cted on a carefully devised
and rigidly followed plan. They were far from putting their uncanny
skill in motion every Wednesday. So long as they had no big game in
sight, the game remained clean and honest. In this way the band might
lose two or three thousand rubles, but such a loss had no great
importance, and was soon made up when some fat "pigeon" appeared.

It sometimes happened that this wily scheme of honest play went on for
five or six weeks in succession, so that the small fry, winning the
band's money, remained entirely convinced that it was playing in an
honorable and respectable private house, and very naturally spread
abroad the fame of it throughout the whole city. But when the fat
pigeon at last appeared, the band put forth all its forces, all the
wiles of the black art, and in a few hours made up for the generous
losses of a month of honorable and irreproachable play on the green
cloth.

Midnight was approaching.

The baroness's rooms were brilliantly lit up, but, thanks to the thick
curtains which covered the windows, the lights could not be seen from
the street, though several carriages were drawn up along the sidewalk.

Opening into the elegant drawing-room was a not less elegant card
room, appreciatively nicknamed the Inferno by the band. In it stood a
large table with a green cloth, on which lay a heap of bank notes and
two little piles of gold, before which sat Sergei Antonovitch Kovroff,
presiding over the bank with the composure of a true gentleman.

What Homeric, Jovine calm rested on every feature of his face! What
charming, fearless self-assurance, what noble self-confidence in his
smile, in his glance! What grace, what distinction in his pose, and
especially in the hand which dealt the cards! Sergei Kovroff's hands
were decidedly worthy of attention. They were almost always clad in
new gloves, which he only took off on special occasions, at dinner, or
when he had some writing to do, or when he sat down to a game of
cards. As a result, his hands were almost feminine in their delicacy,
the sensibility of the finger tips had reached an extraordinary degree
of development, equal to that of one born blind. And those fingers
were skillful, adroit, alert, their every movement carried out with
that smooth, indefinable grace which is almost always possessed by the
really high-class card sharper. His fingers were adorned with numerous
rings, in which sparkled diamonds and other precious stones. An