at roulette by playing his own system."

"_Au contraire_, monsieur, let me demonstrate how to lose," answered
Craig with a smile that showed a row of faultless teeth beneath his
black moustache, decidedly foreign.

Kennedy played and lost, and lost again; then he won, but in the main
he lost. After one particularly large loss I felt his arm on mine,
drawing me closely to him. DeLong had taken a sort of grim pleasure in
the fact that Kennedy, too, was losing. I found that Craig had paused
in his play at a moment when DeLong had staked a large sum that a
number below "18" would turn up--for five plays the numbers had been
between "18" and "36." Curious to see what Craig was doing, I looked
cautiously down between us. All eyes were fixed on the wheel. Kennedy
was holding an ordinary compass in the crooked-up palm of his hand.
The needle pointed at me, as I happened to be standing north of it.

The wheel spun. Suddenly the needle swung around to a point between
the north and south poles, quivered a moment, and came to rest in that
position. Then it swung back to the north.

It was some seconds before I realized the significance of it. It
had pointed at the table--and DeLong had lost again. There was some
electric attachment at work.

Kennedy and I exchanged glances, and he shoved the compass into my
hand quickly. "You watch it, Walter, while I play," he whispered.

Carefully concealing it, as he had done, yet holding it as close to
the table as I dared I tried to follow two things at once without
betraying myself. As near as I could make out, something happened at
every play. I would not go so far as to assert that whenever the large
stakes were on a certain number the needle pointed to the opposite
side of the wheel, for it was impossible to be at all accurate about
it. Once I noticed the needle did not move at all, and he won. But
on the next play he staked what I knew must be the remainder of his
winnings on what seemed a very good chance. Even before the wheel was
revolved and the ball set rolling, the needle swung about, and when
the platinum ball came to rest Kennedy rose from the table, a loser.

"By George, though," exclaimed DeLong, grasping his hand. "I take it
all back. You are a good loser, sir. I wish I could take it as well as
you do. But then, I'm in too deeply. There are too many 'markers' with
the house up against me."

Senator Danfield had just come in to see how things were going. He was
a sleek