s indeed absolutely windowless. It was
a room built within the original room of the old house. Thus the windows
overlooking the street from the second floor in reality bore no relation
to it. For light it depended on a complete oval of lights overhead
so arranged as to be themselves invisible, but shining through richly
stained glass and conveying the illusion of a slightly clouded noonday.
The absence of windows was made up for, as I learned later, by a
ventilating device so perfect that, although everyone was smoking, a
most fastidious person could scarcely have been offended by the odour of
tobacco.

Of course I did not notice all this at first. What I did notice,
however, was a faro-layout and a hazard-board, but as no one was playing
at either, my eye quickly travelled to a roulette-table which stretched
along the middle of the room. Some ten or a dozen men in evening clothes
were gathered watching with intent faces the spinning wheel. There
was no money on the table, nothing but piles of chips of various
denominations. Another thing that surprised me as I looked was that the
tense look on the faces of the players was anything but the feverish,
haggard gaze I had expected. In fact, they were sleek, well-fed, typical
prosperous New-Yorkers rather inclined to the noticeable in dress and
carrying their avoirdupois as if life was an easy game with them. Most
of them evidently belonged to the financial and society classes. There
were no tragedies; the tragedies were elsewhere--in their offices,
homes, in the courts, anywhere, but not here at the club. Here all was
life, light, and laughter.

For the benefit of those not acquainted with the roulette-wheel--and I
may as well confess that most of my own knowledge was gained in that one
crowded evening--I may say that it consists, briefly, of a wooden disc
very nicely balanced and turning in the centre of a cavity set into
a table like a circular wash-basin, with an outer rim turned slightly
inward. The "croupier" revolves the wheel to the right. With a quick
motion of his middle finger he flicks a marble, usually of ivory, to the
left. At the Vesper Club, always up-to-date, the ball was of platinum,
not of ivory. The disc with its sloping sides is provided with a number
of brass rods, some perpendicular, some horizontal. As the ball and the
wheel lose momentum the ball strikes against the rods and finally is
deflected into one of the many little pockets or stalls facing t