Consardine stared at the seven shining footsteps, and on his face was that avid look I had seen on faces bent over the rouge-et-noir tables at Monte Carlo; faces molded by the scorching fingers of the gambler's passion which is a lust exceeding that for women; faces that glare hungrily at the wheel just before it begins to spin and that see not the wheel but the golden booty its spining may draw for them from Fortune's heaped hands. Like them, Consdarine was seeing not the gleaming prints but that enchanted land to which they led where all desire was fulfilled. The web of Satan's lure had him!

1968.