Rex Dillot was nearly twenty-four, almost good-looking and quite
penniless. His mother was supposed to make him some sort of an
allowance out of what her creditors allowed her, and Rex
occasionally strayed into the ranks of those who earn fitful
salaries as secretaries or companions to people who are unable to
cope unaided with their correspondence or their leisure. For a few
months he had been assistant editor and business manager of a paper
devoted to fancy mice, but the devotion had been all on one side,
and the paper disappeared with a certain abruptness from club
reading-rooms and other haunts where it had made a gratuitous
appearance. Still, Rex lived with some air of comfort and well-
being, as one can live if one is born with a genius for that sort of
thing, and a kindly Providence usually arranged that his week-end
invitations coincided with the dates on which his one white dinner-
waistcoat was in a laundry-returned condition of dazzling cleanness.
He played most games badly, and was shrewd enough to recognise the
fact, but he had developed a marvellously accurate judgement in
estimating the play and chances of other people, whether in a golf
match, billiard handicap, or croquet tournament. By dint of
parading his opinion of such and such a player's superiority with a
sufficient degree of youthful assertiveness he usually succeeded in
provoking a wager at liberal odds, and he looked to his week-end
winnings to carry him through the financial embarrassments of his
mid-week existence. The trouble was, as he confided to Clovis
Sangrail, that he never had enough available or even prospective
cash at his command to enable him to fix the wager at a figure
really worth winning.
"Some day," he said, "I shall come across a really safe thing, a bet
that simply can't go astray, and then I shall put it up for all I'm
worth, or rather for a good deal more than I'm worth if you sold me
up to the last button."
"It would be awkward if it didn't happen to come off," said Clovis.
"It would be more than awkward," said Rex; "it would be a tragedy.
All the same, it would be extremely amusing to bring it off. Fancy
awaking in the morning with about three hundred pounds standing to
one's credit. I should go and clear out my hostess's pigeon-loft
before breakfast out of sheer good-temper."
"Your hostess of the moment mightn't have a pigeon-loft," said
Clovis.
"I always choose hostesses that have," said Rex; "a pigeon-loft is
indicative of a careless, extravagant, genial disposition, such as I
like to see around me. People who strew corn broadcast for a lot of
feathered inanities that just sit about cooing and giving each other
the glad eye in a Louis Quatorze manner are pretty certain to do you
well."
"Young Strinnit is coming down this afternoon," said Clovis
reflectively; "I dare say you won't find it difficult to get him to
back himself at billiards. He plays a pretty useful game, but he's
not quite as good as he fancies he is."
"I know one member of the party who can walk round him," said Rex
softly, an alert look coming into his eyes; "that cadaverous-looking
Major who arrived last night. I've seen him play at St. Moritz. If
I could get Strinnit to lay odds on himself against the Major the
money would be safe in my pocket. This looks like the good thing
I've been watching and praying for."
"Don't be rash," counselled Clovis, "Strinnit may play up to his
self-imagined form once in a blue moon."
"I intend to be rash," said Rex quietly, and the look on his face
corroborated his words.
"Are you all going to flock to the billiard-room?" asked Teresa
Thundleford, after dinner, with an air of some disapproval and a
good deal of annoyance. "I can't see what particular amusement you
find in watching two men prodding little ivory balls about on a
table."
"Oh, well," said her hostess, "it's a way of passing the time, you
know."
"A very poor way, to my mind," said Mrs. Thundleford; "now I was
going to have shown all of you the photographs I took in Venice last
summer."
"You showed them to us last night," said Mrs. Cuvering hastily.
"Those were the ones I took in Florence. These are quite a
different lot."
"Oh, well, some time to-morrow we can look at them. You can leave
them down in the drawing-room, and then every one can have a look."
"I should prefer to show them when you are all gathered together, as
I have quite a lot of explanatory remarks to make, about Venetian
art and architecture, on the same lines as my remarks last night on
the Florentine galleries. Also, there are some verses of mine that
I should like to read you, on the rebuilding of the Campanile. But,
of course, if you all prefer to watch Major Latton and Mr. Strinnit
knocking balls about on a table--"
"They are both supposed to be first-rate players," said the hostess.
"I have yet to learn that my verses and my art causerie are of
second-rate quality," said Mrs. Thundleford with acerbity.
"However, as you all seem bent on watching a silly game, there's no
more to be said. I shall go upstairs and finish some writing.
Later on, perhaps, I will come down and join you."
To one, at least, of the onlookers the game was anything but silly.
It was absorbing, exciting, exasperating, nerve-stretching, and
finally it grew to be tragic. The Major with the St. Moritz
reputation was playing a long way below his form, young Strinnit was
playing slightly above his, and had all the luck of the game as
well. From the very start the balls seemed possessed by a demon of
contrariness; they trundled about complacently for one player, they
would go nowhere for the other.
"A hundred and seventy, seventy-four," sang out the youth who was
marking. In a game of two hundred and fifty up it was an enormous
lead to hold. Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from
Dillot's face, and a hard white look take its place.
"How much have you go on?" whispered Clovis. The other whispered
the sum through dry, shaking lips. It was more than he or any one
connected with him could pay; he had done what he had said he would
do. He had been rash.
"Two hundred and six, ninety-eight."
Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another
somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of
striking clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in.
In another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be
listening to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in
part, the wager he had challenged.
"Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three." The game was as
good as over. Rex was as good as done for. He longed desperately
for the ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, for
anything to happen that would put an end to that horrible rolling to
and fro of red and white ivory that was jostling him nearer and
nearer to his doom.
"Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven."
Rex opened his cigarette-case; it was empty. That at least gave him
a pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling
it; he would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that
hopeless game played out to the bitter end. He backed away from the
circle of absorbed watchers and made his way up a short stairway to
a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a guests' name
written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned in
this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click
of the balls; if he waited for a few minutes longer he would hear
the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of congratulation that
would hail Strinnit's victory. On the alert tension of his nerves
there broke another sound, the aggressive, wrath-inducing breathing
of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The sound came
from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the
announcement "Mrs. Thundleford." The door was just slightly ajar;
Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august
Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine
art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of
the table, was a reading-lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to
him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over
by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of
besides billiard matches.
There are occasions when one must take one's Fate in one's hands.
Rex took the lamp in his.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and fifteen." Strinnit
was at the table, and the balls lay in good position for him; he had
a choice of two fairly easy shots, a choice which he was never to
decide. A sudden hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet
sent every one flocking to the door. The Dillot boy crashed into
the room, carrying in his arms the vociferous and somewhat
dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing was certainly not a
mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the party
afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the
table-cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a
flickering, half-hearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on
the billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of
beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them
with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies of the entire
company.
"It was lucky I was passing when it happened," panted Rex; "some one
had better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight."
As a matter of fact the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had
prevented any great damage being done, either to the victim or her
surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most, and had to be
laid up for repairs; perhaps it was not the best place to have
chosen for the scene of salvage operations; but then, as Clovis
remarked, when one is rushing about with a blazing woman in one's
arms one can't stop to think out exactly where one is going to put
her.
_________
-THE END-
[H.H. Munro] Saki's short story: Fate
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