He had lost, and would remain.
Glancing round, his lips curled in a bitter smile; at the same moment, however, he placed his trembling hand to his mouth, as if to stifle an imprecation.
Glaring, rigid and desperate he sat, his dark eyes, the eyes that had been so admired by the women, fixed upon the ever-revolving disc of black and red now holding him in fascination. Suddenly, as another game was being played, a spasm of excruciating pain caused him to clap both hands to his brow and utter a low groan. It was the gasp of a dying man, but amid the terrible excitement of play it passed unnoticed, and none dreamed the truth until a moment or two later when, with a wild, despairing shriek which rang through the hot gilded rooms and caused an instant’s hush, he half-rose from his chair and fell forward upon the table lifeless, scattering the gold, silver and notes staked by the players, and causing a terrible scene of alarm and confusion.
His heart had always been weak, and the sudden excitement of play had caused a rupture which had proved fatal.
Such was the official account of the affair given in the papers, for the administration of the Casino were careful not to let the public know that in the dead man’s pocket was found a tiny bottle labelled “Quinine,” containing several white tabloids which, on analysis, were found to be of strychnine.
Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the public remained in ignorance of this last-mentioned fact, when it is remembered that the Administration of the Cercle des Etrangers spends some hundreds of thousands of francs annually among the journals and journalists in order to conceal the many suicides which take place in their world-famous combination of paradise and hell.