "I laid fifty pounds on the double event at twenty to one against. That is to say, I backed two particular horses to win two particular races. Now, one of my horses won his race all right. The other ought to have done the same. But he didn't. He came in second. So I lost. But you see how near a thing it was."

"Then," said I, "if you had backed the two horses separately, I suppose you would have won on the whole transaction?"

"I suppose I should," he admitted, "but there would have been nothing in it. The horse that won was the favourite. But the double event was a real sporting chance. Twenty to one against. And you see how near I was to bringing it off."

"Nevertheless," I objected, "you lost. And you went into the business with the knowledge, not only that you might lose, but that the chances that you would lose were estimated at twenty to one. I should have supposed that no sane man would have taken such a chance as that."

He looked at me with a broad smile that displayed his golden teeth to great disadvantage.

"Thus saith the banker," he commented. "But you are taking a perverted view of the transaction. You are considering it as an investor might; as a means of realising the greatest profit with the smallest risk. That is the purely commercial standpoint. But I am not engaged in commerce; I am engaged in sport—in gambling, if you prefer the expression. Now the essence of the sport of gambling is the possibility that you may lose. If you were certain to win every time, it might be highly profitable but it would be uncommonly poor fun. Believe me, Mortimer, the heart and soul of the game is the chance of losing."

He spoke quite gravely and earnestly and the statement put me, for the moment, rather at a loss for a reply. For, in its mad way, it was true, and yet, from a practical point of view, it was nonsense. Meanwhile, the waiter brought and placed before us a strangely sophisticated dish, based, I believe, on fish, and then proceeded to fill our glasses with champagne. It was, I think, quite good champagne, though I am no authority, my extreme dissipation, in the ordinary way, not going beyond the traditional "chop and a pint of claret." At any rate, it was highly stimulating, and when Gillum had raised his glass and, with a toast "to the next double event," emptied it and insisted on my doing likewise, the last traces of my depression vanished.

"I admit, Gillum," said I, resuming the discussion, "that there is a certain amount of truth in what you say. But we must try to keep some sense of proportion. Fifty pounds is a devil of a price for the fun of a little flutter. Surely you could have got your sport at a cheaper rate than that."

"But that is just what you can't do," said he. "What you don't seem to realise is that the intensity of the thrill is strictly proportionate to the amount of the possible loss, and, of course, of the possible gain. I could have laid five shillings on the double event and been secure from appreciable loss. But then I should have stood to gain a mere flyer. No, my young friend, you can't get a respectable thrill for five bob. And there is another thing that you are over-looking. You speak as if I lost every time. But I don't. Sometimes I win. If I never won, it would be a dull game and I expect I shouldn't go on."

"I think you would," said I. "You would always be hoping that at last you would get your money back."

"Perhaps you are right," he conceded. "It is certainly the fact that a genuine gambler is not put off by a succession of losses. The oftener he loses the more dogged he becomes."

"So I have always understood," said I. "But to come to your own case, you say that sometimes you win. How often do you win? Taking your betting transactions as a whole, how does the balance stand? Are you in pocket or out?"

"Out, of course," he replied promptly. "Every body is, excepting the bookies. And they don't do it for sport, but just as a cold-blooded matter of business. They don't lose, in ordinary circumstances, and they don't win to a considerable extent. They just balance their books and make a comfortable living. But, of course, the fact that the bookies are in pocket by the transaction is clear proof that the backers, as a whole, must be out."

There seemed to me something very odd and rather abnormal in the reasonable and lucid way in which he discussed this absurdity. I had the sort of feeling that one might have had in discussing insane delusions with a lunatic. But I returned to the charge, futile as I knew the discussion to be.

"Very well," said I, "you agree that the balance of profit and loss is against you. How much, you know better than I do, but I suspect that your losses, from month to month, are pretty heavy." (Of course, I did not "suspect." I knew. The bank's books told the story.) "You must be paying very considerable sums for your little flutters and I put it to you, isn't it a most monstrous waste of money?"

He laughed cheerfully and refilled our glasses.

"I see," he replied, "that you are an incorrigible financier. You are taking a completely perverted view of the matter. You speak of waste of money. But what, after all, is money?"

"If you are asking me that as a banker," I replied, "I can only say that I don't know. I know what money was before the war, but now that the politicians and financial theorists have taken it over, it has become something quite different and I don't profess to understand it."

"That isn't quite what I meant," said he. "I was referring to money in general terms. What is it? It is simply a means of obtaining certain satisfactions or pleasures. No one wants money for itself excepting a miser."

"You can rule out misers," said I. "They are an extinct race. A miser doesn't hoard paper vouchers which have only a conventional and temporary value."

