As for Oldpaint’s system, it was too complicated for me to understand. But the results were plain enough: rouge was generally turning up when she had bet on noir. Her money, as a rule, stood on pair, when it should have been on impair. When other players were doubling their stakes on passe, Oldpaint was almost sure to have five francs on manque. Occasionally she would haul in something substantial. Once she bagged eight times the amount of her stake. It had been put at the intersecting lines of four numbers, one of which had won. As the croupier scooped them in for her with his little rake, I could see the enamel on her cheeks crack open in new places, she smiled so broadly; and then, on the strength of this bit of luck, the poor old woman would go on losing again. It made me sick to see her throwing away good money on a system which ought to have been turned round end for end. A gambler, if he had been in my place, would have made a good thing just watching Oldpaint and playing against her every time.
My attention was now called off by the sudden appearance of Cockspur on the scene. As there was no spare seat for him at the table, he stood up in the second row of players and spectators. His face was flushed, and he reached forward between two other persons to rest his hand on the back of a chair, as if to steady himself. I wondered if the man would be foolish enough to play in that half-drunken state. It was a great pity that such a free-hearted fellow should be a victim of the dreadful vice of gambling, and perhaps be reduced to beggary by his rashness before night.
Cockspur took a napoleon from a side-pocket which audibly jingled with coins. Waiting till the wheel started, he pitched the gold-piece carelessly on the table. It rolled on its edge, making a circle on the cloth and finally laid down at the junction of two lines which intersect six numbers. “Rien ne va plus,” droned the human parrot, when the speed of the wheel was much reduced, and a moment later the ball dropped with a little thud. “Vingt-cinq rouge,” said the same monotonous voice. I looked at the square on the table, and lo! it was one of the six numbers covered by Cockspur’s napoleon. He had won five times the amount of his stake. One of the servitors whose duty it is to assist in placing money on the table or handing over winnings, passed the six napoleons up to Cockspur, who slipped them into the yawning side-pocket. His face expressed no pleasure. Some men, under the belief that they had struck a run of luck, would, in Cockspur’s place, have risked a sum larger than twenty francs on the next round. In his condition I expected him to do something rash. But he only produced another napoleon from his store and let it fall. After wobbling about a moment it came to rest on the division marked manque. Again a whirl of the wheel and a fall of the ball, and the croupier proclaimed “Quinze noir,” and Cockspur doubled his stake, because 15 is manque, or less than 18. All numbers over 18 up to 36 are passe; and all the players who had put their money on the part of the table so labeled, were losers to the bank.
The same good fortune pursued Cockspur as he pitched his gold pieces at random into the section Rouge or Noir, Pair or Impair. He won six or seven times running while I looked on. And then he and all the players together fell prey to the bank’s single advantage. Besides the thirty-six numbers, there is a zero (0), and, when that catches the ball, all the stakes on the board are raked in by the bank, with the solitary exception that any person who has staked on the zero (thereby backing the bank) gains thirty-five times the amount of his wager. But, in the case under notice, the zero symbol was uncovered. As the bank plays nine or ten hours every day in the year, and must, according to the law of probabilities, win once in every thirty-seven games (requiring about a minute each) on the average, one can understand how the administration makes all its money without the necessity of cheating. No player is allowed to stake more than six thousand francs at a time, and the enormous capital of the bank enables it to continue the game against any conceivably probable run of bad luck.
Cockspur continued to drop his money, always the one prudent napoleon, on the table, and letting it take the chances. Sometimes he lost, but more often he won. It would have been amusing, but for the sadness of their long and hungry faces, to see Oldpaint and some others who were losing steadily on systems, look up at Cockspur who was discarding all methods and trusting blindly to luck, and showing so much judgment even in his folly, taking only small risks at a time. As I gazed across the table at him, I foresaw with prophetic eye the time, and not far off, when his luck would turn, and he would then become frenzied and reckless; perhaps put up his last napoleon, and lose it, and then the siren with the frizzled hair would drop her penniless lover, and the comedy of real life would tragically close with a pistol-shot and a newspaper paragraph.
I was dwelling on this dismal ending of the handsome fellow opposite, when a new cause of anxiety threw him quite out of my mind.
There was North Adams, fluttering around the table like a moth about a candle. He had been spending his time watching the other groups of players, I suppose, and had now come to see what our set was doing. Like most persons who look on at the game for the first time, he watched only those who won. The equal numbers who lost at every fall of the ball seemed to escape his observation. Every time a player raked in a goodly pile, North Adams’s eyes would bulge out with astonishment. He would thrust his hand into a pocket and partly draw it out, and then thrust it back again. A storm of conflicting feelings swept over his smooth, beardless face. One could easily read avarice, covetousness, the love of illicit gain, struggling with the generous sentiments of youth and the good principles of New England training. I tried to catch his eye, but in vain. He was totally absorbed in the contemplation of all that money so easily won. Once he elbowed his way through the double row of outsiders, and I thought he was about to place money on the table. But just then the bank again scored zero (0), and all those yellow and white pieces down there disappeared in an instant! This was a warning for North Adams. He drew back, and I saw a look as of shrewd reflection pass across his face. He wiped his damp brow, and resolutely buttoned up the pocket into which his hand had so often dived without bringing up anything.
That one decisive hit for the bank seemed to banish the doubts that had evidently troubled North Adams. He did not look like a person of severe moral principles; he may have had no nice scruples upon the subject of gaming; but when his mind, such as it was, still bearing the impress of his early schooling and severe discipline, realized that the bank had a “sure thing” in the long run, then he hesitated to jump at the gilded bait. Some grains of hard common sense inherited from level-headed ancestors, along with the high cheek-bones of his Scotch face, came to his rescue in the nick of time. Blood will tell, even when thinned down in the veins of a harmless dude; and while I looked at him, still questioning his firmness against temptation, he deliberately turned his back upon the game and walked straight out of the room.
I soon followed him into the open air, better pleased with that spectacle of conflict and victory than with all else I had seen in the gambling-palace of Monte Carlo.