Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/282

272 "I shouldn't think of doing such a thing!" he said kindly. "I will come back with you to the Casino, and together we will persuade Monsieur Wachner to go home. He has had time to make or lose a good deal of money in the last few minutes."

"Yes, indeed he 'as" again Madame Wachner sighed, and Chester's heart went out to her. She was a really nice old woman—clever and intelligent, as well as cheerful and brave. It seemed a great pity that she should be cursed with a gambler for a husband.

As they went back into the Casino they could hear the people round them talking of the Comte de Virieu, and of the high play that had gone on at the club that evening.

"No, he is winning now," they heard someone say. And Madame Wachner looked anxious. If Count Paul were winning, then her Fritz must be losing.

And alas! her fears were justified. When they got up into the Baccarat Room they found L'Ami Fritz standing apart from the tables, his hands in his pockets, staring abstractedly out of a dark window on to the lake.

"Well?" cried Madame Wachner sharply, "Well, Fritz?"

"I have had no luck!" he shook his head angrily. "It is all the fault of that cursed system! If I had only begun at the right, the propitious moment—as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to go away—I should probably have made a great deal of money," he looked at her disconsolately, deprecatingly.

Chester also looked at Madame Wachner. He ad-