“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 Hotel 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?”
“You can take it that I am right. I have studied very carefully here for many years. For five hundred francs I will sell you a list of all the winning numbers which came up last June.”
“But suppose the number doesn’t come up?”
“You wait to start the system until it does.”
“It might take years.”
The little man got up, bowed and said, “That is why one must have capital. I had too little capital. If instead of five million I had possessed ten million I would not be selling you my system for a glass of whisky.”
He retired with dignity, the ferruleless stick padding on the polished floor, the duck staring back at us as though it wanted to stay.
“I think my system’s better,” Cary said. “If that woman can get away with it, I can…”
“It’s begging. I don’t like my wife to beg.”
“I’m only a new wife. And I don’t count it begging—it’s not money, only tokens.”
“You know there was something that man said which made me think. It’s a pure matter of reducing what one loses and increasing what one gains.”
“Yes, darling. But in my system I don’t lose anything.”
She was away for nearly half an hour and then she came back almost at a run. “Darling, put away your doodles. I want to go home.”
“They aren’t doodles. I’m working out an idea.”
“Darling, please come at once or I’m going to cry.”
When we were outside she dragged me up through the gardens, between the floodlit palm trees and the flower-beds like sugar sweets. She said, “Darling, it was a terrible failure.”
“What happened?”
“I did exactly what that woman did. I waited till someone won a lot of money and then I sort of nudged his elbow and said, “Give.” But he didn’t give, he said quite sharply, “Go home to your mother,” and the croupier looked up. So I went to another table. And the man there just said, “Later. Later. On the terrace.” Darling, he thought I was a tart. And when I tried a third time—oh, it was terrible. One of those attendants who light people’s cigarettes touched me on my arm and said, “I think Mademoiselle has played enough for tonight.” Calling be Mademoiselle made it worse. I wanted to fling my marriage lines in his face, but I’d left them in the bathroom at the hotel.”
“In the bathroom?”
“Yes, in my sponge bag, darling, because for some reason I never lose my sponge bag—I’ve had it for years and years. But that’s not why I want to cry. Darling, please let’s sit down on this seat. I can’t cry walking about— it’s like eating chocolate in the open air. You get so out of breath you can’t taste the chocolate.”
“For goodness’ sake.” I said, “If that’s not the worst let me know the worst. Do you realize we shall never be able to go into the Casino again—just when I’ve started on a system, a real system.”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as that, darling. The attendant gave me such a nice wink at the door. I know he won’t mind my going back—but I never want to go back, never.”
“I wish you’d tell me.”
“That nice young man saw it all.”
“What young man?”
“The hungry young man. And when I went out into the hall he followed me and said very sweetly, “Madame, I can only spare a token of one hundred francs, but it is yours.””
“You didn’t take it?”
“Yes—I couldn’t refuse it. He was so polite, and he was gone before I had time to thank htm for it. And I changed it and used the francs in the slot machines at the entrance and I’m sorry I’m howling like this, but I simply can’t help it, he was so terribly courteous, and he must be so terribly hungry and he’s got a mind above money or he wouldn’t have lent me a hundred francs, and when I’d won five hundred I looked for him to give him half and he’d gone.”
“You won five hundred? It’ll pay for our coffee and rolls tomorrow.”
“Darling, you are so sordid. Don’t you see that for ever after he’ll think I was one of those old harpies like Bird’s Nest in there?”
“I expect he was only making a pass.”
“You are so sexual. He was doing nothing of the kind. He’s much too hungry to make a pass.”
“They say starvation sharpens the passions.”
9
We still had breakfast at the hotel in order to keep up appearances, but we found ourselves wilting even before the liftman. I have never liked uniforms—they remind me that there are those who command and those who are commanded—and now I was convinced that everybody in uniform knew that we couldn’t pay the bill. We always kept our key with us, so that we might never have to go to the desk, and as we had changed all our travellers’ cheques on our arrival, we didn’t even have to approach the accountant. Cary had found a small bar called the Taxi Bar at the foot of one of the great staircases, and there we invariably ate our invariable lunch and our dinner. It was years before I wanted to eat rolls again and even now I always drink tea instead of coffee. Then, on our third lunch-time, coming out of the bar we ran into the assistant receptionist from the hotel who was passing along the street. He bowed and went by, but I knew that our hour had struck.