"No, I suppose not," he agreed. "At any rate, I am not a miser," (which was most unquestionably true), "and I have no use for money excepting as a means of obtaining satisfactions. And that is the rational use of money. I put it to you, Mortimer, if a man has money and there are certain things that he desires and that money will buy, is it not obviously reasonable that he should exchange the thing that he doesn't want for the things that he does? You speak of waste of money. But is it wasted when it is being used for the very purpose for which it exists? Take, for instance, this bottle of champagne—which, by the way, is getting low and needs replacing. Now, I think we like champagne."

"I do, certainly," I admitted.

"I am glad you do. So do I. And we can get it in exchange for your despised paper vouchers. Accordingly, like sensible men, we make the exchange; and I submit that it is a reasonable and profitable transaction. For if, as you suggest, the money is a mere fleeting convention, the champagne for which we have exchanged it isn't. It is real champagne."

Seeing that we had already emptied one bottle, the cogency of this argument did not impress me. Probably I should have proceeded to rebut it, but at this paint an interruption occurred and the discussion broke off.

When we had entered the room, I had noticed a party of three persons, two men and a woman, at a table in a corner. They had caught my attention because we had evidently caught theirs. But I don't think that Gillum observed them; and when we had seated ourselves, as his back was towards them, they were outside his range of vision whereas I was nearly facing them; and throughout our meal I found myself from time to time looking in their direction, attracted as before by the occasional glances that they cast in ours. It seemed to me that they must be acquainted with Gillum, for there was otherwise nothing noticeable in our appearance. At any rate, they were obviously interested in us and I received the impression that we were being discussed.

They did not prepossess me favourably. I cannot say exactly why, but there was an indefinable some thing about them that jarred on me. The men did not look like gentlemen, and the woman, dressed in the extreme of an unbecoming fashion, was so heavily and coarsely made up as to extinguish any good looks that she might have had. Everything about her seemed to be artificial. Her hair was of an unnatural colour, her cheeks were visibly painted, and her lips were plastered with crude vermilion like the lips of a circus clown.

That these people were acquaintances of Gillum's became evident when they rose to depart, for they steered a course across the room which brought them opposite our table. And here they halted; and, for the first time, Gillum became aware of their presence. His expression did not convey to me that he was over joyed, but as the lady bestowed on him the kind of leer that is known as "giving the glad eye," he made shift to produce a responsive smile.

"Now, don't let us interrupt your dinner," said she, as he rose to shake hands. "But, as you cut us dead when you came in, we have just come across to say 'howdy' and let you know that we saw you. We are now off to the club. Shall you be coming along presently?"

Gillum was inclined to be evasive.

"I don't quite know what the programme is," he replied. "It depends on what my guest would like to do."

"Bring him along with you," said she, "and let him see the ball roll. I'm sure he'd enjoy it, wouldn't you?"

As she asked the question, she turned to me with the peculiar cat-like grin that one sees in newspaper portraits of young women, with a distinct tendency to the "glad eye"; and I noticed that it seemed a rather tired eye and slightly puffy about the lower lids.

"I am not really an enthusiast in regard to billiards," I replied, "and I am no player. But it is interesting enough to look on at a good game."

Apparently I had said something funny, for the lady greeted my answer with a gay—and rather strident—laugh, and the two men, who had been looking on in silence, broke into sour grins. But Gillum, also smiling, evidently wished to get rid of his acquaintances for he interposed with the air of closing the conversation.

"Well, we shall see what we feel like when we have dined. I won't make any engagement now."

The lady took the hint graciously enough. "Very well, Jack," said she. "We will leave you in peace and hope to see you later;" and with this and another smile which embraced us both, she moved off with her two companions, neither of whom seemed to take any notice of Gillum.

"What was the joke?" I asked when they had gone. "And what club was she referring to?"

"It isn't really a club," replied Gillum. "It is what, I suppose, you would call a gambling hell; a place where you can stake your money at trente et quarante, rouge et noir, chemin de fer, or any of the regular gambling games. The joke was that the ball she meant was not a billiard ball but the little ball that rolls round the roulette wheel. It is not a particularly amusing joke."

"No," I agreed. "And are these people connected with the club?"

"Very much so," he replied. "That tall chappie—the one with the squint—runs the place, and I should think he does fairly well out of it. He is a Frenchman of the name of Foucault."

"He doesn't look a particularly amiable person," I remarked, recalling the rather sulky way in which he had looked on at the interview.

Gillum laughed. "He is a silly ass," said he, "as jealous as the devil; and as Madame's manners are, as you saw, of the distinctly coquettish, slap and tickle order, there is pretty constant trouble. But he needn't worry. There is no harm in the fair Marie. Her engaging wiles are all in the way of business."

"Do you spend much time at the club?" I asked.

"I drop in there pretty frequently," he replied.

"And I suppose you drop a fair amount of money."

"I suppose I do. But not so much as you would think. You orthodox financiers seem to imagine that a gambler always loses, but that is quite a mistake. The luck isn't always on the one side. Sometimes I pick up a little windfall that pays my expenses for quite a long time."

