“When I play solitaire,” I observed, “I may win three or four times within a few minutes.”
“Solitaire is that kind of game,” Gautier agreed. “But when you are playing at home, risking nothing, you can afford to lose for a month before that happens. Few people could bank such losses in a casino. However, if you do not have consistent heavy losses, you realize a very large profit when you begin to hit. And that is what Chapuyt did to us. Playing his long game, he nicked us consistently for small sums. He was a splendid player. He never made a mistake. Most people overlook possible plays, or make foolish moves for immediate advantage which increase the odds against them. Not Chapuyt!
“Then came the inevitable evening when he ran out the deck on us his very first game of the evening. He made ten thousand on his second game, lost fifteen thousand on his third, and then, mirabile! two more smashes in a row. Three-quarters of a million dollars’ profit in ten minutes! And with that, Monsieur Chapuyt rose from the table and approached the cashier to collect 187,500,000 francs.”
“Smart fellow,” I said.
“Exactly,” Gautier agreed unhappily. “There was no doubt that he was finished, though for some reason quite detached from the play, he seemed most reluctant to quit the salon. In my mind I could see him aboard the morning plane for Paris. It was most unappetizing.”
“So?”
“Naturally, we do not carry two hundred million francs in the cashier’s cage against a single night’s play. To pay such a sum in these times is difficult, though not impossible. My colleagues and I decided to play a bit of strategy on Monsieur Chapuyt, and keep him in town a while. He had, we thought, run his luck. Now to get the money back! That was our problem.”
“Quite a problem,” I said.
“Under ordinary circumstances, and against ordinary frequenters of casinos, no. Against Chapuyt, yes, for he was not the gambling type. Ordinarily we would have paid up with extravagant compliments, making a splendid scene of our congratulations and envy, with toasts in vintage champagne and talk of a memorial in the garden, had he been just a bit luckier. Had he seen the bronze to M. Rochambeau, we would say, the only man to win a million? The victim would return to beat Rochambeau’s record, and lose everything. Such tactics always work. But Monsieur Chapuyt did not have the disease.”
“Not malignantly, anyway,” I concurred.
“It need only be chronic,” said Gautier. “What we did with Chapuyt was to conduct him to the directors’ chambers and explain that to pay such a sum required a trip to our bankers. He understood that. Would he care for a glass of wine during his wait? No, he said, he drank nothing. A bit of supper? His stomach permitted no piece-mealing. A coffee, perhaps?” Gautier paused, winced, and went on. “He joined us in a glass of Vichy water!
“As we talked to him, we realized that he was not excited over the money he had won. He was anxious, in fact, over his windfall, and afraid that if he remained among us he might become like the habitual players, who depended on the night’s play as a narcotics addict relies on his daily injection. He liked the excitement, but since he could not play roulette, and since solitaire had begun to bore him, he was going home, before he began to lose and contract the gamblers’ disease.
“It was then that my colleague M. Reynard was suddenly inspired with the true assessment of Chapuyt’s character. He had returned night after night not to play solitaire but to mingle with the celebrities who patronized the exclusive upstairs room.
“So Reynard cautiously suggested that there was a way whereby Chapuyt might play on and yet avoid the disease. In fact, he might spend the rest of his life about the Casino. All he had to do was to leave the three-quarter million he had won with the Casino as an investment against a lifetime of play. Reynard emphasized what Chapuyt must by now realize, namely, that frequenters of the salon intime would never duplicate another’s wager. In return for his investment, the Casino each night would give Chapuyt an unlimited supply of chips. When he finished playing, he would turn in his unspent chips. Obviously, if he won, he surrendered his gains. But when his luck turned, as inevitably it must, he could not lose, either. Unobsessed by either the profit motive or the fear of loss, he would never contract the virus.”
“He took it?” I asked, incredulous.
“He accepted promptly,” Gautier said, “with one stipulation which proved how precise Reynard’s evaluation of him had been. He insisted that no one — not even the croupiers — know of the deal that had been made. He had already won sufficient on previous nights to maintain himself comfortably in a hotel for life. And it was, on the whole, a good investment for us.”
“Quite a deal,” I said.
“Ah, but the odd thing is that Chapuyt’s luck has not changed. He wins at roulette night after night. He is the idol of the salon, a mystery man of great distinction among, shall I say, a discriminating clientele. Had he made no bargain with us, he would today be one of the richest men on the Riviera, in the world.”
“What a story!” I exclaimed.
“But I am not quite to the end of it,” Gautier said. “You mentioned his extravagant tips to the croupiers.”
“I did, indeed. He must give away thousands.”
“He gives away nothing,” Gautier said bitterly. “All his life Chapuyt was a money-grubber, watching every franc. He never had a penny for tips. He was even embarrassed about it.
“Now, my friend, he can afford to tip like a champagne salesman. Don’t you see? The chips cost him nothing. He is tipping with our money!”
The Man Who Feared the Water
by Margery Sharp
“Different” is perhaps the best word to describe Margery Sharps “The Man Who Feared the Water.” Surely the tone of the story is “different” from the light-hearted comedy you remember in THE NUTMEG TREE and in Miss Sharp’s recent Literary Guild selection, THE GYPSY IN THE PARLOUR. And the locale of the story is “different” — a small island in the Mediterranean where “unhappiness was out of place” And the natives on the island — their means of earning a living is “different,” not to say curious and curdling. And while the chief characters present the eternal triangle — in this instance, a poetic “genius” a dour Scottish newspaperman, and a young woman who “with a little more color... might have been lovely” — the triangle is decidedly “different,” at least in its psychological implications.
“Rent” a white adobe house overlooking Spanish Harbor and the jade-colored bay, hear the natives dancing on the quay to the sound of a concertina — and watch the drama unfold...
It is no use trying to commit suicide in the waters of Spanish Harbor; the islanders swim too well. Toss a sixpence from the jetty, and two or three lithe young ruffians will be tumbling after it before it touches bottom; while at any larger splash, as of a falling body, the whole sleepy quayside wakes to instant life. Once or twice in each season (if the luck is good) some careless or careworn stranger will miss his footing, and then the lucent water boils milk-like with expert rescuers. The first half-dozen or so clutch at his helpless limbs, the rest content themselves with outlying portions of his raiment, and though the stranger may be a strong and resolute swimmer, he has no opportunity of proving it. Within ten seconds he is seized, saved, and haled back to shore, there to be dunned, in several different patois, for extortionate rewards. George Cotterill, who lived on the island, once worked out some very interesting statistics; the least anyone had ever got away with, he said, was about twenty-two shillings at the normal rate of exchange.