The footman did not raise an eyebrow at a stranger turning up on the doorstep and claiming to be a friend of Chekalinsky, but took a step back and ushered Killigrew inside. ‘This way, m’sieur.’ Apparently, Wojtkiewicz kept open house.
Killigrew stepped into a large, high-ceilinged hallway with a grandiose staircase leading up from the middle of the floor to the landing above.
‘May I take your coat and hat, m’sieur?’
Killigrew shrugged off his greatcoat and wideawake hat, and the footman took them and hung them up in a walk-in closet off to one side.
‘If you’ll follow me, m’sieur…’ The footman led the way across the marble floor with a measured tread. Killigrew followed him up the staircase. At the top, the footman opened a pair of double doors, and ushered the commander into the ante-room beyond. The footman closed the doors behind them, and Killigrew crossed to pause in the middle of the empty room, taking in the portraits of rosy-cheeked noblewomen in satin gowns and moustachioed officers in eighteenth-century uniforms, which hung on the rococo-panelled walls. A hubbub of voices came from the double doors on the far side of the room, and the footman walked past him to open them. The sound of voices instantly became louder, and a haze of tobacco smoke issued into the ante-room. The footman ushered him through.
Killigrew stepped into a large, plush salon where various ladies and gentlemen sat around on velvet-covered sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes respectively. Most of the men present were in various gaudy uniforms bedecked with gold braid. Clearly it was the done thing to wear full-dress uniform to purely social occasions here in St Petersburg, and there were few enough men in civilian garb to make him feel a little self-conscious in his evening clothes.
No sooner had the footman retreated, closing the doors after him, than another approached carrying crystal flutes of champagne on a silver salver. Killigrew helped himself to a glass and sipped it, sauntering through the crowded room. The walls were papered in a rather garish shade of purple, with matching drapes covering the windows. A number of doors led off the salon: through one, he could see generals and privy counsellors playing whist, while the unmistakable click and clatter of a roulette wheel emanated from another. A number of footmen stood at strategic points wherever he looked; if most people who employed footmen chose them on the basis of height, Wojtkiewicz clearly looked for width; in the shoulders rather than the girth.
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, m’sieur…?’
Killigrew turned to see an alluring woman of thirty or thereabouts, dressed in an off-the-shoulder gown of scarlet tarlatan, lavishly trimmed with ribbons, lace and artificial flowers, yet not so elegantly cut that it did not display a modicum of cleavage. Her hair – somewhere between dark brown and brunette, but with auburn highlights where it caught the warm glow of the chandeliers – was in ringlets, so she was probably unmarried.
‘Bryce,’ he told her. ‘John Bryce.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘An Englishman?’
‘An American.’ He told himself to relax. His Yankee accent was pretty good, just wasted on most Russians.
‘Ah. An American.’ She looked at him through eyes that were large and brown, but intelligent rather than vacuous, and an amused smile played on her sensuous lips. She held up a gloved hand for him to kiss. ‘Permit me to introduce myself. I am the Countess Apollónia Vásáry.’
He bowed, and kissed her hand. ‘Enchanté, madame. Vásáry… that’s not a Russian name, is it?’
She shook her head. ‘Hungarian. But what brings an American to St Petersburg at this time, M’sieur Bryce?’
‘Oh, I’m a reporter for the New York Herald. I’m, er… looking for a story. And yourself?’
She looked him up and down. ‘I’m just looking. Do you think me dreadfully forward, introducing myself to a complete stranger?’
He smiled. ‘Forward, certainly, ma’am; but not dreadfully so.’
‘I travel around a good deal. Life is so short, and it is my ambition to see every part of this world before I die. But it is also good to make new friends, and when one has so little time one cannot always afford to wait for an introduction.’
‘Couldn’t agree more.’
‘And what do you make of our host?’
‘M’sieur Wojtkiewicz? I can’t say I’ve met him… although I do feel I ought to pay my respects. Is he in here?’
She shook her head, making her ringlets dance prettily. ‘He’ll be upstairs, playing faro. Come on, I’ll introduce you to him.’
