Chapter 5

He found the back room one of good proportions: whatever the architect's original intention, now serving as a combined lounge and grill, richly and comfortably furnished in sober, masculine fashion, boasting in all three buffets set forth with a lavish display of food and drink. In one of many deeply upholstered club chairs a gentleman of mature years and heavy body, with a scarlet face and a crumpled, wine-stained shirt-bosom, was slumbering serenely, two-thirds of an extravagant cigar cold between his fingers. In others two young men were confabulating quietly but with a most dissipated air, heads together over a brace of glasses. At a corner service table a negro in a white jacket was busy with a silver chafing-dish which exhaled a tantalising aroma. This last, at the entrance of P. Sybarite, glanced quickly over his shoulder, and seeing a strange face, clapped the cover on the steaming chafing-dish and discovered a round black countenance bisected by a complete mouthful of the most brilliant teeth imaginable.

"Yas-suh--comin'!" he gabbled cheerfully. "It's sho' a pleasure to see yo' again."

"At least," suggested P. Sybarite, dropping into a chair, "it will be, next time."

"Tha's right, suh--that's the troof!" The negro placed a small table adjacent to his elbow. "Tha's what Ah allus says to strange gemmun, fust time they comes hyeh, suh; makes 'em feel more at home like. Jus' lemme know what Ah kin do for yo' to-night. That 'ere lobstuh Newburg's jus' about prime fo' eatin' this very minute, ef yo' feel a bit peckish."

"I do," P. Sybarite admitted. "Just a spoonful--"

"An' uh lil drink, suh? Jus' one lil innercent cocktail to fix yo' mouf right?"

"If you insist, Pete--if you insist."

"Yas-suh; and wif the lobstuh, suh, Ah venture to sug-gest a nice cold lil ha'f-pint of Cliquot, Yallah Label? How that strike yo' fancy, suh? Er mebbe yo'd perfuh--"

"Enough!" said P. Sybarite firmly. "A mere bite and a glass are enough to sustain life."

"Ain't that the troof?"

Chuckling, the negro waddled away, returned, and offered the guest a glass brimming with amber-tinted liquid.

Poising the vessel delicately between thumb and forefinger, P. Sybarite treated himself to one small sip--an instant of lingering delectation--another sip. So only, it is asserted, must the victim of the desert begin to allay his burning thirst; with discretion--a sip at a time--gingerly.

It was years since P. Sybarite had tasted a cocktail artfully concocted.

Dreamily he closed his eyes halfway. From a point in his anatomy a degree or two south of his diaphragm, a sensation of the most warm congratulation began to pervade his famished system: as if (he thought) his domestic economy were organising a torchlight procession by way of appropriate celebration.

Tender morsels of lobster smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation.

Finally "the house," through the medium of its servitor, insisted that he top off with a cigar.

Ten years since his teeth had gripped a Fancy Tales of Smoke!...

Now it mustn't be understood that P. Sybarite entertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the institution into which he had stumbled. He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audible from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its questionable character.

So at length, satiate and a little weary--drawn by curiosity besides--he rose, endowed Pete lavishly with a handful of small change (something over fifty cents; all he had in the world aside from his cherished five dollars), and with an impressive air of the most thorough-paced sophistication (nodding genially to the doorkeeper _en passant_) slowly ascended to the second floor.

Here, in remodelling the house for its present purposes, partitions had arbitrarily been dispensed with, aside from that enclosing the well of the stairway; the floor was one large room, wholly devoted to some half a dozen games of chance. With but few of these was P. Sybarite familiar; but on information and belief he marked down a faro layout, the device with which his reading had made him acquainted under the designation of _les petits chevaux_, and at either end of the saloon, immense roulette tables.

Upon all the gaming tables massive electric domes concentrated their light. The walls, otherwise severely unadorned, were covered with lustrous golden fabric; the windows were invisible, cloaked in splendid golden hangings; the carpet, golden brown in tone, was of a velvet pile so heavy that it completely muffled the sound of footsteps. The room, indeed, was singularly quiet for one that harboured some two-score players in addition to a full corps of dealers, croupiers, watchers, and waiters. The almost incessant whine of racing ivory balls with their clattering over the metal compartments of the roulette wheels, clicking of chips, dispassionate voices of croupiers, and an occasional low-pitched comment on the part of one or another of the patrons, seemed only to lend emphasis to the hush.

