The Sunny Side | Page 8

been to the Riviera--if you've had any luck."
"Well, you've had a lot of luck," said Archie. "Several times when
you've been standing on the heights and calling attention to the
beautiful view below, I've said to myself, 'One push, and he's a deader,'
but something, some mysterious agency within, has kept me back."
"All the fellows at the club--"
Simpson is popularly supposed to belong to a Fleet Street Toilet and
Hairdressing Club, where for three guineas a year he gets shaved every
day, and has his hair cut whenever Myra insists. On the many occasions
when he authorizes a startling story of some well-known statesman
with the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. I heard it at the
club to-day from a friend of his," then we know that once again the
barber's assistant has been gossiping over the lather.
"Do think, Samuel," I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you
could be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside

the rooms. And then when the hairdresser--when your friends at the
club ask if you've had any luck at the tables, you just say coldly, 'What
tables?'"
"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "Quae mensae?"
But it was obviously no good arguing with him. Besides, we were all
keen enough to go.
"We needn't lose," said Myra. "We might win."
"Good idea," said Thomas. He lit his pipe and added, "Simpson was
telling me about his system last night. At least, he was just beginning
when I went to sleep." He applied another match to his pipe and went
on, as if the idea had suddenly struck him, "Perhaps it was only his
internal system he meant. I didn't wait."
"Samuel, you are quite well inside, aren't you?"
"Quite, Myra. But, I have invented a sort of system for roulette, which
we might--"
"There's only one system which is any good," pronounced Archie. "It's
the system by which, when you've lost all your own money, you turn to
the man next to you and say, 'Lend me a louis, dear old chap, till
Christmas; I've forgotten my purse.'"
"No systems," said Dahlia. "Let's make a collection and put it all on
one number and hope it will win."
Dahlia had obviously been reading novels about people who break the
bank.
"It's as good a way of losing as any other," said Archie. "Let's do it for
our first gamble, anyway. Simpson, as our host, shall put the money on.
I, as his oldest friend, shall watch him to see that he does it. What's the
number to be?"
We all thought hard for several moments.

"Samuel, what's your age?" asked Myra, at last.
"Right off the board," said Thomas.
"You're not really more than thirty-six?" Myra whispered to him. "Tell
me as a secret."
"Peter's nearly two," said Dahlia.
"Do you think you could nearly put our money on 'two'?" asked Archie.
"I once made seventeen," I said. "On that never-to-be-forgotten day
when I went in first with Archie--"
"That settles it. Here's to the highest score of The Rabbits'
wicket-keeper. To-morrow afternoon we put our money on seventeen.
Simpson, you have between now and 3.30 to-morrow to perfect your
French delivery of the magic word dix-sept."
I went to bed a proud but anxious man that night. It was my famous
score which had decided the figure that was to bring us fortune ... and
yet ... and yet....
Suppose eighteen turned up? The remorse, the bitterness! "If only," I
should tell myself--"if only we had run three instead of two for that cut
to square-leg!" Suppose it were sixteen! "Why, oh why," I should groan,
"did I make the scorer put that bye down as a hit?" Suppose it were
thirty-four! But there my responsibility ended. If it were going to be
thirty-four, they should have used one of Archie's scores, and made a
good job of it.
At 3.30 next day we were in the fatal building. I should like to pause
here and describe my costume to you, which was a quiet grey in the
best of taste, but Myra says that if I do this I must describe hers too, a
feat beyond me. Sufficient that she looked dazzling, that as a party we
were remarkably well-dressed, and that Simpson--murmuring
"dix-sept" to himself at intervals--led the way through the rooms till he
found a table to his liking.

"Aren't you excited?" whispered Myra to me.
"Frightfully," I said, and left my mouth well open. I don't quite know
what picture of the event Myra and I had conjured up in our minds, but
I fancy it was one something like this. At the entrance into the rooms of
such a large and obviously distinguished party there would be