He followed her out through a door beneath a painting of a tiger, and she led the way up a flight of stairs. Puzzled, Killigrew frowned before following, his nerves on edge.
At the top of the stairs they entered another salon, this one thick with cigar smoke, inhabited exclusively by men, most of them above forty. The man who sat dealing cards at the head of the table was one of the few dressed in plain evening clothes, like Killigrew’s, and every bit as exquisitely cut. His hair and neatly trimmed beard had long since turned white, although his moustache was salt-and-pepper and his eyebrows remained thick and black. He turned the cards out with practised dexterity, and the punters’ arms darted back and forth across the table, rearranging their counters on the faro table while the case-keeper’s hands fluttered over the beads in the case, nimbly keeping track of which cards had been played.
Killigrew did not gamble, except for pennies at whist to be sociable – ironically, his calotypic memory made him a dab hand at the game – but he had seen faro played often enough to know the rules. He saw at once there were some obvious differences in the way the game was played in Russia. For one thing, the banker sat at the head of the table instead of in the middle of one side, while the case-keeper stood at the opposite end of the table, allowing places for the punters on both sides. Instead of a faro box, which showed the uppermost card in the deck, the banker was dealing from a baccarat shoe, piling them alternately to the left and to the right.
‘M’sieur Wojtkiewicz?’ said the countess. ‘May I introduce M’sieur John Bryce? He’s a reporter from the New York Herald.’
The banker glanced up, studying Killigrew with hard, brown eyes. ‘I understand they call faro “bucking the tiger” in your country, M’sieur Bryce. Do you play?’
‘No.’
‘Then you have no business in the faro room.’ Wojtkiewicz went on dealing cards unconcernedly.
The countess smiled. ‘I’ll leave the two of you to get to know one another,’ she told Killigrew. ‘I can see you’re going to hit it off!’ She slipped outside again, closing the door behind her.
‘Make a place for M’sieur Bryce, Hordienko,’ Wojtkiewicz grunted without looking up from his dealing. One of the men stood up from his place at the table and gestured for Killigrew to be seated.
The commander sat down on Wojtkiewicz’s left, hitching up the knees of his trousers at he did so. Someone put some counters and a game card and pencil-stub on the table in front of him. ‘I’ll stake you one hundred roubles to begin with,’ said Wojtkiewicz. ‘I trust you’re good for it?’
Killigrew inclined his head, although it was going to make a nasty dent in the expense money he had been provided with if he lost that much.
The rules of faro were really rather simple. It was purely a game of chance, more like roulette than a card game. The punters did not touch the cards themselves. The banker dealt two cards at a time from the box; as it was played in England, the first card dealt ‘lost’ while the one showing face-up in the box ‘won’. In the middle of the baize-covered table were pictures of a full suit of cards – spades, but suits did not matter in this game. Punters put money on one of the pictures, to bet on the value of the card, from ace to king. If the punter bet on the queen, for example, then if the next queen to turn out ‘won’, then so did the punter; if it lost, then the banker took the punter’s money. If both cards were of the same value, then it was a ‘split’, and the banker took all wagers placed on that card. Punters could also ‘
copper’ their bet by putting a penny – or a kopeck – on top of their wager, to denote that they were betting on that card to lose. It was one of the few gambling games where the odds were almost even, but if you got carried away the stakes could rise swiftly: wealthy aristocrats had been reduced to paupers on a turn of the cards at faro.
‘Which part of the United States do you hail from, M’sieur Bryce?’ asked Wojtkiewicz, pulling the cards from the shoe.
‘New England, originally,’ Killigrew said absently, his eyes on the game. It did not take him long to work out that the way they played it in Russia, it was the cards dealt on the left that won, while those on the right lost. ‘Though I moved to the big city as soon as I finished school.’
‘New York?’ asked Wojtkiewicz.
‘Where else?’ Killigrew moved all his counters on to the three. In for a kopeck, in for a hundred roubles, he told himself. The game was already halfway through, but punters could enter the game or cash in their counters at any point, without waiting for the banker to reach the end of the deck.