The warmth of the room was noticeable....

A brief survey of the gathering convinced P. Sybarite that, barring the servants, he was a lonely exception to the rule of evening dress. But this discovery discomfited him not at all. The wine buzzing in his head, his demeanour, not to mince matters, rakehelly, with an eye alert for the man with the twisted mouth, negligent hands in his trouser pockets, teeth tight upon that admirable cigar, he strutted hither and yon, ostensibly as much in his native element as a press agent in a theatre lobby.

A few minutes sufficed to demonstrate that the owner of the abandoned hat was not among those present; which fact, coupled with the doorkeeper's averment that Mr. Bailey Penfield was out, persuaded P. Sybarite that this last was neither more nor less than the proprietor of the premises. But this conclusion perturbed, completely unsettling his conviction regarding the _soi-disant_ Miss Lessing; he couldn't imagine either her or Miss Marian Blessington in any way involved with a common (or even a proper) gambler.

To feel obliged constantly to revise his hasty inferences, he considered tremendously tiresome. It left one all up in the air!

His tour ended at last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torchlight procession was in full swing, leaving an enduring refulgence wherever it passed.

There were perhaps half a dozen players round the board--four on one wing, two on the other. Of the latter, one was that very young man who had been responsible for P. Sybarite's change of mind with regard to going home. With a bored air this prodigal was frittering away five-dollar notes on the colours, the columns, and the dozens: his ill success stupendous, his apparent indifference positively magnificent. But in the course of the little while that P. Sybarite watched, he either grew weary or succeeded in emptying his pockets, and ceasing to play, sat back with a grunt of impatience more than of disgust.

The ball ran its course thrice before he moved. Then abruptly lifting his finger to the croupier: "Five on the red, Andy," said he.

"Five on the red," repeated the croupier; and set aside a chocolate-coloured chip in memorandum of the wager.

When the ball settled again to rest, the announcement was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blasé prodigal was presented with the chocolate-coloured token.

Carelessly he tossed it upon the red diamond. Black won. Unperturbed, he made a second oral bet, this time on black, and lost; increased his wager to ten dollars on black--and lost; made it twenty, shifted to red, and lost; dropped back to five-dollar bets for three turns of the wheel, and lost them all. Fifty dollars in debt to the house, he rose, nodded casually to the croupier, left the room.

In mingled envy and amazement P. Sybarite watched him go. Fancy losing three weeks' wages and a third of another week's without turning a hair! Fancy losing fifty dollars without being required to pay up!

"Looks easy," meditated P. Sybarite with a thrill of dreadful yearning....

At precisely that instant the torchlight procession penetrated a territory theretofore unaffected, which received it with open arms and tumultuous rejoicings and even went so far as to start up a couple of bonfires of its own and hang out several strings of Japanese lanterns. In the midst of a confusion of soaring skyrockets and Roman candles vomiting showers of scintillant golden sparks, P. Sybarite was shocked to hear his own voice.

"Five on the red," it said distinctly, with an effect of extravagant apathy.

A thought later he caught the croupier's eye and drove the wager home with a nod. His heart stopped beating.

Five dollars! All he had in the world!

The _whirr_ of the deadly little ball in its ebony runway was like nothing less than the exultant shriek of a banshee. Instantaneously (as if an accident had happened in the power house) every light in his body went out and left it cold and dark and altogether dismayed.

The croupier began his chant: "Three, red--!"

P. Sybarite failed to hear the rest. All the lights were on again, full blast. The croupier tossed him a chocolate token. He was conscious that he touched it with numb and witless fingers, mechanically pushing it upon the red diamond.

Ensued another awful, soul-sickening minute of suspense....

"Twenty-five, red--!"

A second brown chip appeared magically on top of the first. P. Sybarite regarded both stupidly; afraid to touch them, his brain communicated to his hand the impulse to remove the chips ere it was too late, but the hand hung moveless in listless mutiny.

"_Thirty-four red_--!"

