Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  But he was wrong. There were to be thrills, though they were not caused by Michael Crowther, and no man was more surprised than he when they occurred. The quest of the sapphire indeed was proceeding on the ordinary plane of human affairs. Sometimes chance helped him, sometimes it thwarted him; and on this night it was unexpectedly to help him, although at the time not one of us was able to recognise any signs of his good fortune.

  * * * * *

  We went early to Savile Row in order to give Michael a chance of finding a seat at the big table. It was eleven when we entered the room and the table was being actually made up, so that Michael could only find a place at one end. There had been no trouble about his admission; and once in the room he did not even provoke the least curiosity. The play was the thing and, anyway, odder birds than he had found a welcome at Jack Sanford’s little casino. Imogen and I stood behind Crowther’s chair and watched. We noticed that Monsieur de Craix had brought a couple of friends with him, one a thin, finicking, timorous, dilettante person whom I heard addressed as Mr. Julius Ricardo, and the other a burly middle-aged Frenchman with a blue shaven skin, inclined to be a trifle boisterous. Both of them seemed to me astonishing companions for so obvious a member of the French Jockey Club as the spruce young Vicomte de Craix. Or rather, they would have seemed astonishing companions in any other gathering. But if misfortune makes strange bed-fellows, a gambling-house makes stranger. Monsieur de Craix, who was seated next to the croupier, introduced the Frenchman to Robin Calhoun across the table.

  “This is my very good friend, Monsieur Chaunard. I marked the place for him next to you, Mr. Calhoun,” and he laughed, adding: “He likes a game, I can tell you.”

  Robin Calhoun bowed to this new-comer upon his right, smiled, ran a shrewd eye over him and was content.

  “You are of Paris?” he asked, and Monsieur Chaunard shook his head vigorously.

  “No, no, my friend, look at me! I am of the Provinces. I make the china pots at Limoges. Now I take my holiday from the business.” He sat down in his chair and rubbed his hands together loudly. Close by my side I heard a little prim voice:

  “Vulgar! Vulgar!” and I saw that this new Mr. Ricardo was standing at my side and in quite a twitter lest the man from Limoges should misbehave.

  The cards were brought in to Robin Calhoun who tore the wrappers from the packs and handed them across the table for the croupier to shuffle. By the side of the croupier on the one side, as I have said, was the Vicomte de Craix, and on the other, exactly opposite to Monsieur Chaunard, sat a man in the early forties whom I had seen and talked to once or twice before, a partner in a famous firm of stockbrokers named Arnold Mann and a very level-headed person. Chaunard turned to his neighbour on his right.

  “You have the good fortune? Yes? No? For me, I think you shall see something to-night. Yes. I feel that I am in my veins.”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” murmured Mr. Ricardo. “In the vein.”

  The murmur reached Monsieur Chaunard’s ears, and he smiled blandly at his twittering Ricardo.

  “No, no, you are wrong, my friend,” he said simply. “It is a phrase. I am in my veins. It means I am not the weathercock which turns South and East and North and West. No, I go plong for the nine,” and he slapped his hand down on the table as though he pinned the famous card down there for good. Mr. Ricardo was, I think, dazed by that wondrous confusion of veins and vanes. He had no words and we no eyes for him. For the game was beginning.

  We saw the cards, now one thick pack, passed back to Robin Calhoun. He held them tightly between his thumb and his fingers and extended them to the right and the left across the table, offering at the same time with his left hand a blank red card so that anyone could slip it into the pack and make a cut wherever he or she chose. I think the pack was cut six times. There was an air of expectation in the room that night which passed from one to the other of us and held certainly those who stood about the table in a curious suspense. We waited for a great duello between the manufacturer from Limoges and Robin Calhoun. Imogen at my side, for instance, was standing with her lips parted, her eyes fixed on Robin Calhoun. There was something in her gaze which reminded me faintly of the afternoon in the rest-house on the road to Anuradhapura, when I had seen her upright against the wall. Mr. Ricardo on the other side of me was breathing hard and lifting himself ridiculously on his toes and so down again. I, too, was waiting for a curtain to go up. Or, rather, the curtain had gone up and I was waiting for the action to begin. There were the characters brightly illuminated; Jack Sanford looking on comfortably with a big cigar between his lips; Robin Calhoun glancing round the table once with a question: “Is that staked?” when a chip was a little too near the line; the impassive croupier opposite with his long broad blade of very thin black wood; the young Vicomte de Craix next to him with his eyeglass; and opposite, the big black man from Limoges, his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, at his ease, completely in his veins, with a vast smile upon his face as though he wanted to kiss the world.

