“A hundred and seventy, seventy-four,” sang out the youth who was marking.  In a game of two hundred and fifty up it was an enormous lead to hold.  Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from Dillot’s face, and a hard white look take its place.

“How much have you go on?” whispered Clovis.  The other whispered the sum through dry, shaking lips.  It was more than he or any one connected with him could pay; he had done what he had said he would do.  He had been rash.

“Two hundred and six, ninety-eight.”

Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of striking clocks.  Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in.  In another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager he had challenged.

“Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three.”  The game was as good as over.  Rex was as good as done for.  He longed desperately for the ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, for anything to happen that would put an end to that horrible rolling to and fro of red and white ivory that was jostling him nearer and nearer to his doom.

“Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven.”

Rex opened his cigarette-case; it was empty.  That at least gave him a pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it; he would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game played out to the bitter end.  He backed away from the circle of absorbed watchers and made his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a guests’ name written in a little square on the door.  In the hush that reigned in this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click of the balls; if he waited for a few minutes longer he would hear the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of congratulation that would hail Strinnit’s victory.  On the alert tension of his nerves there broke another sound, the aggressive, wrath-inducing breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber.  The sound came from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the announcement “Mrs. Thundleford.”  The door was just slightly ajar; Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in.  The august Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading-lamp.  If Fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of besides billiard matches.

There are occasions when one must take one’s Fate in one’s hands.  Rex took the lamp in his.