The Assassins by Alan Bardos (read novel full .TXT) 📕

or the despair of its patrons, who like Johnny, had well and truly fallen through the cracks by the time they'd made it there. The desperation in their eyes was blatant. He caught Lady Smyth's eye and looked away before she saw the same desperation in his own.

The woman next to Johnny was actually pressing against him now to get to the table, all modesty gone in her attempts to place her bets. Her future was also at stake - financial security or the streets. Johnny had seen many such women who'd lost their position in society and in dire need, would ply their trade in the slightly more up market brothels he'd patronised before...before he'd met Lady Smyth.

The last of his rash decisions had been to send her a telegram confirming their arrangement to meet at the spa; he'd needed to see her. She was the most daunting woman Johnny had ever known and if anyone could make him forget the trouble he was in, it was her. Lady Elizabeth Smyth could make him forget everything.

He pushed out his last stack of chips, doubling up his bet on nineteen again, and the croupier sent the ball spinning round with his customary smug sneer, which Johnny found particularly galling. They both knew he was on his last legs.

Captivated, Johnny watched the ball spinning around the wheel. He loved the way it dropped and flitted about, teasing and caressing his hopes and dreams, before finally landing in a pocket.

'Yes! Huzzah!' Johnny was shouting before he'd fully registered what had happened. 'Nineteen! It's actually, bloody-well landed on nineteen!'

That wiped the smug look off the croupier's face and he sullenly pushed a large stack of chips towards Johnny.

'Thank you. I think I'll call it a night, ' Johnny said, smirking. He hurriedly started picking up the chips, ignoring the piteous looks from the people around the table.

'Come on, Johnny - play up and play the game!' The crisp, precise voice of Lady Smyth was like cold steel. The jolt caused him to drop his chips. She'd pushed through the crowd and was standing over him. 'You've hardly broken the bank at Monte Carlo.'

'Lady Smyth, we've had our win. The strategy worked,' Johnny said discreetly.

'Aren't you bored with playing the inside, Johnny?' She always looked down on his success as slightly tasteless, believing that it wasn't the winning that counted but how boldly one played. 'Why don't you take a chance on the outside, for once?'

Lady Smyth's elegant, cat-like features formed a smile, her words a not so subtle reminder that he was an outsider. He might look the part, in her husband's old evening dress, but he wasn't quite the thing. Johnny gave in to his anger and pushed the chips back out onto the table.

The ball bounced and flicked about the wheel with all the mean-spirited flirting of a bored and frustrated debutante. Johnny had thrown everything on red. It seemed the most fitting. The ball bounced slowly to a stop and the croupier smirked for the last time. 'Noire.'

The crowd stared at Johnny. They knew what it meant and thanked whatever luck they had left that they weren't him.

Johnny pulled together the last shreds of dignity that his education had given him and addressed the crowd. 'I may have lost everything tonight, but as Sir Cecil Rhodes said: "I am an Englishman, so consequently have won first prize in the lottery of life." '

He bowed stiffly and guided Lady Smyth out into the foyer before she could goad him into making any more bets.

'You lose with such style, such vigour,' she purred. 'Oh, to show such superiority, such contempt for money!'

'Where there is disaster to be averted, I will bring catastrophe,' Johnny said glibly and then stepped outside.

The night air cleared Johnny's head and focused his mind. He'd won Lady Smyth's admiration at the expense of every penny he could get. He now owed over two and a half thousand pounds. Not a huge amount, in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not enough to break the bank at Monte Carlo, but it was enough to break him. The sheer scale of it staggered him, when he chose to think about it. Assuming he kept his position in the Diplomatic Service, he could work for twenty years before coming close to repaying it.

Johnny knew he'd have to return to Paris; there was nowhere else for him to go. He shoved Lady Smyth into a cab, in as gentlemanly a manner as he could manage under the circumstances, and climbed in after her, shouting, 'Station!' at the driver.

'But we've only just got here,' Lady Smyth snapped. She still didn't grasp the full enormity of Johnny's situation. To emphasise the point, he took the telegram out of his pocket.

'Sir George has called me back to Paris, Lady Smyth. Our happy time is over.'

'I do wish you'd call me Libby, when we're in private.'

'I'm required at the Embassy, immediately.'

'Nonsense - I'm sure my husband can spare you for a day or two. All he does is gorge himself on the latest scandal in the popular press.'

'You could still take your spa treatment,' Johnny suggested. Sir George tried to moderate his wife's wayward nature with soothing spa cures, even to the extent of allowing her to go out of season. It made an excellent pretext for Johnny to meet her, away from the inquisitive eyes of Paris's diplomatic community.

'That's not the treatment I yearn for.' She ran a suggestive finger down Johnny's face, but nothing could soothe the churning in his stomach.

'You needn't worry about the money,' she said, sensing his anxiety.

'What?'

'I renewed all of the notes before I left Paris. We've got a month to pay it back.'

That gave Johnny some comfort, but he was too stunned by what had just happened in