"Still," said I, "the balance must be against you in the long run."

"I have already admitted," he replied, "that I lose on my gambling transactions as a whole, and probably I lose, in the long run, at the club, though it isn't so easy to keep accounts of what I do there. But supposing that the balance is against me. What about it? Foucault runs the club to make a profit. But he can only make a profit if the players make a loss. What they lose to the bank is, in effect, their payment to him for the entertainment that he supplies. Hang it all, Mortimer, you can't expect to get your fun for nothing."

"Some people do," said I, "the people, I mean, who have infallible systems. I gather that you don't use a system."

"Well," he replied cautiously, "I haven't managed yet to devise a system that really works, but I have given some thought to the matter. There ought to be some way of ascertaining how the laws of chance operate, and if one could discover that, one would have the means of circumventing them."

"You haven't tried the plan of doubling the stakes when you lose?"

"Yes, I have; and I must admit that, for sheer excitement there is nothing like it. Your real, rabid gambler loves it—and usually cleans himself out. But for a sane and sober gambler it is not practicable. There are too many snags. To begin with, at the best you only get your money back plus the amount of the lowest stake. Consequently, the first stake must be a fairly large one or there is nothing in it. But if you start with a substantial stake and the luck is against you, you are up in enormous figures before you know where you are. For instance, supposing you are playing roulette and you lay a hundred pounds on manque or impair or any of the even chances. If you lose four times in succession, which would not be extraordinary, you have dropped fifteen hundred pounds; and the danger is that you may empty your pocket before the winning coup comes round. Then you have lost the lot. But there is another snag. The bank won't let you go on doubling as long as you like. There is a limit set to each kind of bet, and when you reach that limit you are not allowed to double any more. If you go on playing you have got to go back to a flat stake, in which case it is impossible for you to win back what you have lost. So, regarded as a serious method of play, the doubling racket is no go."

"It seems astonishing," said I, "that anyone should practise it. But perhaps they don't."

"Oh, don't they?" said Gillum. "You must understand, Mortimer, that to the real, perfect gambler, the charm of the game is the risk of losing. The bigger the risk, the greater the thrill. Plenty of people at the club, particularly the roulette players, double the stakes when they lose; and there is a temptation, you know, when you have lost, to take another chance in the hope of getting your money back. But it is a bad plan, because you stand to lose so much more than you stand to gain."

"Don't some people double on their winnings?" I asked.

"Ah," said he, "but that is quite a different kind of affair. There is some sense in that because it is quite the opposite of the other method. If you win you win, you don't merely get your money back; and if you eventually lose, you have only lost your original stake—plus your winnings, of course. Supposing you take an even chance at roulette, say you put a hundred pounds on red and you win; and suppose that you leave the stake and the winnings—two hundred pounds—on the table as a fresh stake. If the red turns up again you take up four hundred, of which one hundred is your original stake. You have won three hundred. But if you lose, you have only lost a hundred, plus the three that you had won. From a gambler's point of view it is quite a sound method."

"Yes," I agreed, "I see that, at least, you start with the knowledge of the amount that you stand to lose. But the whole thing is beyond my comprehension. I can't begin to understand the state of mind of a man who is prepared to risk his money in a transaction over which he has no control and in respect to which no judgement, calculation or prevision is possible."

He laughed gaily and refilled our glasses. "You are a banker to the finger-tips, Mortimer," said he; "and, as you happen to be my banker, I am not disposed to quarrel with your eminently correct outlook. I suppose you have never seen a gambling den.''

"Never," I replied; "and I am an absolute ignorant on the subject of gambling. I hardly know how to play the common card games."

"I think you ought to know what these shows are like," said he. "I can assure you that, as a mere spectacle, a regular gaming house is worth seeing. What do you say to strolling round to the club with me when we have had our coffee? It's too late to do anything else."

It was really too late to do anything but go home and to bed. But I could hardly, in the circumstances, suggest that course. Nor, in fact, was I particularly disposed to; for the excellent dinner and the equally excellent wine had produced a state of exhilaration that made me not disinclined for adventure. In my normal state, nothing would have induced me to set loot in a gambling den. Now I fell in readily enough with Gillum's suggestion.

"But shan't I be expected to play?" I enquired. "Because I am not going to."

"That will be all right," he replied. "I shall explain to Madame, and she will see that you are left in peace. But you understand that this is an unregistered club and that you will keep your own counsel about your visit there. I shall have to guarantee your secrecy."

I gave the necessary undertaking and Gillum then held the wine bottle up to the light.

"There's half a bottle left," said he, making as if to refill my glass. "Won't you really? Not another half-glass? Well, I don't think I will, either. We will just have our coffee and a cognac and then toddle round to the club and see the ball roll."