“I protest!” said Sydney, turning almost savagely upon his friends. “Go to your tables, and concern yourself with your own counters. We can settle our affair without witnesses. Grace, a glass of champagne.”
He drank three glasses in succession, and said to Mr. Pelham, with only myself and Adolph standing by the small table,
“This is a moment to remember. Fortune! be kind! I throw first. Fifteen! I am a free man. Now, Mr. Pelham.”
“Sixteen!” said Mr. Pelham, raising his box.
The word had no sooner passed his lips than his wrist was seized with a grasp of iron by Sydney, and taking up this unrehearsed cue, I pinned the cheat to his chair. He uttered a cry of rage, but he could neither rise nor release his wrist from Sydney’s hold. This incident brought all the players to their feet.
“Gentlemen,” said Sydney, calmly, “this man and I have been playing for something more than money, but it is simply a question of honour in which money is involved that I ask you to decide. Here are my dice, and here my throw. There are Mr. Pelham’s dice, and there his throw. I call upon you to constitute yourselves a committee of honour, and examine the dice we each used in the last throw.”
They removed the dice, and discovered those used by Mr. Pelham to be loaded. It would have gone hard with him if Sydney had not interfered.
“Hold!” he cried. “Fair play for rogue and gentleman! Release him, Fred.” I released the blackleg, and he sat helpless in his chair, and glared at us. But he saw that his fate was in our hands, and he submitted. Sydney continued: “Mr. Pelham, these dice I have thrown with are fair dice, such as are used by gentlemen. My throw is fifteen. Take them, and throw against it. On my honour, if you beat my cast, I will endeavour to pay you what I owe you, despite the fact that the I O U’s you hold of mine have been unfairly won.”
The blackleg took the box, and rattled the dice in it, gazing upon us with a ghastly smile, and then deliberately replaced the box on the table, mouth upwards.
“What guarantee have I,” he asked, “that in the event of my throwing higher than fifteen, these gentlemen friends of yours will not set upon me, and murder me?”