Complacent Mr Holmes saw him safely off by the last train to Nice, before retiring for the night to his own snug quarters. ’Tis thus one prepares one’s pigeons for the plucking. When Franz arrived at the hotel, he called for more champagne, to celebrate his victory; and, failing other friends, shared drinks with the waiter.
Next morning, he was over again at Monte Carlo betimes, though with a chastening headache. He got a seat at once, and sat down to it like a man who means to win a fortune. His experience of yesterday had only strengthened his preconceived belief in the infallibility of his System. Encouraged by luck, he began playing from the outset now on the basis of staking five louis a time on each turn of the roulette wheel. For the first two or three twirls, fortune still went with him. He won as easily as he had won the preceding evening. But, after a few hazards, the chance began to change; he lost once, twice, thrice, as quickly as he had won at the outset of his playing. Presently, he was aware of Mr Holmes at his side, watching his play with a self-restrained smile of cynical indifference. That smile put Franz Lindner at once upon his mettle. He began to plunge desperately. Five louis on black;?—?they went like water. Five louis on manque were equally unsuccessful. Time after time Franz played; and time after time he lost again. His winnings had gone down now to two hundred louis. He began to reflect whether it mightn’t be wise to reduce his stake again for a while, during this run of ill-luck, from five louis to two. He even tried it once; but a disapproving murmur from a lady behind decided him to stick to the game he had so far been playing. “You should never change your stakes,” she said, “when you’re losing, you know; it’s an insult to chance, and it brings bad luck with it.” Franz was too good a Tyroler not to be thoroughly superstitious; so he accepted the bystander’s disinterested advice, and continued to put down his five gold pieces.
But still, luck was hard. If it’s easy to win three hundred pounds at a go, it’s easier still to lose them. And yet, Franz felt sure that, sooner or later, the System must win; the System was infallible; his friend the betting man had made all that so clear to him. Recklessly and desperately he hurried on with his game?—?five louis, five louis, five louis once more?—?lost, lost, lost, lost?—?till he was sick and tired of it. Now and again, luck varied, to be sure, for a time, as it had varied yesterday; but while yesterday with minor fluctuations it steadily rose, to-day with minor fluctuations it as steadily fell again. By two o’clock that afternoon, he had lost the whole of his last night’s winnings, and was reduced once more to his original capital.
He was going to stake yet again, somewhat haggard and feverish, when Joaquin Holmes, who had been watching him with the profoundest interest, tapped him lightly on the arm and invited him to luncheon. “You want food,” he said “?—?and wine. After a good glass of Mumm, you’ll play better and stronger again!” In the altered state of the money-market, Franz felt himself less punctilious on the score of treats than the day before; he accepted the lunch, and the offer of champagne, with despondent alacrity. The Seer, ever prudent, stood a bottle of the best wine the cellar of the Hotel de Paris could produce. It was excellent and invigorating. As lunch proceeded, Franz’s spirits returned; the champagne supplied him with fresh sinews of war?—?Dutch courage for the onset. “If I were you, Von Forstemann,” the Seer said in his friendliest and most insinuating tone, “I wouldn’t play any more. You’re sure to lose in the end by it.” But Franz stood by his colours. “Ah, no,” he answered, smiling, “I can’t lose. I’ve got a System. It’s been tried before. A friend of mine, do you know, made twenty thousand pounds in these very rooms by it.”
Flushed and fired by his wine, he went back to the tables. The Seer paid the bill for their lunch, and followed him. Franz had found another seat, and was deep in his play. But he lost, lost, lost?—?won a little?—?then lost again. All the afternoon long, he kept on losing. The Seer walked about, exchanging a word or two at times with friends and with ladies of his acquaintance (some of whose faces Franz fancied he had seen before at the London Pavilion), but came back again to his side after each such excursion, with friendly persistence.
“How much have you lost now?” he asked each time.
