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  This gesture a little relieved his feelings, and the first glass of brandy, tossed at one gulp down his throat, had a still more heartening effect upon him. He looked again at the twenty-pound bill, still clasped between his fingers. He remembered that Chuffy had named twenty pounds as the minimum stake permitted to punters at the Nonesuch. Such a coincidence was surely too marked to be ignored. The second glass of brandy convinced him that here in his hand lay his last chance of saving himself from irretrievable ruin and disgrace.

  Not being accustomed to drinking neat brandy, he was obliged before setting out for Long’s Hotel to swallow a damper in the form of a glass of porter. This had a sobering effect and the walk through the streets to Long’s put him in tolerable shape to do justice to maintenon cutlets, and the hotel’s famed Queensbury hock. He had made up his mind to be guided by Fate. He would lay down his twenty guineas upon a card chosen at random from the livret: if it turned up, he would take it for a sign that his luck had changed at last, and play on until he had covered all his debts; if he lost, he would be very little worse off than he was already, and could, at the worst, cut his throat, he supposed.

  When he and Lord Wivenhoe entered the faro-room at the Nonesuch, Mr Beaumaris, holding the bank, had just completed a deal, and had tossed the pack on to the floor. He raised his eyes, as a waiter laid a fresh pack before him, and looked straight across to the door. The lure of hazard had drawn all but one other of the club’s doyens from the room, and that one, Lord Petersham, was lost in one of his fits of deep abstraction.

  Damn Petersham! Thought Mr Beaumaris, on the horns of a dilemma. Why must he choose this of all moments to dream of tea?

  That amiable but vague peer, perceiving Lord Wivenhoe, smiled upon him with the doubtful air of one who seemed to recollect seeing his face before. If he took notice of a youthful stranger within the sacred precincts of the club, he gave no sign of it. Mr Warkworth stared very hard at Bertram, and then glanced towards the head of the table. Lord Fleetwood, filling his glass, frowned, and also looked to the Nonpareil.

  Mr Beaumaris gave an order to the waiter to bring him another bottle of burgundy. One blighting word from him, and the stranger would have nothing to do but bow himself out with what dignity he could muster. There was the rub: the boy would be unbearably humiliated, and one could not trust that young fool, Wivenhoe, to smooth over the rebuff. He would be far more likely to kick up a dust over the exclusion of one his friends, placing the unhappy Bertram in a still more intolerable position.

  Lord Wivenhoe, finding places for himself and Bertram at the table, was casually making Bertram known to his neighbours. One of these was Fleetwood, who favoured Bertram with a curt nod, and again looked under his brows at the Nonpareil; the other, like most of the men in the room, was content to accept any friend of Chuffy’s without question. One of the older men said something under his breath about babes and sucklings, but not loudly enough to be overheard.

  Mr Beaumaris glanced round the table. ‘Stakes, gentlemen,’ he said calmly.

  Bertram, who had changed his bill for one modest rouleau, thrust it in a quick movement towards the queen in the livrat. Other men were placing their bets; someone said something which made his neighbour laugh; Lord Petersham sighed deeply, and deliberately pushed forward several large rouleaus, and ranged them about his chosen cards; then he drew a delicately enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, and helped himself to a pinch of his latest blend. A pulse was beating so hard in Bertram’s throat that it almost hurt him; he swallowed, and fixed his eyes on Mr Beaumaris’s hand, poised above the pack before him.

  The boy has been having some deep doings, thought Mr Beaumaris. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s rolled-up! What the devil possessed Chuffy Wivenhoe to bring him here?

  The bets were all placed; Mr Beaumaris turned up the first card, and placed it to the right of the pack.

  ‘Scorched again!’ remarked Fleetwood, one of whose bets stood by the card’s counterpart.

  Mr Beaumaris turned up the Carte Anglaise, and laid it down to the left of the pack. The Queen of Diamonds danced before Bertram’s eyes. For a dizzy moment he could only stare at the card; then he looked up, and met Mr Beaumaris’s cool gaze, and smiled waveringly. That smile told Mr Beaumaris quite as much as he had need to know, and did nothing to increase his enjoyment of the evening ahead of him. He picked up the rake beside him, and pushed two twenty-guinea rouleaus across the table. Lord Wivenhoe called for wine for himself and his friend, and settled down to plunge with his usual recklessness.

  For half-an-hour the luck ran decidedly in Bertram’s favour, and Mr Beaumaris was encouraged to hope that he would rise from the table a winner. He was drinking fairly steadily, a flush of excitement in his cheeks, his eyes, glittering a little in the candlelight, fixed on the cards. Lord Wivenhoe sat cheerfully losing beside him. He was soon punting on tick, scrawling his vowels, and tossing them over to the bank. Other men, Bertram noticed, did the same. There was quite a pile of paper before Mr Beaumaris.

  The luck veered. Three times did Bertram bet heavily on the bank’s card. He was left with only two rouleaus, and staked them both, sure that the bank could not win his money four times in succession. It could. To his own annoyance, Mr Beaumaris turned up the identical card.

  From then, on, he accepted with an unmoved countenance, vowel upon vowel from Bertram. It was quite impossible to tell the boy either that he would not take his vouchers, or that he would be well-advised to go home. It was even doubtful whether Bertram would have listened to him. He was in the grip of a gamester’s madness, betting recklessly, persuaded by one lucky chance that the luck smiled upon him again, convinced when he lost that ill-fortune could not last. That he had the least idea of the sum he already owed the bank, Mr Beaumaris cynically doubted.

  The evening broke up rather earlier than usual, Mr Beaumaris having warned the company that he did not sit after two o’clock, and Lord Petersham sighing that he did not think he should take the bank over tonight. Wivenhoe, undaunted by his losses, said cheerfully: ‘In the basket again! What do I owe, Beaumaris?’

  Mr Beaumaris silently handed his vowels to him. While his lordship did rapid sums in mental addition, Bertram, the flush dying out of his cheeks, sat staring at the paper still lying in front of Mr Beaumaris. He said jerkily: ‘And I?’ And stretched out his hand.

  ‘Dipped, badly dipped!’ said Wivenhoe, shaking his head. ‘I’ll send you a draught on my bank, Beaumaris. The devil was in it tonight!’

  Other men were totting up their losses; there was a noise of lighthearted conversation dinning in Bertram’s ears; he found that his vowels totalled six hundred pounds, a sum that seemed vast to him, almost incredible. He pulled himself together, pride coming to his rescue, and rose. He looked very white now, and ridiculously boyish, but he held his head well up, and spoke to Mr Beaumaris perfectly calmly. ‘I may have to keep you waiting for a few days, sir,’ he said. ‘I – I have no banking accommodation in London, and must send to Yorkshire for funds!’

  What do I do now? Wondered Mr Beaumaris. Tell the boy the only use I have for his vowels is as shaving-papers? No: he would enact me a Cheltenham tragedy. Besides, the fright may do him a world of good. He said: ‘There is no hurry, Mr Anstey. I am going out of town tomorrow for a week, or five days. Come and see me at my house – let us say, next Thursday. Anyone will tell you my direction. Where are you putting up?’

  Bertram replied mechanically: ‘At the Red Lion, in the City, sir.’

  ‘Robert!’ called Fleetwood, from the other side of the room, where he was engaged in a lively argument with Mr Warkworth. ‘Robert, come and bear me out! Robert!’

  ‘Yes, in a moment!’ Mr Beaumaris returned. He detained Bertram a moment longer. ‘Don’t fail!’ he said. ‘I shall expect to see you on Thursday.’

  He judged it to be impossible to say more, for there were people all round them, and it was plain that the b