The Sphinx, Vol. 14, No. 205

              10
THE SPHINX.
January 5, 1907.
[all rights reserved]
THE MIN WITHOUT II PURSE.
By HAMILTON DRUMMOND,
Author of “For The Religion,” “A Man of His
Age,” “A King’s Pawn,” “The Seven Houses,”
“On Behalf of the Firm,” “Room Five,” &c. —
Until one evening in October I had never so much as heard of the Charity Club, and, to prevent misapprehension, let me say at once J that, in spite of its name, it is neither a Dorcas I Society nor a soup kitchen. My introduction to it came about in this way.
As I dressed, preliminary to hunting up a solitary dinner at my club, the following note was brought to me from Calthorpe. You may have heard of Calthorpe ? Twenty years or so ago he went in for doing out-of-the-way things as if he liked them. A man who cannot be great can often be notorious, and so Calthorpe took to exploring hinterlands that nobody owned or wanted to own ; to crossing Manchuria in dirt, discomfort, and a pigtail ; to sounding for ocean chasms, and being supremely proud of a half-1 fathom beyond the depth the last man had struck— all highly scientific and entirely valueless ; but, being a bachelor with eight thousand a-year, he had, I suppose, the right to spend his income and his time as he pleased. Somehow or other,! being Calthorpe, he got value for his money.
This was his letter:
“My dear Boy,—I have a worry—and the gout. Come across to-night and relieve me of the one if you can ; as to the other, Belas says^—rbut never mind what Belas says, come over ahd see me, there’s a good, fellow.—Ever yours, T. Calthorpe.” '
It chanced I had no engagement that night, and as he still has the eight thousand a-year I went across after dinner to the hotel where he roomed and looked him up. He was on the I sofa nursing a leg as big as a mummy with elephantiasis.
“Good boy, Winslow !” he cried. “I knew; you would come. No, no, you fool! don’t j touch me, I’m red-hot to the finger-tips !”
“I’m sorry,” I began.
“Oh, this is nothing ! he went on, hastily, “a few days on the sofa, nothing more; anyhow, if Belas can’t cure it I don’t suppose you can. But the mind’s diseased, my boy, and that is where you can help. I have a worry, and it
'aggravates this—this---” and he slid off into
what might have been Thibetan, Finnish, or East-African Portuguese, so far as the words went, but was none the less perfectly comprehensible as the equivalent of a bargee’s opinions of a! newly-created black eye.
“Have you to-morrow night free?” he asked when the steam had at last blown off.
“Um-----” I began, cautiously, for if it was
to be spent listening to polyglot objurations I rather thought I had an engagement that could not possibly be put off.
Calthorpe, confound him, quite understood the j cause of my reticence, for he grinned wickedly.! That is the worst of these beggars who travel amongst strange folk. The ease with which they read a man’s face is perfectly indecent.
“No,” he said, still grinning; “no, not with1 me. You’re a good fellow, Winslow, but I don’t think either of us could stand the other for a whole evening. At least, I know one of us who ! couldn’t. I’m glad you’re not engaged, for now you’ll be able to do me a kindness—that is, if you can play piquet, as of course you can ? ”
“I’ve seen the game played,” I answered, still cautiously—I am suspicibus of Calthorpe when Ire is too civil—“but I’m not an expert, and j piquet—you know what I mean ? It’s a game at which a man might soon drop----
“That is all right; we don’t play for money.”
,‘On, you don’t, don’t you ? Then what do you play for ?”
“Charity ? ” I echoed, feebly. Somehow, I had always understood that Calthorpe found a very personal use for his whole eight thousand a-year, to the very last sixpence, and, anyhow, it seemed a mad idea. “You play for charity ? Play piquet for charity? How in the world do you do that?”
“Twelve of us meet each week at the Monopole Hotel in Craven-street for eight months in the year. Whoever cannot attend must provide a substitute, and you see how it is with me ?!
I’m greatly obliged to you, Winslow, for taking my place.”
“Who are the other men ?” I asked. “Do I know them ?”
But Calthorpe shook his head. “We never; mention names,” he said. “The man you play with may be your bootmaker or the premier Duke in England. Unless you know him socially elsewhere you meet as strangers, except within the four walls of the club-room. We are known by our numbers.”
“Your numbers ? ” I am afraid my echo was again a feeble one. It sounded like prize beasts ! in a cattle show.
“Yes. Mine is on the mantelshelf, if you don’t mind looking.”
Lying conspicuously to the forefront was an ; ivory disc of about the diameter of a five-shilling piece. Number nine was stamped upon it, and above the number a slit was punched, through j which ran a loop of crimson ribbon.
“Yes,” went on Calthorpe, as I shewed him the token, “that is it. Put it in your pocket, will you, and I’ll tell you what to do. You know the Monopole? No ! Well, it’s easily found. Shew the number to the hall-porter, and he will tell you in which room the club is meeting. Just inside the door you will find, on a small table, a book ruled with twelve horizontal spaces and numbered down the left-hand margin. The members present write in their numbers, but you, not being a member, will simply write “Deputy” opposite the nine. The president of the club will be standing beside the table and will hand you a small silver counter stamped with the same number, and having a clip attachment. This you will hang to the edge of your coat— and, by the way, leave it behind you on the table as you quit the room. He will then olfer you a velvet bag, from which you’ll draw a paper pellet bearing either a number from one to six, or a similar number followed by an R. These indicate the opponents for the night. I think that is all.”
