“You see, he is hopeless,” mused Kennedy over our light repast. “And yet of all gambling games roulette offers the player the best odds, far better than horse-racing, for instance. Our method has usually been to outlaw roulette and permit horse racing; in other words, suppress the more favourable and permit the less favourable. However, we're doing better now; we're suppressing both. Of course what I say applies only to roulette when it is honestly played—DeLong would lose anyhow, I fear.”
I started at Kennedy's tone and whispered hastily: “What do you mean? Do you think the wheel is crooked?”
“I haven't a doubt of it,” he replied in an undertone. “That run of '17' might happen—yes. But it is improbable. They let me win because I was a new player—new players always win at first. It is proverbial, but the man who is running this game has made it look like a platitude. To satisfy myself on that point I am going to play again—until I have lost my winnings and am just square with the game. When I reach the point that I am convinced that some crooked work is going on I am going to try a little experiment, Walter. I want you to stand close to me so that no one can see what I am doing. Do just as I will indicate to you.”
The gambling-room was now fast filling up with the first of the theatre crowd. DeLong's table was the centre of attraction, owing to the high play. A group of young men of his set were commiserating with him on his luck and discussing it with the finished air of roues of double their ages. He was doggedly following his system.
Kennedy and I approached.
“Ah, here is the philosophical stranger again;” DeLong exclaimed, catching sight of Kennedy. “Perhaps he can enlighten us on how to win at roulette by playing his own system.”
“Au contrarie, monsieur, let me demonstrate how to lose,” answered Craig with a smile that showed a row of faultless teeth beneath his black moustache, decidedly foreign.
Kennedy played and lost, and lost again; then he won, but in the main he lost. After one particularly large loss I felt his arm on mine, drawing me closely to him. DeLong had taken a sort of grim pleasure in the fact that Kennedy, too, was losing. I found that Craig had paused in his play at a moment when DeLong had staked a large sum that a number below “18” would turn up—for five plays the numbers had been between “18” and “36.” Curious to see what Craig was doing, I looked cautiously down between us. All eyes were fixed on the wheel. Kennedy was holding an ordinary compass in the crooked-up palm of his hand. The needle pointed at me, as I happened to be standing north of it.
The wheel spun. Suddenly the needle swung around to a point between the north and south poles, quivered a moment, and came to rest in that position. Then it swung back to the north.
It was some seconds before I realised the significance of it. It had pointed at the table—and DeLong had lost again. There was some electric attachment at work.