  “I begin with the moderation,” he said and pushed a ten-pound chip over the line. Mr. Ricardo gulped audibly. It might have been his money which was pushed over the line. “Afterwards we shall see.”

  We did see. The man from Limoges took the cards for the right-hand tableau, a financier from the Argentine those upon the left. I did not notice the value of the cards, but I remember that the bank won from the first or right-hand tableau and was on an equality with the second. At the second coup he won from both tableaux. The bank had started with five hundred pounds and it must now have amounted to double that sum. As Robin Calhoun began to deal the third coup, the man from Limoges began his antics.

  Calhoun dealt two cards to each tableau and two to himself. He dealt them one by one, face downwards in the usual way, one to the right, one to the left, one to himself, and so again. It was the croupier’s business to lift the two cards for the right and left tableaux in turn on his long blade, still face downwards, and present them to the player whose turn it was to hold them. The two cards for the right hand were thus in the first instance dealt in front of Monsieur Chaunard, although it was the second player to his right who would handle them. Monsieur Chaunard did not touch them. It was not his right. He was leaning back in his chair perfectly correctly. But he looked at the backs of them and said gently but clearly, so clearly that the croupier who had already stretched forward his blade to pass the cards on, stopped in the middle of his movement:

  “Aha, we lose again. We have a bûche and a one. And our friends on the left they have an eight and three, also making one. And the dealer he has a bûche and a six. We must draw a card on our side, by the law.” He looked round at an assemblage outraged into silence. “We shall draw again the one, making us two. Our friend on the left, he too must draw. He will draw a two making him three. And the dealer having six will not draw. So, as I say, he will win.”

  The silence was broken by the indignant voice of Mr. Jack Sanford.

  “Really, Mossoo le Vicomte, your friend — —”

  “He has the bad flavour — yes,” said the man from Limoges genially, and at my side Mr. Ricardo in a sort of agony:

  “Taste! Taste!”

  Robin Calhoun turned with a smile to Chaunard.

  “You agree?” said he. “Not quite out of the top drawer, what?”

  Chaunard moved his head forward quickly, and there was for a second a flutter of alarm about the table. But it seemed to me that as yet, at all events, there was no chance of trouble. Chaunard was not so much goaded by the insult as interested in the phrase. He, in fact, and Robin Calhoun were the coolest people present. Robin was marvellous.

  “It is, of course, impossible to continue the game. I beg you all to withdraw your stakes.”

  He reached his hand out to the stack of cards leaning against the rest in front of him. It was like good acting, quicker than life and very neat but without any appearance of hurry. In a fraction of a second he would have picked up the pack
and scattered it in confusion over the table. But he did not get that second. Monsieur Chaunard who, with his blue chin, really looked like an actor, was by a fraction of a second quicker. A very strong hand pounced upon Robin’s wrist.

  “Let the cards stay as they are,” said Chaunard, and such authority rang in his voice that we were all taken by surprise — even Robin Calhoun. For he shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his chair. Then from the opposite side of the table, where, in fact, we were standing, another voice, very cool and quiet, was raised, Mr. Arnold Mann’s.

  “Yes, let the cards stay as they are, and, Jack, perhaps you had better close the doors to the buffet.”

  I never saw anything more sinister than the aspect of that table, with the company still as a set of images and their eyes watching lest Calhoun’s fingers should touch the stack of cards in front of him or the croupier’s blade the four cards still face downwards upon the table. In the other room voices were being raised, questions were being asked, there was an excited surge of people towards the double doors. Mr. Jack Sanford was just in time to prevent a rush into this quiet room.