Wojtkiewicz flipped the next two cards out of the shoe, putting the ten of diamonds on the right and the nine of hearts on the left.
Another player rearranged his counters on the layout. The next turn brought out the two of diamonds and the knave of clubs. A man who had bet on the knave saw his counters doubled. ‘Paix,’ he said.
‘Count Orloff always bets on the knave,’ Wojtkiewicz remarked to Killigrew with a smile.
‘I wish the knaves showed the same loyalty to me that I do to them,’ grunted Orloff.
A chill ran down Killigrew’s spine as he looked at the count, a man with close-cropped hair and a wen in the middle of his forehead. He knew the name well enough: Count Orloff was the head of the Third Section. Could his presence at the table be a nasty coincidence? He did not seem to be paying excessive attention to Killigrew, but that could mean anything or nothing.
Two more cards emerged from the shoe: the four of hearts and the trey of clubs. ‘You have beginner’s luck, Mr Bryce,’ Wojtkiewicz remarked, as a footman acting as the croupier put another ten counters on the layout next to Killigrew’s stake.
‘I’ve a feeling I’m going to need it.’ Killigrew knew the sensible thing to do was to walk away from the table, while he was a hundred roubles up; but if he did that he would have lost his chance to sound out Wojtkiewicz. A glance at the case told him there were no more treys left in the deck, so he moved his counters to the seven.
The next two turns brought out no sevens, but he won again on the third. Now he had four hundred roubles’ worth of counters on the seven. He moved them to the queen.
‘I see you’re familiar with the works of Pushkin!’ said Wojtkiewicz.
Killigrew smiled. On the journey from London he had been reading Russian literature, including ‘The Queen of Spades’, to brush up on his familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet and to try to get a feel for Russian society. ‘Let’s just say I don’t want to make the same mistake as Herr Herman.’
‘As you will.’
Killigrew glanced at the case: there were two queens left in the deck, but the next three turns brought out none of them. The third showed he had been right to move his counters off the seven, however: it produced a split, and if there had been any money riding on the seven it would have gone to Wojtkiewicz.
The ace of hearts won on the next turn; if Killigrew had played the cards in the order recommended by the old countess in ‘The Queen of Spades’ – the order that had cost Herman so much money – he would have had eight hundred roubles by now.
Wojtkiewicz flipped out the next two cards: this time, it was the turn of the ace of diamonds to win. Killigrew wondered if Wojtkiewicz was toying with him. He had heard that there were ‘gaffed’ faro boxes, which could ‘skin’ the cards – bring them out in an order dictated by the banker – although he could not imagine how it was done. He would have to ask Molineaux: the petty officer was a master of prestidigitation, and there was no way of cheating at cards that he could not spot. Still, if it was possible for a faro box, it must have been possible for a baccarat shoe; if anything, the fact that cards remained invisible until they were taken out made it easier.
He wished Molineaux were at his side now.
Wojtkiewicz extracted the next two cards: the queen of hearts and the queen of spades. If the latter had mocked Herman at the climax of Pushkin’s short story, the effect on Killigrew was doubled now, even if the money he had lost was nowhere near as disastrous.
Wojtkiewicz smirked. ‘Bad luck, old boy. Have you had enough for one night, or would you like a chance to win back your money?’
Killigrew cursed himself inwardly. This was exactly the reason he never gambled for significant money. He had allowed himself to be suckered in… and now Wojtkiewicz was giving him a chance to get suckered in even deeper. The sensible thing to do was to walk away from the table; but he already owed Wojtkiewicz eight hundred roubles, which was rather more money than he could afford; and Killigrew suspected that Wojtkiewicz was not the sort of man who took kindly to those who could not pay their debts of honour. More importantly than that, he had been beaten, and Killigrew did not like to be beaten. Wojtkiewicz’s smirk goaded him; doubtless it was intended to do exactly that.
Killigrew took out his cheroot case and lit one to buy himself a few more seconds to think. Was it a gaffed box? Even if it was not, the odds were still stacked in the banker’s favour, even if only marginally.
