“A thousand!
A million dollars worth?”
The idiot’s smile stiffened upon the face of Caspar Hannas, and he looked protestingly at Jay Kalam.
“Commander, this is blackmail!”
“No blacker,” whispered Giles Habibula, “than the bloody career of Pedro the Shark!”
“I’ll give it to you!”
Clutching the order, Giles Habibula waddled toward the table.
A smart jab with his cane, in the ribs of a purple-clad woman as corpulent as himself, made him a place beside the green-cloaked giant and the girl in white. He presented the order to the startled croupier.
“A thousand blue chips, mister—or make it a hundred of your mortal diamond ones.”
He turned to the pale tall stranger.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” he wheezed. “But my poor old hands scatter the chips, they tremble so.
And your lucky touch, I see, has won a fortune for the lovely lass beside you.
Would you kindly place my bets, sir?”
“If you like.”
The big man relaxed.
“How much are you playing?”
Giles Habibula gestured at the stacks of his chips.
“The million,” he said. “On thirty-nine.”
Even here in the Diamond Room, such a play made a stir.
Spectators crowded up to watch the wheel.
With his small eyes half closed, Giles Habibula watched the croupier flick the ball into its polished track, and then lift his hand dramatically over the wheel.
“Eh!” he muttered.
“Not when old Giles plays!”
He turned to the man and the girl.
“Thank you, sir!” he puffed.
“And now we await the turn of luck —or skill!”
His leaden eyes lit with a sudden admiration of the girl’s proud grace.
“A lovely thing!” he wheezed.
“As lovely as you are, my dear—that blue tapestry from Titan!”
His cane pointed suddenly across the table, held with an odd sure steadiness hi his pudgy yellow hands, so that its polished green head was precisely opposite the still uplifted hand of the croupier, across the wheel.
The croupier gulped and whitened.
His hand dropped, dramatically, as he followed the racing ball.
“Ah, and that golden nymph!”
The cane fell, precisely as the hand, pointing to a statue in its niche.
And the quick eyes of Giles Habibula came back to the girl in white.
“Dancing as you might dance, my dear!”
The croupier stood trembling.
His pale face ran sudden little rivulets of sweat.
And the clicking ball fell at last into the slot.
Blank, distended, stricken, the eyes of the croupier came up to the seamed yellow face of Giles Habibula.
“You are the winner, sir,” he croaked.
“At forty to one!”
“Precisely,” agreed Giles Habibula.
“And none of your chips or scrip—give me forty millions in good new Green Hall certificates.”
The quivering fingers of the croupier tapped the keys before him, and presently a thick packet of currency popped up out of the magnetic tube.
While hushed spectators stared, he counted out forty crisp million-dollar bills.
Trembling suddenly as violently as the other man, Giles Habibula snatched up the forty stiff new certificates. He swung hastily, and his fat arm struck the pale man in green, scattering the bills out of his hand.
“My life!” he sobbed.
“My forty millions!
For Earth’s sweet sake, help a poor old man to save his miserable mite!”