“And when is the—er—collection taken up ? ”
“Collection ? ”
“Charity, you know.”
Calthorpe laughed, but with a little embarrassment. “That is not exactly our method. You must have noticed, Winslow, that there are two things human nature loves.”
“Only two!” I interjected. “How modest you are! Why, it takes more than that to make a decent salad—or the gout. Two hundred you mean.”
“The bizarre, and an element of change,” went on Calthorpe, as if I had never spoken. “These it is that hold the club together. You play six parties a night, and against as many different opponents, halt of you keeping your seats after each game, the other half moving on in rotation. Keep your score in the ordinary way, and at the end of the night the man who has lost most points has to give their value in charity, reckoning each point at sixpence and first deducting his | gains from his losses.”
“But that might mean-----” I began.
“It’s charity,” he interrupted, hastily ; “and in that the rule of the club is this ; The loser must give the whole amount to the first person who j applies to him, unless he has previously given it! to an object he believes deserving. There have been some some quaint------”
“Quaint!” I groaned. “Why, it might mean ; fifty pounds!”
Again Calthorpe grinned, but this time there was humour in his malice. A man always finds a genial amusement in seeing another man let j into a hole.
“I have known it almost a hundred, and as low as seven-and-sixpence. That is where the element j of chance comes in. You will find it quite inter- j esting, and, by the way, Winslow, of course you understand this is a private club and not to be talked about.”
“Private asylum,” said I, crossly, and rising to j go; but since it is Only for once, and to oblige 1 you, I don’t mind.”
“Oh, you’ll like it,” he answered ; “let the spirit of the thing once grip you and you’ll want me to * put you up for the first vacancy. Good-bye, then, for a—er—day or two. Remember, play begins at nine, and punctuallity is a virtue.”
I saw the sense in Calthorpe’s last remark, and ten minutes before the time named I entered the club-room. At the door a tall, keen faced, clean-
shaven man greeted me with the kindly welcome of an old friend, shaking my hand warmly.
“Ah ! Number Nine,” said he, glancing at the disc which I produced, but asking no other credential. “Here is your badge ; kindly sign the---
Yes, that is right. Deputy? Just so. Now, if
you will draw a lot---What is it ? Four ? Then
you are a fixed star, and that table over by the window is yours. In”—and he drew out his watch, an exceedingly handsome plain gold hunter— “seven minutes we shall begin, and here, in good time, comes our twelfth member.”
With a nod I passed on to the middle of the room and looked about me. Nine or ten men were grouped here and there in twos or threes, chatting and laughing. I knew none personally, but more than one were dimly familiar through the medium of the illustrated press as artist, as a writer of books that sold, or, like the president himseli, as counsel in some case which had set the ears of the public itching. Scattered about the room were six tables, each with two piquet packs standing on scoring cards.
From the nearest group a man turned towards me with cordial, outstretched hand.
"I wonder if I would be quite honest if I wished you good luck ?”
“Perfect honesty,” replied I, “would disrupt any society; not even sweet charity would stand against it.”
“Ah!” said he, “you are cynical. You must have lost last week !”
“Lost?” returned I. “How lost? ‘ ’Twere good you do so much for charity!’ ”
“Fudge!” he answered; “and Portia knew it was fudge when she said it. It is true I am only a miserable stop-gap deputy, here on sufferance, but I am here because it amuses me to see— But there goes the president’s bell. What is your table number ? Four ? Then you are a fixture for the night and my 1 last antagonist, since I have drawn five and must revolve the circle. We meet again three hours hence!”
To describe the varying fortunes of the night is unnecessary. It is enough to say that the involuntary almoner of the club for the night was the man who had introduced himself as Number Five.
“May the recording angel set it to my credit!” said he with a shrug, as he reckoned up the score. “The points against me are two hundred and sixty-five, which translated into hard coin, is six pounds twelve shillings and six-pence.”
From his purse he produced a five-pound note, into which he folded two gold coins and a half-crown. “Well, gentleman, let us hope it will do more good in the world than my nine pounds eleven this day fortnight. They fell a prey to a mother of nine who the week before had been a blind father of five. That is the beauty of the system.”
Ten minutes later we left the hotel together, and turning into the Strand strolled towards Trafalgar-square.
“Your first experience ?” said he “And probably my last.”
He shook his head as he paused to light a cigarette. “Not if you can help it. It’s a foolish business I grant, and a trifle contemptible, that a dozen sane men should squander four hours in order that one of their number should fling good money down the gutter; for nine times in ten that’s what it means. Foolish and contemptible, and yet come now, be honest—you liked the evening?”
“Well, it was novel, and the company----
“Thank you—was mixed ? But company is like a salad, and all the better for a mixture. If it were all white of egg it would be very insipid ; a touch of garlic, now, to flavour the vinegar,
adds----- What’s that ?”
At that dead hour of the night there was comparatively little life astir, and a quick thud of hoofs racing past St. Martin’s Church compelled attention as twelve hours earlier a runaway might have done. We had crossed to the angle of the square and pausing turned to look northward. A hansom was tearing down the slope at a breakneck pace, but as it neared us its occupant flung back the folding apron and, rising, waved his hand urgently over the roof of the cab. Leaning back in his perch the driver reined up his horse, curving inward as he did so alongside the pavement where we stood, and his fare, a young fellow of six or eight and twenty, leaped out.
A heavy overcoat thrown back shewed him to be in evening dress, and as he came towards us