"What?" asked DeLong eagerly.
Kennedy staked a large sum on the red to win. The black came up, and he lost. He doubled the stake and played again, and again lost. With amazing calmness Craig kept right on doubling.
"The martingale," I heard the men whisper behind me. "In other words, double or quit."
Kennedy was now in for some hundreds, a sum that was sufficiently large for him, but he doubled again, still cheerfully playing the red, and the red won. As he gathered up his chips he rose.
"That's the only system," he said simply.
"But, go on, go on," came the chorus from about the table.
"No," said Kennedy quietly, "that is part of the system, too—to quit when you have won back your stakes and a little more."
"Huh!" exclaimed DeLong in disgust. "Suppose you were in for some thousands—you wouldn't quit. If you had real sporting blood you wouldn't quit, anyhow!"
Kennedy calmly passed over the open insult, letting it be understood that he ignored this beardless youth.
"There is no way you can beat the game in the long run if you keep at it," he answered simply. "It is mathematically impossible. Consider. We are Croesuses—we hire players to stake money for us on every possible number at every coup. How do we come out? If there are no '0' or '00,' we come out after each coup precisely where we started—we are paying our own money back and forth among ourselves; we have neither more nor less. But with the '0' and '00' the bank sweeps the board every so often. It is only a question of time when, after paying our money back and forth among ourselves, it has all filtered through the 'O' and 'OO' into the bank. It is not a game of chance for the bank—ah, it is exact, mathematical—c'est une question d'arithmétique seulement, n'est-ce pas, messieurs?"