Two more chips were added to his stack.

And this time his brain sulked. If his body wouldn't heed its plain and sagacious admonition--very well!--it just wouldn't bother to signal any further advice.

But quite instinctively his hand moved out, tenderly embraced the four brown chips, and transferred them to the green area dominated by the black diamond.

"_Twelve, black_--!"

Forty dollars were represented in that stunted pillar of brown wafers! P. Sybarite experienced an effect of coming to his senses after an abbreviated and, to tell the truth, somewhat nightmarish nap. Aping the manner of one or two other players whom he had observed before this madness possessed him, he thrust the chips out of the charmed circle of chance, and nodded again (with what a seasoned air!) to the croupier.

"Cash or chips?" enquired that functionary.

"Oh--cash, thank you."

The chips gathered into the company of their brethren, two twenty-dollar bills replaced them.

Stuffing these into his pocket, P. Sybarite turned and strolled indifferently toward the door.

"Better leave while your luck holds," Intelligence counselled.

"Right you are," he admitted fairly. "I'll go home now before anybody gets this away from me."

"Sensible of you," Intelligence approved.

"Still," suggested the small but clear voice of Greed, "you've got your original five dollars yet to lose. Be a sport. Don't go without turning in a cent to the house. It wouldn't look pretty."

"There's something in that," admitted P. Sybarite again.

Nevertheless, he never quite understood how it was that his feet carried him to the other roulette table, at the end of the salon opposite that at which he had been playing; or how it was that his fingers produced and coolly handed over the board, one of the twenty-dollar notes rather than the modest five he had meant to risk.

"How many?" the new croupier asked pleasantly.

P. Sybarite pulled a doubtful mouth. Five dollars' worth was all he really wanted. What on earth would he do with all the chips twenty dollars would buy? He'd need a bushel measure!

Before he could make up his mind, however, exactly twenty white counters were meted out to him.

"What are these worth?" he demanded incredulously, dropping into a chair.

"One dollar each," he was informed.

"Indeed?" he replied, politely smothering a slight yawn.

But he conceived a new respect for those infatuated men who so recklessly peppered the lay-out with chips--singly and in little piles of five and ten--worth one-hundred cents each!

However, to save his face, he'd have to go through his twenty. But after that--exit!

He made this promise to himself.

Prying a single chip apart from its fellows, he tossed it heedlessly upon the numbered squares. It landed upon its rim, rolled toward the wheel, and fainted gracefully upon the green compartment numbered 00.

The croupier cocked an eyebrow at him, as if questioning his intention, at the instant the ivory ball began to sing its song of a single note. Abruptly it was chattering; in another instant it was still.

"Double O!" announced a voice.

A player next P. Sybarite swore soulfully.

Thirty-five white chips were stacked alongside the winning stake. With unbecoming haste P. Sybarite removed them.

"Well," he sighed privately, "there's one thing certain: this won't last. But I don't like to seem a piker. I'll just make sure of this one: it can't win. And at that, I'll be another fifteen dollars in."

Deliberately he shifted the nineteen remaining of his original stack to keep company with his winning chip on the Double O....

A minute or so later the man at his elbow said excitedly: "I'll be damned if it didn't repeat! Can you beat that--!"

P. Sybarite stared stupidly.

"How's that?" he said.

"Double O," the croupier answered: "the second time."

"This is becoming uncanny," P. Sybarite observed to himself; and--"Cash!" said he aloud with cold decision.

Seven new one-hundred dollar certificates were placed in his hand. In a daze he counted, folded, and pocketed them. While thus engaged he heard the ball spin again. His original twenty dollars remained upon the double naught. Ten turned up: his stake was gathered in.

"You've had enough," Intelligence advised.

"Perfectly true," P. Sybarite admitted.

This time his anatomy proved quite docile. He found himself at the foot of the steps, fatuously smiling at the doorkeeper.

"He ain't come in yet," said the latter; "but he's liable to be here any minute now."

"Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite brightly, after a brief pause--"Mr. Penfield, of course. Sorry I can't wait."

"Well, you'll want your hat before you go--won't you?"

