Jonah and Co Part 53

The conference between the lovers became more intense.

"_Esta hecho?_"

"Oh, be quick!" cried the girl. "Between '7' and '8,' Bill.

Between..."

As the money went on--

"_No va mas_," cried the croupier in charge.

Two pairs of eyes peered at the revolving wheel. They did not notice that the Dutchman, plunging at the last moment upon 'MANQUE,' had touched their counter with his cuff and moved it to '9.'

The ball lost its momentum, poppled across the ridges, and leaped to rest.

"_Nueve._"

Two faces fell. I wondered if a new frock had vanished into air....

With the edge of his rake a croupier was tapping their counter and looking round for the claimant.

For a second the Jew peered about him. Then he pointed to himself and stretched out his hand.

I called to the croupier in French.

"No. It belongs to Monsieur and Madame. I saw what happened. That gentleman moved it with his cuff."

"_Merci, Monsieur._"

With a sickly leer the pretender rallied the croupier, confidentially a.s.sured the dainty Englishwoman that he did not care, and, laughing a little too heartily, waved the thirty-five pounds towards their bewildered owners.

"B-but it isn't mine," stammered the boy.

"Yes," I said, smiling. "Your counter was moved. I saw the whole thing." I hesitated. Then, "If you'll take an old hand's advice, you'll stop now. A thing like that's invariably the end of one's luck."

I was not 'an old hand,' and I had no authority for my dictum. My interference was unpardonable. When the two stopped to thank me, as they pa.s.sed from the room, I felt like a criminal. Still, they looked very charming; and, after all, a frock on the back is worth a score at the dressmaker's.

"I am going," said Berry, "to suspend my courts.h.i.+p and smoke a cigarette. Possibly I'm going too strong. If I give the lady a rest, she may think more of me."

"I suppose," said Daphne, "you're bent on losing it all."

Her husband frowned.

"Fortune favours the bold," he said shortly. "You see, she's just proving me. If I were to falter, she'd turn me down."

It was impossible not to admire such confidence.

I bade my sister take heart.

"Much," I concluded, "may be done with forty pounds."

"Fifty," corrected Berry. "And now let's change the subject. How d'you p.r.o.nounce Lwow? Or would you rather tell me a fairy tale?"

I shook my head.

"My power," I said, "of concentration is limited."

"Then I must," said Berry. "It's fatal to brood over your fortune."

He sat back in his chair and let the smoke make its own way out of his mouth. "There was once a large king. It wasn't his fault. The girth went with the crown. All the Koppabottemburgs were enormous. Besides, it went very well with his subjects. Looking upon him, they felt they were getting their money's worth. A man of simple tastes, his favourite hobby was fowls.

"One day, just as he'd finished cleaning out the fowl-house, he found that he'd run out of maize. So he slipped on his invisible cloak and ran round to the grocer's. He always wore his invisible cloak when shopping. He found it cheaper.

"Well, the grocer was just recovering from the spectacle of two pounds of the best maize shoving themselves into a brown-paper bag and pus.h.i.+ng off down the High Street, when a witch came in. The grocer's heart sank into his boots. He hated witches. If you weren't civil, before you knew where you were, you were a three-legged toad or a dew-pond or something. So you had to be civil. As for their custom--well, it wasn't worth having. They wouldn't look at bacon, unless you'd guarantee that the pig had been killed on a moonless Friday with the wind in the North, and as for pulled figs, if you couldn't swear that the box had been crossed by a one-eyed man whose father had committed arson in a pair of brown boots, you could go and bury them under the lilacs.

"This time, however, the grocer was pleasantly surprised.

"I didn't know," said the witch, "that you were under the patronage of Royalty."

"Oh, didn't you?" said the grocer. "Why, the Master of the Horse has got his hoof-oil here for nearly two days now."

"Master of the Horse be snookered," said the witch. "I'm talking about the king."

"'The K-King?'" stammered the grocer.

"'Oh, cut it out,' said the witch, to whom an invisible cloak meant nothing. 'No doubt you've been told to keep quiet, but I don't count.

And I'll bet you did the old fool over his maize.'

"The grocer's brain worked very rapidly. The memory of a tin of mixed biscuits and half a Dutch cheese, which had floated out of his shop only the day before, and numerous other recollections of mysteriously animated provisions came swarming into his mind. At length--

"'We never charge Royalty,' he said loftily.

"'Oh, don't you?' snapped the witch. 'Well, supposing you change this broomstick. You swore blue it was cut on a rainless Tuesday from an ash that had supported a murderer with a false nose. The very first time I used it, it broke at six thousand feet. I was over the sea at the time, and had to glide nearly four miles to make a landing. Can you b-beat it?'

"When the grocer put up his shutters two hectic hours later, he was a weary man. In the interval he had been respectively a toad, a picture post-card, and a tin of baked beans. And somebody had knocked him off the counter during his third metamorphosis, so he felt like death. All the same, before going to bed, he sat down and wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, asking for permission to display the Royal Arms. Just to make it quite clear that he wasn't relying on hoof-oil, he added that he was shortly expecting a fine consignment of maize and other commodities.

"The postscript settled it.

"The permission was granted, the king 'dealt' elsewhere in future, and the witch was given three hours to leave the kingdom. So the grocer lost his two worst customers and got the advertis.e.m.e.nt of his life.

Which goes to show, my children, that if only---- Hullo! Here's a new s.h.i.+ft."

It was true.

The eight croupiers were going off duty. As they vacated their seats, eight other gentlemen in black immediately replaced them.

Berry extinguished his cigarette and handed me his last bunch of notes.

In exchange for these, with the peculiar delicacy of his kind, the croupier upon my right selected, arrayed and offered me counters of the value of forty English pounds.

He might have been spared his pains.

As I was piling the money by Berry's side--