CHAPTER VI
THE HARVARD FRESHMAN’S ADVENTURE: THE FORTY PANATELAS
James Wiswell Coffin, 3d, was the first of the three adventurers to leave the restaurant, and as he turned up Kearney Street he had a new but fully fledged philosophy buzzing in his brain. Enlightenment had come in a hint dropped by Coffee John himself. It took a Harvard man and a Bostonian of Puritan stock to hatch that chick of thought, but, by the time the coffee was finished, the mental egg broke and an idea burst upon him. It was this:
“Facts show that good luck is stable for a while and is then followed by a run of misfortune. The mathematical ideal of alternate favorable and unfavorable combinations does not often occur. There is where the great Law of Probabilities falls down hard. The curve of fortune is like a wave. It should then be played heavily while it ascends, and lightly on the decline. Mine is undoubtedly rising. Go to! I shall proceed to gamble!”
But how gamble at midnight with a capital of but one dime? In no other city in the world is it so easy as in San Francisco, that quaint rendezvous of saloons and cigar stands. There the goddess Fortuna has a shrine on every street corner and the offerings of her devotees produce a rattle as characteristic of the town as the slap of the cable pulley in the conduit of the car lines. The cigar slot-machine or “hard-luck-box” is a nickel lottery played by good and bad alike; for it has a reputation no shadier than the church-raffle or the juvenile grab-bag, and is tolerated as a harmless safety-valve for the lust of gaming. All the same, it is the perpetual ubiquitous delusion of the amateur sportsman.
Gunschke’s cigar shop was still open as Coffin reached the corner of Brush Street. He walked briskly inside the open sales-room (for a cigar shop has but three walls in San Francisco’s gentle clime) and, with the assurance of one who has just touched a humpback and the carelessness of a millionaire, he exchanged Coffee John’s dime for two nickels, dropped one down the slot of the machine on the counter and sprang the handle. The five wheels of playing-cards whirled madly, then stopped, leaving a poker-hand exposed behind the wire. He had caught a pair of kings, good for a “bit” cigar.
Coffin was disappointed, and yet, after all, there was a slight gain in the transaction. Investing five cents, he had won twelve and a half cents’ worth of merchandise. It was not sufficiently marvellous to turn his head, but his luck was evidently on the up-curve, though it was rising slowly enough. He took the other nickel—his last—and jerked the handle again, awaiting with calmness for the cards to come to a standstill.
As the wheels settled into place a man with green eyes and a bediamonded shirt front came up and leaned over Coffin’s shoulder. “Good work! A straight flush, by crickety!—forty cigars! Get in and break the bank, young fellow!”
Coffin turned to him with nonchalance, while the clerk marked the winning in a book. “Nn—nn! I know when I’ve got enough.”
“Play for me then, will you?” the other rejoined. “You’ve got luck, you have!”
“I don’t propose to make a present of it to you, if I have; I need every stitch of it myself.” And then Coffin, touched with a happy thought, began to swagger. “Besides, if I’m going to smoke this forty up to-night I’ve got to get busy with myself.” He looked knowingly at the goods displayed for his choice, pinching the wrappers. “I’ve never had all the cigars I could smoke yet, and I’m going to try my limit. Got any Africana Panatelas, Colorado Maduro?” he asked the clerk. A small box was taken down from the shelf. Coffin accepted it and walked leisurely toward the door.