Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

against a wall and smoked quickly, trying to laugh at himself, cursing himself, wishing he’d never come near the place, telling himself to get out of here now, because there was still danger. With that part of his mind that was independent of physical disturbance he repeated the words: It doesn’t matter. You’ve only lost twenty-two pounds ten. You took the risk, and it didn’t come off. You realised that before you took the risk.You are now no worse off than you would have been if you’d lost the twenty-odd pounds in the first place.
    But he was not convinced. A minute before he had had two hundred pounds. Now he did not have two hundred pounds. Useless to say he had won it as quickly as he had lost it. He was dry, shaken, sickened by the anticlimax.
    The absolute unconcern of those around him struck him as wantonly callous, but a little corner of humour left to him dispelled the twinge of self-pity, and he grinned as he thought of his lack of concern for the loser when he had won.
    All right, Grant, he told himself, you’ve had your run. Go back to bed and forget it ever happened.
    But he stayed leaning against the wall saturated in the atmosphere of money. It had been so easy to win. Just a flicker of two coins and money doubled itself, and doubled itself and doubled itself. God! but the hunger for money was a gnawing, tearing thing.
    He barely recognised Crawford when he appeared and said: ‘How’s it, John, still here?’
    Grant had no reserves left for social efforts.
    ‘Will they cash a cheque here?’ he said. No, he would not think about it, he would do it. He would do it. Act now and think about it later, but act now.
    ‘Yes,’ said Crawford, unsurprised. ‘How much for?’
    ‘One hundred and forty.’ Grant took out the cheque and showed it to Crawford.
    ‘That’ll be all right, I’ll fix it. You’d better sign it.’
    Grant endorsed the cheque with a pen supplied by Crawford, and the policeman made his way over to the controllers, who cashed the cheque without question, carelessly doling the notes out of their pockets.
    Grant barely thanked Crawford when he brought him the money.
    ‘Going to try the Game?’ said Crawford, but Grant had forgotten him, and he was on his way to the ringside.
    His lips were working in desperation. Somewhere in his mind the irrationality of his actions was clear to him; but he was like an automaton, dominated by an idea that was almost an instruction. He was being forced forward by a decision, made, it seemed now, forever ago.
    Not for Grant the tedium of trying to build a bank from a small bet. He leaned over the line of players sitting on the benches, dropped his one hundred and forty pounds and called: ‘One forty on tails.’
    His voice sounded strange and removed, and despair was heavy on his shoulders, and dragging down on his stomach. He had no hope of winning, but he would not have recalled his bet even if there had been time before it wascovered by showers of notes from half a dozen different directions.
    Just three minutes after he had received the money for his cheque, he had lost it.
    The cry of ‘Heads!’ had no effect on him; but a moment or two later there was the dull, bruising shock of realisation. He watched blankly as the hands scraped away the money he had laid down. He kept on looking at the bare carpet where it had been, until suddenly another growth of notes flowered there, and the Game was going on.
    He turned, staring, and walked out of the building, out into the night, walking rigidly, transfixed by the magnitude of his loss. What the loss meant to him was so grievous in import that he could not think about it. His mind had a small tight knot at the back, and around it whirled the destructive realisation of what he had done, but until that knot unravelled, he need not think too deeply about what was to happen now.
    He went back to the hotel, stripped off his clothes, fell naked on to the bed, and stared, hot-eyed, at the ceiling until