  “Just a moment!” he cried. “It is a little question. Stand back, please. In a moment I open again.”

  He managed to close the doors but he did not open again. The stockbroker with the cool voice continued:

  “Let us see whether this gentleman is right. You said that your cards were a ten and a one. Will you turn them up?”

  Monsieur Chaunard obeyed. They were a ten and a one.

  “And the second tableau was an eight and a three. Let us see them.”

  He reached across the table and turned them up himself.

  “Yes, they are an eight and a three. Now let us see the dealer’s.”

  But Calhoun did not move. To upset the big stack now would have been a confession of guilt to a charge which no one had formulated. With his own two cards he was not concerned.

  “They may be any two out of the pack,” said he.

  “And what do you say they are, Monsieur Chaunard?” Arnold Mann asked.

  “A bûche and a six.”

  Arnold Mann himself took the scoop from the croupier, and using infinite care not to touch the big pack stacked against the rest, lifted daintily upon the blade the two cards in front of Robin, and turning them over dropped them in the middle of the table. There they were, a King and a six.

  Again there was a stir about the table. I wondered that Robin Calhoun sat in his place so still. If he scattered the big pack even now, we should take it as a confession, no doubt, but we should have no proof. But I think now that he was afraid. The stir was no longer to be put down to fear. There was anger — yes, even amongst those well-dressed unobtrusive people of good manner, the dangerous anger of the mass.

  “And the next cards to be turned up?” Mann asked, looking at Chaunard.

  Chaunard looked round the table.

  “With your consent...” he said, and with such light fingers that one could hardly believe they belonged to such big strong hands, he picked up the stack of cards and held them out to the stockbroker.

  “The first card for our tableau here will be an ace and for the left-hand tableau a two,” he said.

  Amidst a deadly silence Arnold Mann exposed the two top cards, an ace and a two. Here and there a cry of anger rose. It looked as though the storm must burst. But the stockbroker and the man from Limoges between them held the gathering in control.

  “I think you should explain,” said the stockbroker.

  “I will do better. I will make you an experiment first. I will tell you the cards you hold one by one, and one by one you shall turn them up.”

  No one had eyes now for either Jack Sanford who stood by the door as white as a perspiring ghost, if so strange a thing could be, or for Robin Calhoun who sat in his place with a mask for a face, a mask without an expression. Chaunard gave the value of a card and a card of that value the stockbroker turned up. So it went on in a monotonous exactitude until the pack was exhausted.

  Our admiration of such a feat was immense, but Monsieur Chaunard did not wait for its expression. He beamed on us. He handed himself bouquets on the instant — Caruso after singing “La donna è mobile” to an Italian audience.

  “That was good? Yes? Worthy of the bravos? I think so. Aha, Mister Banker,” and he swung round upon Robin Calhoun. “Me — it may be — I do not come out of the top of my drawers, but the memory, he does!”

  “Revolting!” twittered Mr. Ricardo.

  Imogen leaned forward right across me.

  “Nonsense! He’s an absolute darling!”

  “Silence, if you please,” said Mr. Mann.

  “Yes, the silence, whilst I talk,” Chaunard agreed enthusiastically. “Monsieur de Craix, he comes to see me in Paris.”

  “At Limoges,” said the stockbroker.

  “I make the apologies. We are the mugs here to-night but I do not make us at Limoges. No. I inhabit Paris. At times I come to stay with a friend in London” — and here Mr. Ricardo shifted his feet uncomfortably— “just to keep myself fresh in the idioms of your language. But that is all. M. de Craix, he says to me: ‘There is a game of baccara. Often it is — oblong.’”

  “Square,” said Mr. Ricardo.

  “Well, square or oblong. ‘But now and then there is a big killing.’ So having a holiday I come and I am lucky. For the first time I come there is to be the big killing — the 705 system, as the old chief of my establishment used to call it. I beg your attention.”

  He rose and walked across the room to a desk upon which some packs of cards lay in their wrappers. As he rose Robin Calhoun rose, too, and at once Arnold Mann, the stockbroker, spoke sharply.

