As soon as the immediate game we were watching was finished, the players rose, and greeted Lucio with a good deal of eagerness and effusion. I instinctively guessed from their manner that they looked upon him as an influential member of the club, a person likely to lend them money to gamble with, and otherwise to oblige them in various ways, financially speaking. He introduced me to them all, and I was not slow to perceive the effect my name had upon most of them. I was asked if I would join in a game of baccarat, and I readily consented. The stakes were ruinously high, but I had no need to falter for that. One of the players near me was a fair-haired young man, handsome in face and of aristocratic bearing,—he had been introduced to me as Viscount Lynton. I noticed him particularly on account of the reckless way he had of doubling his stakes suddenly and apparently out of mere bravado, and when he lost, as he mostly did, he laughed uproariously as though he were drunk or delirious. On first beginning to play I was entirely indifferent as to the results of the game, caring nothing at all as to whether I had losses or gains. Lucio did not join us, but sat apart, quietly observant, and watching me, so I fancied, more than anyone. And as chance would have it, all the luck came my way, and I won steadily. The more I won the more excited I became, till presently my humour changed and I was seized by a whimsical desire to lose. I suppose it was the touch of some better impulse in my nature [p 108] that made me wish this for young Lynton’s sake. For he seemed literally maddened by my constant winnings, and continued his foolhardy and desperate play,—his young face grew drawn and sharply thin, and his eyes glittered with a hungry feverishness. The other gamesters, though sharing in his run of ill-luck, seemed better able to stand it, or perhaps they concealed their feelings more cleverly,—anyhow I know I caught myself very earnestly wishing that this devil’s luck of mine would desert me and set in the young Viscount’s direction. But my wishes were no use,—again and again I gathered up the stakes, till at last the players rose, Viscount Lynton among them.
“Well, I’m cleaned out!” he said, with a loud forced laugh. “You must give me my chance of a revanche to-morrow, Mr Tempest!”
I bowed.
“With pleasure!”
He called a waiter at the end of the room to bring him a brandy and soda, and meanwhile I was surrounded by the rest of the men, all of them repeating the Viscount’s suggestion of a ‘revanche,’ and strenuously urging upon me the necessity of returning to the club the next night in order to give them an opportunity of winning back what they had lost. I readily agreed, and while we were in the midst of talk, Lucio suddenly addressed young Lynton.
“Will you make up another game with me?” he inquired. “I’ll start the bank with this,”—and he placed two crisp notes of five hundred pounds each on the table.
There was a moment’s silence. The Viscount was thirstily drinking his brandy-and-soda, and glanced over the rim of his tall tumbler at the notes with covetous bloodshot eyes,—then he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “I can’t stake anything,” he said; “I’ve already told you I’m cleaned out,—‘stony-broke,’ as the slang goes. It’s no use my joining.”
“Sit down, sit down, Lynton!” urged one man near him. “I’ll lend you enough to go on with.”
“Thanks, I’d rather not!” he returned, flushing a little. [p 109] “I’m too much in your debt already. Awfully good of you all the same. You go on, you fellows, and I’ll watch the play.”
“Let me persuade you Viscount Lynton,” said Lucio, looking at him with his dazzling inscrutable smile—“just for the fun of the thing! If you do not feel justified in staking money, stake something trifling and merely nominal, for the sake of seeing whether the luck will turn”—and here he took up a counter—“This frequently represents fifty pounds,—let it represent for once something that is not valuable like money,—your soul, for example!” A burst of laughter broke from all the men. Lucio laughed softly with them.