Placing an incredulous hand upon the crown of his head, P. Sybarite realised that it was covered exclusively with hair.

"I must have put it down somewhere upstairs," he murmured in panic.

"Mebbe you left it with Pete before you went up."

"Perhaps I did."

Turning back to the lounge, he entered to find it deserted save for the somnolent old gentleman and the hospitable Pete, but for whom P. Sybarite would probably never have known the delirious joy of that internal celebration or found the courage to risk his first bet.

And suddenly the fifty-cent tip previously bestowed upon the servitor seemed, to one unexpectedly fallen heir to the princely fortune then in P. Sybarite's pockets, the very nadir of beggarliness.

"Pete," said he with owlish gravity, "I begin to see that I have done you an inexcusable injustice."

Giggling, the negro scratched his head.

"Well, suh," he admitted, "Ah finds that gemmun gen'ly does change they min's erbout me, aftuh they done cut er melon, like."

With the air of an emperor, P. Sybarite gave the negro a twenty-dollar bill.

"And now," he cut short a storm of thanks, "if you'll be good enough to give me just one more glass of champagne, I think I'll totter home."

"Yas-_suh!_"

In a twinkling a glass was in his hand. As if it were so much water--in short, indifferently--P. Sybarite tossed it off.

"And my hat."

"Yo' hat?" Pete iterated in surprise. "Yo' didn't leaf yo' hat wif me, suh; yo' done tek it wif yo' when yo' went upstahs."

"Oh," murmured P. Sybarite, dashed.

He turned to the door, hesitated, turned back, and solemnly sat himself down.

"Pete," said he, extending his right foot, "I wish you'd do something for me."

"Yas-suh!"

"Take off my shoe."

Staring with naïf incredulity until assured of the gentleman's complete seriousness, the negro plumped down upon his knees, unlaced, and removed the shoe.

"It's a shocking shoe," observed P. Sybarite dreamily.

Bending forward he tucked his original five-dollar note into the toe of the despised footgear.

"I am not going home broke," he explained laboriously to Pete; "as I certainly shall if I dare go upstairs again to find my hat."

"Yo's sholly sens'ble," Pete approved. "But they ain't no reason why yo' sho'd tek enny mo' chances ef yo' don't wantuh," he added, knotting the laces. "I'd just as leave's not go fetch yo' hat."

"You needn't bother," P. Sybarite returned with dignity.

IX

THE PLUNGER

A humour the most cool and reckless imaginable now possessed P. Sybarite. The first flush of his unaccustomed libations seemed to have worn itself out, his more recent draught to have had no other effect than to steady his gratulate senses; and a certain solid comfort resided in the knowledge that his hard-earned five dollars reposed in safe deposit.

"They can't get _that_ away from me--not so long as I'm able to kick," he reflected with huge satisfaction.

And the seven hundred and thirty-five in his pocket was possessed of a devil of restlessness. He could almost feel it quivering with impatience to get into action. After all, it was only seven hundred and thirty-five dollars: not a cent more than the wages of forty-nine weeks' servitude to the Genius of the Vault of the Smell!

"That," mused P. Sybarite scornfully, "won't take me far....

"What," he argued, "is the use of travelling if you can't go to the end of the line?...

"I might as well be broke," he asseverated, "as the way I am!"

Glancing cunningly down his nose, he saw the finish of a fool.

"Anyway," he insisted, "it was ever my fondest ambition to get rid of precisely seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in one hour by the clock."

So he sat down at the end of the table of his first winnings, and exchanged one of his seven big bills for one hundred white chips.

"What," he asked with an ingenious smile, "is the maximum?"

"Seein's it's you," said the croupier, grinning, "we'll make it twenty a throw."

"Such being the case"--P. Sybarite pushed back the little army of white chips--"you may give me twenty dark-brown counters for these...."

In ten minutes he had lost two hundred dollars.

At the end of twenty minutes, he exchanged his last thirty-five dollars for seven brown chips.

Ten minutes later, he was worth eighteen hundred dollars; in another ten, he had before him counters calling for five thousand or thereabouts.

"It is," he observed privately--"it must be my Day of Days!"