And Franz, very shamefaced, yet proud in a way that he could own to such losses, made answer again and again, as the case might be, “A hundred and twenty,” “Two hundred and thirty,” “Three hundred and twenty-seven.” Ach Gott, it was pitiful!
At last, about six o’clock, the Tyroler found himself reduced to a hundred and fifty pounds of his original capital. He couldn’t understand it; this was strange, very strange; the System somehow didn’t seem to work as it ought to do. In his despair, he almost began to disbelieve in its virtues. Just then, the Seer strolled casually by once more, chatting gaily to a lady. He paused, and looked at Franz. In the thirst for human sympathy we all feel at such times, Franz beckoned him up with one hand, and confided to him in a hoarse whisper the painful state of his exchequer. “Come out and have a drink,” the Seer said, bending low, with his most courteous manner. “Let’s work this thing out. Just you show me your System?”
Franz followed him blindly across to the café opposite. The Seer ordered two cognacs and a syphon of soda-water. “Now, tell me how you do it,” he said, in a very grave voice. And, with some little reluctance, looking down at the table, Franz proceeded to disclose to his attentive listener the main points of his System.
It was a transparent fallacy, of course. Such systems always are; and the Seer, who was no fool at the doctrine of chances, saw through it at a glance. His lip curled lightly. “You’re a good mathematician?” he asked, with a well-suppressed sneer.
And Franz was obliged perforce to admit, in this critical moment, that he had got no further in that abstruse science than the first four rules of arithmetic.
The Seer assumed his kindliest and most didactic manner. “Now, you look here, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, leaning over towards his new friend confidentially; “you’ve allowed yourself to be duped; you’ve been grossly imposed upon. I can show you in a minute your System’s all bosh. The bank stands always its regular chance to win, no matter what you do, and it dodges you exactly where you think you’ve dodged it.”
He took out a pencil and paper, and began with great show of care and patience to make the fallacy as clear as day to his unwilling pupil. Franz leant over him and looked. Step by step the clever American unravelled before his eyes all the tangled mass of false assumptions and baseless conclusions Franz called his System. Poor Franz stood aghast; the demolition was patent, irresistible, crushing. Joaquin Holmes was in his element; he was a specialist on games of chance; he demonstrated with loving care that in this case, as in all others, the bank had exactly thirty-seven chances for itself, against thirty-six for the players. Franz saw it with his own eyes: sorely against his will he was forced to see it. He couldn’t gainsay it: it was clear as mud; he could only murmur in a feebly illogical way, “But my friend made twenty thousand pounds in these rooms right off with it.”
The Seer was remorseless. “Accident!” he answered, calmly, with a bland wave of the hand. “Pure luck! Coincidence! And if it happened once, by a mere fluke, to pull itself off so well, all the less reason to believe such a wonderful sequence of happy shots would ever manage to repeat itself. The bank stands always its fixed chance to win in a certain proportion; by good fortune you may circumvent it, by calculation, never!”
Franz was convinced against his will. But the blow was an appalling one. He had lost three hundred and fifty pounds already; he saw no hope of recovering it. And, what was far worse, he had practically lost twenty thousand into the bargain. During all those years while he had been saving and scraping, he had considered his fortune as good as made, if he could but once go to Monte Carlo with five hundred pounds of ready money in his pocket. In five short minutes the affable stranger had knocked the bottom out of his drum?—?demolished the whole vast superstructure of false facts and bad reasoning Franz had reared so carefully; and now, like a house of cards, it had tumbled about his ears, leaving the poor duped Tyroler blankly hopeless and miserable.
The reaction was painful and piteous to behold. From a potential millionaire, Franz descended at once to be the owner of a paltry hundred and fifty pounds in English money. The Seer did his best in these straits to console and comfort him. He pointed out that while no man can ensure a fortune at games of chance by trying to play on a system, any man may have the good luck to win large sums if he treats it frankly as a question of fortune, not of deliberate planning. “Only,” he added, with a significant glance ............