Here at tables were groups of men and women. Each player hoped to quit the tables that night richer by thousands. Most of them were doomed to leave poorer, as chance is always in favor of the gambling institution and always against the player.
"It's a mad scene," murmured Dan, in a low voice.
"You are looking on now at an exhibition of what is probably the worst, and therefore the most dangerous, human vice," Dave replied. "Bad as drunkenness is, gambling is worse."
"What is at the bottom of the gambling mania?" Dan asked thoughtfully.
"Greed," Dave responded promptly. "The desire to possess property, and to acquire it without working for it."
"Some of these poor men and women look as if they were working hard indeed," muttered Dan, in almost a tone of sympathy.
"They are not working so much as suffering," Dave rejoined. "Study their faces, Danny boy. Can't you see greed sticking out all over these countenances? Look at the hectic flush in most of the faces. And—look at that man!"
A short, stout man sprang up from a table, his face ghastly pale and distorted as though with terror. His eyes were wild and staring. He chattered incoherently as he hastened away with tottering steps. Then his hands gripped his hair, as though about to tear it from his head.
A few of the players in this international congress of greed glanced at the unfortunate man, who probably had just beggared himself, shrugged their shoulders, and turned their fascinated eyes back to the gambling table.
One woman, young and charming, reached up to her throat, unfastening and tossing on the table a costly diamond necklace and pendant.