A hand touched his shoulder, and a quiet voice said: "Beg pardon--"

He looked up with a slight start--that wasn't one of joyous welcome, because the speaker was altogether a stranger--to find at his elbow a large body of man entirely surrounded by evening clothes and urbanity; whose face was broad with plump cheeks particularly clean-shaven; whose eyes were keen and small and twinkling; whose fat hand (offered to P. Sybarite) was strikingly white and dimpled and well-manicured; whose dignity and poise (alike inimitable) combined with the complaisance of a seasoned student of mankind to mark an individuality at once insinuating and forceful.

"You were asking for me, I believe?" pursued this person, with complete suavity.

P. Sybarite pursed doubtful lips. "I'm afraid," he replied pleasantly, "you have the advantage of me.... Let's see: this is my thirty-second birthday...."

The ball was spinning. He deposited four chips on the square numbered 32.

"I am Mr. Penfield," the stranger explained.

"Really?" P. Sybarite jumped up and cordially seized his hand. "I hope I see you well to-night."

Releasing the hand, he sat down.

"Quite well, thank you; in fact, never better." With a slight smile Mr. Penfield nodded toward the gaming table. "Having a good time?"

"_Thirty-two, red, even_," observed the croupier....

"Oh, tolerable, tolerable," assented P. Sybarite, blandly accepting counters that called for seven hundred dollars....

"In one year from to-day, I shall be thirty-three," he reckoned; and shifted a maximum to the square designated by that number....

"What do you think? Is Teddy going to get the nomination?"

"I'm only very slightly interested in politics," returned Mr. Penfield. "I shouldn't like to express an opinion.... Sorry a prior engagement obliged me to keep you waiting."

"_Thirty-three, black, odd_...."

"Don't mention it," insisted P. Sybarite politely. "Not another word of apology--I protest! Indeed, I've managed to divert myself amazingly while waiting.... Thank you," he added in acknowledgment of another seven-hundred-dollar consignment of chips. "To-day," he mused aloud, "is the thirteenth of April--"

"The fourteenth," corrected Mr. Penfield: "to-day is only about two hours old."

"Right you are," admitted P. Sybarite, shifting twenty dollars from the 13 to the 14. "Careless memory of mine ..."

"_Thirteen, black, odd_...."

"There, now! You see--you spoiled my aim," P. Sybarite complained peevishly.

"Forgive me," murmured Mr. Penfield while P. Sybarite made another wager. "Are you in a hurry to break the bank?" he added.

"It's my ambition," modestly confessed the little man, watching a second twenty gathered in to the benefit of the house. "But I've only a few minutes more--and you do play such a _darned_ small game."

"Perhaps I can arrange matters for you," suggested Mr. Penfield. "You'd like the limit removed?"

"Not as bad as all that. Make the maximum a hundred, and I'll begin to feel at home."

"Delighted to oblige. You won't object to my rolling for you?" Penfield nodded to the croupier; who (first paying P. Sybarite seven hundred on his last wager) surrendered his place.

"Not in the least," agreed P. Sybarite, marshalling his chips in stacks of five: twenty-five dollars each. "It's an honour," he added, covering several numbers as Penfield deftly set ball and wheel in motion.

He won the first fall; and encouraged by this, began to play extravagantly, sowing the board liberally with wagers of twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred dollars each. Hardly ever the ball clattered to a lodgment but he cashed one or another of these; and the number of times that the house paid him thirty-five hundred dollars passed his count. All other play at that table ceased; and a gallery of patrons of the establishment gathered round, following with breathless interest the fortunes of this shabby little plunger. Their presence, far from annoying, pleased him; it was just so much additional assurance of fair play. The mounting of the roulette wheel--it was placed upon a broad sheet of plate-glass elevated several inches above the table--was proof against secret manipulation. And a throng of spectators not only forbade any attempt to call wrong numbers on a winning cast but likewise insured fair dealing on the part of the croupier, who was so busy raking in losing bets or paying winnings that P. Sybarite had time neither to watch him nor to check his payments.

Penfield, cool and smiling, confined his attention to the wheel. If he felt any uneasiness or dismay on account of P. Sybarite's steadily augmented mountain of chips, he betrayed it not at all overtly.