“Quantum fati parva tabella vehit,” he said crookedly. “And there are those who mock at astrology!”
A roar, instant, overwhelming, heart-shaking, broke upon his words. It greeted the appearance on the board of the fifth and final figure—a zero!
The gods had laughed. All stakes were cancelled, and forfeit to the Government.
Dr Bonito stood quite still. The sweat dried from his forehead. Slowly his face seemed to turn into grinning stone. The surge of the crowd roared round him, like fierce water about a pile. He heeded nothing of it. He only grinned and grinned, until his grin became a blasphemy, a horror. Then he recognised that he must stir, speak, do something human, to cheat the hell to which his looks were claiming him. He was conscious of a rigor enchaining his flesh; his feet seemed locked in the jaws of a quicksand; a little, and he would be under.
At the crisis, the card in his hand caught his attention. Very stiffly, moving his arms mechanically, he tore it into halves, folded, quartered, requartered, and, at a wrench, divided and sent those fluttering piecemeal. The act spoke an inhuman grip. It had hardly been possible to him a minute earlier. But its madness rent the veil.
He twisted awry, and glared up at his companion. Louis-Marie remembered that night in the café. He recognised well enough what had happened. The calamity might have stirred him little on his own account, had it not been for this look in the ruined face turned to him. He shivered slightly.
“So much for the Taroc Mysteries!” whispered the doctor, “chaff of the gods! But I forgot that nought stood for the Fool.”
His tongue rustled on his palate like a dry scale.
“He hunts butterflies,” he said. “Why, you cursed owl, what are you staring at? Have you never seen him, with his net, on the cards? Nought is the Fool, I say, and I am nought—the butt of the gods. I’ll pay them!”
He took a frantic step or two, returned, seized his companion’s arm, and urged him from the press.