Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Must you play?” asked the consultant laconically.

“As long as I live, I must. It has me completely. If I locked myself in my room and threw the key out of the window, still, somehow, I would find myself standing beside the roulette wheel around midnight.”

“I have heard that’s the way it is,” murmured the consultant with an edge of contempt in her voice. The patronage of the well for the ill, of the whole for the maimed. “And you want, then?”

“I have lost almost everything I have. If I go there again tonight and play with the little that is left and lose that, what will become of me? I will never be able to recover my losses, for I will have nothing more to play with. All I can see is gray poverty staring me in the face. You must tell me how to win tonight, for it is my last chance.”

The occult lady took out a pack of cards, shuffled them, spread them before her in some sort of cryptic formation, and pored over them at great length. She gathered them together at last, shook her head as though dissatisfied, shuffled them once more, and tried again. Three times she repeated the endeavor. Finally she swept them all aside with a sudden switch of her hand. The countess, meanwhile, sat rigid, with the strained expression about her eyes of a nervous onlooker waiting to hear a gun go off.

The consultant cleared her throat, with a note of deep gravity. “I do not know what to say to you,” she said speaking with deliberation. “Do not go there. Do not play.”

The countess slowly backed her hand to her forehead, as though she had been dealt a blow there.

“I will lose if I go tonight?” she faltered.

She took a moment to recover, then painfully scraping up hope once more, asked wanly: “If I go tomorrow night, then? (I have often missed a night before. When I was on a train, when I was on a plane, when the casino employes went out on strike.) I could go to a doctor, and he could give me something in a glass of water or with a needle — that would make me miss tonight.” Her eyes were pleading febrilely, as though she were coaxing somebody for something that they had it in their power to give her. “Tomorrow night, then? Tomorrow? Say tomorrow, won’t you? Say tomorrow.”

The occultist said with brutal emphasis: “Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Not any night. Not ever in this lifetime. Now do you understand?”

A low moan escaped from the countess’ tightly pressed lips.

“Perhaps you do not believe me, madame,” the other went on. “Let me try to help you understand.”

“Yes, help me,” the countess nodded expiringly. “Please. Help me—”

“Let us go back, then, before we go forward. Have you ever at any time won? Think, now.”

A touch of pride reasserted itself in the countess, as when one finds that she has certain accomplishments she can boast of after all. “Many times. Oh, many times. But I did not stop soon enough, that was the only trouble. I went on playing too long afterward, and—”

“There is no ‘soon enough,’ there is no ‘too long afterward,’ ” the consultant told her inexorably. “There is only one terminal point in this, and that is the point at which you did stop. Because you were meant to, because it was ordained for you to stop there by the forces that rule us. Take that. Let me repeat: when you have stopped, have you ever been winning?”

The countess closed her eyes despairingly for answer.

“You have never won at any time, you see? Judge by that. The past is the future that lies behind us, the future is the past that lies before us. They are one and the same. Only fools think that they can divide the two in the middle.”

The countess lowered her head fearfully.

“It is not only that you will lose tonight — and I have gone through the cards three times, as you noticed — you are not destined to win at any time. No matter when you play, tonight, a month from now, a year from now. The money-cards, the diamond suite, have all consistently avoided you, turned their backs on you, each time they came up. It happened too many limes. That shows clearly that your personality, your aura, in some mysterious way attracts only ill-fortune at the gaming-table. There is something that is not en rapport. It is inexplicable, it is in your birth, in your aspect, but there it is.”

“Then what am I to do? For I know that I will go back there and play. I cannot stay away.”

The consultant lighted a cigarette almost a foot long, only part of which contained tobacco, however, and held it poised beside her ear like a pen ready to write with. “I have only one solution. You have someone who could place your bets for you? A maid, perhaps? But the selection must be hers, not yours. It will not help if you tell her which plays to make. That is still you playing, then.”

The countess shook her head vehemently. “I would be only a spectator? I couldn’t! It is the excitement, the urge, to play myself that possesses me. If I am thirsty, and you give the drink to someone else, will that quench me? If I am in a fever, and you give the medicine to someone else, will that calm me?”

The consultant sighed, gestured fatalistically with her hands. “There you have it. There it is.” The ubiquitous, the unarguable, “ voilà .”

“Couldn’t I alter my own personality in some way, change it, hide it — so that contact might be established between it and good-fortune at playing?”

“You mean cheat your own destiny? Tamper with it? That is dangerous, madame.”

“Some hope. Give me some hope. Don’t let me go out of here in this condition, that isn’t life and that isn’t death.”

“You could try. But I guarantee nothing.”

“I ask no guarantee. Who am I to ask a guarantee? I, who would not bet on a sure thing if I could, for then it would have no savor for me! All I ask is the outside chance, the short end of the odds.”

“Even in this you bet, madame,” sighed the consultant with sardonic detachment. “Not only on the game itself, but on the betting on the game.”

“Say only ‘maybe,’ say only ‘perhaps’; you need not say ‘for sure.’ ”

“What you really wish to hear.” the consultant told her drily, “are your own words, those you would say yourself, issuing from my lips. So that they may have a cachet of infallibility that you yourself cannot give them. Very well, on these terms, have them. ‘Maybe.’ ‘Perhaps.’ ‘Who knows?’ Try it. It may help.”

“But you yourself do not really believe—”

The consultant moved one shoulder in delicate nuance. “You are not asking what I believe. You are asking to hear me say that which you believe yourself.”

“And is this all you can do for me?”

“No,” said the occultist with almost brutal candor. “Since the consultation is not gratis, I can amplify it, I can dress it up. And in a little while you will forget that it is not my suggestion to you, but only your own suggestion to yourself, passed through me.”

“But it is your suggestion. You yourself told me that, as I am now. I will never win at gambling.”

“You see?” murmured the consultant, half to herself. “Already! Very well, then. We will garnish. Do not wear anything you have already worn before when playing. To be safe, do not wear anything that belongs to you at all, that you have worn even when not playing. Change your perfume, change your hairdress change everything. Do not arrive at the same hour, do not enter by the same door, do not stand at the same side of the table. Breathe different breaths, think different thoughts — those of someone else. Even in your own mind, be someone else. Call yourself by another name. Believe you are called by another name. You see how impossible it is?”