The Goddess: A Demon
A Demon
Richard Marsh
9781465656292
188 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I was sure that I had seen Edwin Lawrence juggle with the pack. As I lay there wide awake in bed it all came back to me. I wondered how I could have been such an unspeakable idiot. We had dined together at the Trocadero; then we had gone on to the Empire. The big music hall was packed with people, the heat was insufferable. “Let’s get out of this,” suggested Lawrence, almost as soon as we were in. “This crush, in this atmosphere, is not to be borne.” I agreed with him. We left. “Come into my place for an hour,” he said. We both lived in Imperial Mansions, on the same floor. His number was 64, mine was 79. You went out of his door, along the passage, round the corner to the right—the second door on the right was mine. I went in with him. “What do you say to a little gamble?” he asked. “It will be better than nothing.” I agreed. We had a little gamble—at first for trivial stakes. I am an abstemious man. I had already drunk more than I was accustomed to. At his invitation I drank still more. We increased the stakes. I really do not know from whom the suggestion came, I know that I did not object. I had lost all my ready money. I kept on losing. He was dotting down, on a piece of paper, the extent of my indebtedness. Presently, when he announced the sum total, I was amazed to learn that it was very much more than I imagined—actually nearly a thousand pounds. On the instant I was wide awake. “Nine hundred and forty pounds, Lawrence! It can’t be as much as that!” “My dear chap, here are the figures; look for yourself.” He handed me the piece of paper. His manner of arranging the several amounts I found more than a little vague, but as I had been so foolish as not to have kept count of them myself, I was hardly in a position to dispute their accuracy; and, added together, they certainly did come to the sum he stated. Still I felt persuaded that there was a mistake somewhere, though in what it consisted I was unable at the moment to perceive. “Look here,” he said. “Be a sportsman for once in your life! I’ll give you a chance—I’ll cut you double or quits.” I did not want to. I would have very much rather not. Gambling on such a scale was altogether out of my way. But he urged me, and I yielded; I don’t know why. I must have been very much more under the influence of drink than I imagined. We cut. I cut first—the knave of diamonds. As it was to be highest, not a bad card. I watched him as he cut, and saw that he dropped at least one card from the lot which he picked up; and that after he had had an opportunity of getting a shrewd guess at its value. The card which he faced was the queen of diamonds, exclaiming as he did so: “That does you!” “But that was not the card which you originally cut—you dropped one.” “I dropped one! What do you mean? I have not the slightest notion of having done anything of the kind, and, anyhow, it must have been by the sheerest accident. What are you looking at me like that for? Don’t lose your temper because you happen to have lost.” The insinuation was as gratuitous as it was uncalled for. There was not the slightest danger of my losing my temper; but that I was right in what I had said I felt assured. But then the card might have been dropped by accident, and he might not have noticed what had happened. And, anyhow, in face of the fact that I had been with the man on terms of intimacy, and had never before had cause to suspect him of anything in the least dishonourable, having regard to his explicit denial, it was a delicate position to persist in. I got up from my chair, conceding the point. “That makes eighteen hundred and eighty pounds you owe me. My sympathy, Ferguson; better luck next time.” I mentally resolved that I would not play cards again with Edwin Lawrence—at any rate, when we two were alone.
