I want you to
stand close to me so that no one can see what I am doing. Do just as I
will indicate to you."
The gambling-room was now fast filling up with the first of the
theatre crowd. DeLong's table was the centre of attraction, owing to
the high play. A group of young men of his set were commiserating with
him on his luck and discussing it with the finished air of roues of
double their ages. He was doggedly following his system.
Kennedy and I approached.
"Ah, here is the philosophical stranger again," DeLong exclaimed,
catching sight of Kennedy. "Perhaps he can enlighten us on how to win
at roulette by playing his own system."
"_Au contraire_, monsieur, let me demonstrate how to lose," answered
Craig with a smile that showed a row of faultless teeth beneath his
black moustache, decidedly foreign.
Kennedy played and lost, and lost again; then he won, but in the main
he lost. After one particularly large loss I felt his arm on mine,
drawing me closely to him. DeLong had taken a sort of grim pleasure in
the fact that Kennedy, too, was losing. I found that Craig had paused
in his play at a moment when DeLong had staked a large sum that a
number below "18" would turn up--for five plays the numbers had been
between "18" and "36." Curious to see what Craig was doing, I looked
cautiously down between us. All eyes were fixed on the wheel. Kennedy
was holding an ordinary compass in the crooked-up palm of his hand.
The needle pointed at me, as I happened to be standing north of it.
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