“Oh, this will never do,” cried Cranley. “If no one else will open a bank, I’ll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it is done!”
Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were winning, thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly and amusing.
“I must have one shy,” said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto stood with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth with a diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds and won; he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time, and then said, “May I draw a cheque?”
“Of course you may,” Cranley answered. “The waiter will give you tout ce qu’il faut pour écrire, as the stage directions say; but I don’t advise you to plunge. You’ve lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil favors beginners, so you can’t come to grief.”
The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles of the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he returned with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The luck turned again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice consecutively he lost.
“Excuse me,” said Barton suddenly to Cranley, “may I help myself to one of your cigarettes?”
He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
“Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when you have done with it.”
He dealt again, and lost.