‘Some day,’ he said, ‘I shall come across a really safe thing, a bet that simply can’t go astray, and then I shall put it up for all I’m worth, or rather for a good deal more than I’m worth if you sold me up to the last button.’
‘It would be awkward if it didn’t happen to come off,’ said Clovis.
‘It would be more than awkward,’ said Rex; ‘it would be a tragedy. All the same, it would be extremely amusing to bring it off. Fancy awaking in the morning with about three hundred pounds standing to one’s credit. I should go and clear out my hostess’s pigeon-loft before breakfast out of sheer good-temper.’
‘Your hostess of the moment mightn’t have a pigeon-loft,’ said Clovis.
‘I always choose hostesses that have,’ said Rex; ‘a pigeon-loft is indicative of a careless, extravagant, genial disposition, such as I like to see around me. People who strew corn broadcast for a lot of feathered inanities that just sit about cooing and giving each other the glad eye in a Louis Quatorze manner are pretty certain to do you well.’
‘Young Strinnit is coming down this afternoon,’ said Clovis reflectively; ‘I dare say you won’t find it difficult to get him to back himself at billiards. He plays a pretty useful game, but he’s not quite as good as he fancies he is.’
‘I know one member of the party who can walk round him,’ said Rex softly, an alert look coming into his eyes; ‘that cadaverous-looking Major who arrived last night. I’ve seen him play at St Moritz. If I could get Strinnit to lay odds on himself against the Major the money would be safe in my pocket. This looks like the good thing I’ve been watching and praying for.’
‘Don’t be rash,’ counselled Clovis, ‘Strinnit may play up to his self-imagined form once in a blue moon.’
‘I intend to be rash,’ said Rex quietly, and the look on his face corroborated his words.
‘Are you all going to flock to the billiard-room?’ asked Teresa Thundleford, after dinner, with an air of some disapproval and a good deal of annoyance. ‘I can’t see what particular amusement you find in watching two men prodding little ivory balls about on a table.’
‘Oh, well,’ said her hostess, ‘it’s a way of passing the time, you know.’
‘A very poor way, to my mind,’ said Mrs Thundleford; ‘now I was going to have shown all of you the photographs I took in Venice last summer.’
‘You showed them to us last night,’ said Mrs Cuvering hastily.
‘Those were the ones I took in Florence. These are quite a different lot.’
‘Oh, well, some time tomorrow we can look at them. You can leave them down in the drawing-room, and then every one can have a look.’
‘I should prefer to show them when you are all gathered together, as I have quite a lot of explanatory remarks to make, about Venetian art and architecture, on the same lines as my remarks last night on the Florentine galleries. Also, there are some verses of mine that I should like to read you, on the rebuilding of the Campanile. But, of course, if you all prefer to watch Major Latton and Mr Strinnit knocking balls about on a table–’
‘They are both supposed to be first-rate players,’ said the hostess.
‘I have yet to learn that my verses and my art causerie are of second-rate quality,’ said Mrs Thundleford with acerbity. ‘However, as you all seem bent on watching a silly game, there’s no more to be said. I shall go upstairs and finish some writing. Later on, perhaps, I will come down and join you.’
To one, at least, of the onlookers the game was anything but silly. It was absorbing, exciting, exasperating, nerve-stretching, and finally it grew to be tragic. The Major with the St Moritz reputation was playing a long way below his form, young Strinnit was playing slightly above his, and had all the luck of the game as well. From the very start the balls seemed possessed by a demon of contrariness; they trundled about complacently for one player, they would go nowhere for the other.
‘A hundred and seventy, seventy-four,’ sang out the youth who was marking. In a game of two hundred and fifty up it was an enormous lead to hold. Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from Dillot’s face, and a hard white look take its place.
‘How much have you got on?’ whispered Clovis. The other whispered the sum through dry, shaking lips. It was more than he or any one connected with him could pay; he had done what he had said he would do. He had been rash.
‘Two hundred and six, ninety-eight.’
Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of striking clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in. In another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager he had challenged.
‘Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three.’ The game was as good as over. Rex was as good as done for. He longed desperately for the ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, for anything to happen that would put an end to that horrible rolling to and fro of red and white ivory that was jostling him nearer and nearer to his doom.
‘Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven.’
Rex opened his cigarette-case; it was empty. That at least gave him a pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it; he would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game played out to the bitter end. He backed away from the circle of absorbed watchers and made his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a guest’s name written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned in this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click of the balls; if he waited for a few minutes longer he would hear the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of congratulation that would hail Strinnit’s victory. On the alert tension of his nerves there broke another sound, the aggressive, wrath-inducing breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The sound came from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the announcement. ‘Mrs Thundleford.’ The door was just slightly ajar; Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading-lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of besides billiard matches.