“Le dix-neuf!” announced the croupier. “Rouge, impair et passe.”
Breaths that had been held were released, and there was a murmur of voices lamenting that they had not been on nineteen. For the prince had won.
It was not very much—perhaps fifteen thousand francs—but he seemed to regard it as a sign, for he too took a quick breath and nodded to an attendant, who hastened to find a chair for him. The prince sat down, placed his winnings in front of him, and began to play with absorbed attention, always on or around or in connection with the number nineteen.
There have been many stories of desperate persons who risked an entire fortune on a single turn of the wheel and lost, or of lucky individuals who won enormous sums by permitting their stakes to accumulate as the same number came out again and again. Neither of these things is possible, for the bank sets arbitrary limits to the play, running from a hundred and eighty francs on a number, which pays thirty-five for one, to six thousand francs on the simple chances, odd or even, red or black, high or low, which wins an equal amount. So that, if one plays the maximum on all the chances, it is possible—though rather difficult—to lose about thirty thousand francs, or to win a little over a hundred thousand. But that is the limit.
So the prince, playing cautiously and confining himself at first to the cheveaux and carrés, took a long time in losing the fifteen thousand francs he had won, even though nineteen did not come again. Twenty, seventeen and twenty-three came, which helped to recoup his losses, and it was at least an hour after he had sat down that the last of his fifteen thousand francs were swept away.
He glanced at his watch and made a motion as if to rise, then decided to wait for the next play.
The ball fell into nineteen.
There was an outcry of sympathy and indignation on the part of the spectators. What a shame, what a crime, that his number should come at the very moment he had ceased playing!
Quietly, as though moved by some power stronger than himself, the prince drew his purse from his pocket, opened it and laid it on the table before him. And this time he staked the maximum.
It is not often that any one stakes the maximum at Monte Carlo. Even in this day thirty thousand francs is a considerable sum. So an electric whisper ran around the room that something unusual was going forward at the prince’s table, and the crowd around it became thicker and thicker. The chef de partie, scenting a battle royal, sent hastily to the cashier for an extra supply of funds.