The devil take it, thought Killigrew. ‘Will you stake me another one hundred roubles, M’sieur Wojtkiewicz?’
‘I assume you’re good for it?’
‘I’m good for it.’ If the worst came to the worst, Killigrew could always telegraph Napier for more money in the morning, although the admiral would tear several strips off him when he learned why he had needed it, and he would end up paying it back out of his salary.
According to the case, there were only five cards left in the shoe. Killigrew bet half the money the Pole staked him on the three, coppering it to lose.
Wojtkiewicz turned the next two cards: the six of hearts and the two of clubs. Killigrew’s fifty roubles stayed where they were.
‘Let’s make this interesting,’ said Wojtkiewicz. ‘I’ll wipe the slate clean if you can call the turn.’
‘And if I can’t?’
Wojtkiewicz smiled. ‘You’ll owe me thirty-two hundred roubles.’
If it was a gaffed box, the banker could beat him whatever he called. But Wojtkiewicz clearly liked to play. He would not be interested in hanging Killigrew out to dry so quickly… would he? He wanted to sucker him in even deeper: another win to buoy up his confidence, trick him into thinking the game was not rigged, build the stake up even higher. How much money did Wojtkiewicz think an American journalist could be taken for?
Killigrew glanced at the case: the three cards remaining in the deck were a three, a four and a nine. He licked parched lips. ‘Four, three, nine.’
Wojtkiewicz flipped out the first card: the four of clubs. Killigrew was still in the game, but it all depended upon the next card. Wojtkiewicz waited with all the skill of a showman, dragging it out before turning the penultimate card…
The three of diamonds.
Killigrew exhaled as a feeling of almost overwhelming relief surged through him.
A professional gambler, Wojtkiewicz took out the last card, the ‘hock’ as it was called, just in case the case-keeper had not kept an accurate track of which cards had been played, but it was the nine of clubs. Killigrew’s knees would not get broken tonight.
Assuming he walked out now.
But he would be walking out empty-handed, and he did not want that. He wanted to wipe the smile off Wojtkiewicz’s face.
The Pole shuffled the cards and reinserted them in the shoe. ‘Another game, gentlemen?’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘I’ve had quite enough excitement for one night, thank you. To tell you the truth, “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go�
� is more my game.’
Wojtkiewicz blinked. ‘“Go Johnny—”… what did you say?’
‘“Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go”,’ Killigrew repeated, offhand.
‘Never heard of it,’ growled one of the other punters.
‘No?’ Killigrew feigned surprise. ‘It’s all the rage in the States.’
‘How do you play?’ asked Wojtkiewicz.
Killigrew regarded him in disbelief. ‘Don’t you know how to play “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go”? I thought everyone knew how to play “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go”!’ He picked up the deck of cards, and shuffled it. ‘It’s perfectly simple: knaves are worth ten, kings are worth three… apart from one-eyed jacks, which are wild cards, but I’ll come to those in a minute. In round one you get a hand of nine, in round two a hand of seven. Deuces are wild cards as well, apart from diamonds, which retain their face value; apart from the king of diamonds, obviously. We play in sequence, unless you can match a pair or play a card in ascending or descending order. If you can, that’s a “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go”. You stand up, pick up all the cards on the table, and shout “Go, Johnny, go-go-go-go!” The winner is the man with the most tricks after fifteen hands.’ He began to deal out the cards. ‘You’ll pick up the rest as we go along…’
Chapter 10
Countess Vásáry
Killigrew narrowed his eyes at Wojtkiewicz across the top of the baize table. ‘That’s very good, m’sieur. A full house… Are you quite certain you’ve never played this game before?’
Wojtkiewicz threw down his cards and picked up his pencil, toying with it. He did not scowl at Killigrew, but he looked as if he very much wanted to. ‘Never,’ he growled.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to sharp me,’ Killigrew chided him. ‘But, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. I’m afraid even a full house doesn’t beat a three-card trick with aces high in “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go”. Which leaves me the winner, I think.’
Killigrew and the Sea Devil Page 19