Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/315

Rh That is not all. Next day Lord Rosslyn and Mr. Lewis again tried their luck, and lost at whatever they tried, whether at roulette or at trente-et-quarante. Lord Rosslyn staked fifteen times in as many minutes, and never won a single "coup." Sir Hiram drily observes:—

"Considered from a purely mathematical standpoint, it would appear very remarkable that he should win seventeen consecutive times in the evening, and lose fifteen consecutive times the following morning."

Captain Weihe of Hamburg, of the German Marine Artillery, has published in German and Italian a brochure, entitled, in the former language, Das Falschspiel in Monte Carlo, in which he brings a charge of fraud against the company, based on his observation during three seasons of steady watching the play. Now the chances of the ball entering a given pocket are calculable. According to him, the number of times, say in a thousand, in which, by the law of chances, the ball ought to enter a given number is calculable, here, however, it does not obey the law of chances. Further, he says that he noticed that wealthy players were encouraged to proceed, by winning stake after stake, and then, all at once, luck would declare against them. Why, he wonders, should such men be lucky at first and only unlucky afterwards?

Then, he asserts that the agents of the company occasionally encourage a timorous player by advice, given with all secrecy, to stake on a certain number, and that then, by some remarkable coincidence, this number will win. These observations, he says, led him to the conclusion that there existed some method