  “You will wait, if you please, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “Yes,” said the Frenchman over his shoulder. “Certainly the gentleman should wait. Both the gentlemen should wait. For there may be restitutions.”

  Decorous as the whole conduct of this scandalous affair had been, that one word restitutions sent a wave of brightness and hope throughout the company. Mr. Robin Calhoun resumed his seat with a shrug of the shoulders and a contemptuous face. Mr. Jack Sanford, holding tight to the handles of the double doors, looked as if he were going to faint.

  Monsieur Chaunard, no longer of Limoges, brought a pack of cards to the baccara table and resumed his seat. He stripped the wrapper from the pack.

  “I will arrange the cards in an order,” and he turned over the top card. It was a seven. He looked at the second — it was a ten. He laughed and looked at the third — it was a five. He rose and bowed with great ceremony to Jack Sanford.

  “I thank you. My work is done for me, and then the wrapper replaced.”

  He laid out the cards face upwards in four lines of thirteen cards to a line. Counting the Court cards and the tens of no value, the object of the game being to get nine or as near to it as possible, the values ran as follows. For I made a note of them as the cards were turned up.

  7 0 5 9 0 2 6 0 4 1 3 6 0

  8 0 1 2 6 9 0 8 7 0 9 7 0

  4 9 0 2 5 0 4 8 0 3 2 0 8

  1 1 3 5 5 3 4 0 0 0 6 0 7

  Monsieur Chaunard contemplated the cards with a smile.

  “This is the combination known to a famous chief of my establishment, Monsieur Goron, as 705. You see the very good reason,” and he pointed to the first three cards of the top row. “Yes, it is all correct. I have him by the heart. Now I gather the cards all up in that order, beginning at the top row and working from left to right like the grousers from the moors in your illustrated papers. So!”

  I had never seen a man so completely savouring the enjoyment of the leading part. He was Mounet-Sully and Coquelin and Henry Irving and Lucien Guitry all rolled into one. He beamed, he — I find no other word for it — he listened to the deep silence of the room, he watched the eyes riveted upon his hands. He was happy.

  “So!”

  He had the pack in his hand, the cards now face upwards and the last card picked up show
ing a seven of spades. He turned the pack over so that now the backs were uppermost and the top card, of course, was the first seven.

  “Now,” he said, “in that order, which was the order of the pack when it lay upon the desk there, the banker cannot lose one coup. Once or twice there may be an equality. Every other time he wins.”

  Robin Calhoun laughed sarcastically.

  “I think our unusual visitor is forgetting that the cards were shuffled,” he said.

  To my amazement, and to Mr. Ricardo’s disgust, the big visitor became playful. He turned and dug his long middle finger into Robin’s white waistcoat at the level of his waist.

  “That is the good one!”

  “Ah,” murmured Mr. Ricardo. “A good one.”

  “No, no, my friend,” Chaunard continued, taking no notice whatever of Mr. Ricardo. “It is you who do the shuffle now with the words, and your croupier who did not do the shuffle with the cards then. I watch him. With my eyes, I watch him.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you watched him with your feet,” said Robin sourly.

  “Yes, I watch him. And he shuffle as a hundred tenth-rate conjurers can shuffle, without altering the lie of one card.”

  “But I cut the pack afterwards,” cried a woman towards the end of the table.

  “So did I!”

  “So did I!”

  Other voices joined in but they left Monsieur Chaunard quite unmoved.

  “And so you shall again, madame. And you! And you! And you!”

  With an excellent mimicry of Robin Calhoun, he daintily extended the pack held tight between the fingers and thumb of one hand, and the red card for the cut with the other. “As many as will. The cut, it makes no difference. The 705 is a work of genius. Now you, monsieur! Now you!”

  I think that he had the pack cut seven times.

  “Will someone sweep those old packs off the table?” he asked, and as soon as that was done he moved the rest across from in front of Robin to in front of Arnold Mann.

  “You are the banker. And you cannot lose!”

  Arnold Mann slipped the cards off the pack to right and to left and to himself, turned them face upwards, refused cards or drew cards as the hands required, when the pack was exhausted sat back.