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out to be refilled.
    “Nah…I ain’t takin’ a bet on that,” Merkin said, tipping the decanter and generously pouring. “Be crazy.”
    “What, are you backing off?” Lankin thought for a moment, and said, “Let’s say I bring in a fellow, what would be enough to win such a bet?”
    Merkin had not run a gambling house for so long without knowing when a man was bored and in need of diversion, and Lankin had that look about him, the irritability, the shifty gaze, the quick moodiness. “I’d need some honest proof the fella was about to leave, and I’d need to witness his change o’ heart.”
    Lankin again drained the glass. “Say I get him to stay at the tables another…three hours, after such a display? Would that do it?”
    “Done,” Merkin said, quickly. “But he’ll have to lose a pile. Otherwise how would I know you hadn’t set it up with the fella to just stay one for a while?”
    “Are you implying I would cheat you? You, sir, are no gentleman.”
    “No, I ain’t. Thank God.”
    Mollified, Lankin chuckled. Terms of the bet were discussed and they shook hands on it. The very next evening Lankin surveyed the suitable youngsters at White’s, and found several new candidates, inviting them one at a time to Merkin’s gambling club. In a season of overwhelming boredom, the challenge added some spice to his bland life.
    The first fellow was adamant and unshakable. Once he had lost a few thousand pounds, he headed for the door and Lankin was unable to persuade him to stay to try to “change his luck.” Merkin smirked at that, and raised his eyebrows. Lankin swore to do better with the next fellow. Alcohol, the sly demon that perched on many a man’s shoulder for his whole life, digging at him and urging him on to downward paths, must be his tool.
    The next night, Lankin came to Merkin’s club with a fresh-faced sprig of the noble tribe. Viscount Trilby, a stripling of twenty-one, strolled into the gambling hell with an excited quiver, like a hound that has scented the game. Three hours later, as he lost a thousand pounds more than his yearly allowance, he began to look haunted, and miserably told Lankin he had to leave. Four hours after that, Trilby was staggering drunk and had signed markers for ten thousand pounds.
    Merkin nodded in appreciation as he sidled up to Lankin. “I underestimated you, sir,” he murmured, his words concealed from the other patrons by the noise of the tables. “You got him in nice and deep.”
    The praise merely spurred Lankin to fresh efforts. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Watch this.” With a deftly timed barb aimed at the young man’s gambling acumen, he incited him to add his signature to another marker, extending his credit by another ten thousand pounds. By dawn, the young viscount had committed himself to fifty thousand pounds.
    That very day the lad was banished to the country by his father. The marker was paid, using loans from the moneylenders, and Lankin was banished from White’s. The unfairness of such an expulsion, after a decade of dues and attendance, had him raging and looking for vengeance.
    Merkin’s coffers gained from that quest for revenge, while several titled and untitled, but wealthy, families suffered. Being barred from White’s merely meant Lankin sought out the sons of club members at other watering holes in the city. He led several to their doom in Merkin’s hell, taking particular glee in destroying their family finances, each destruction a blow for the injustice done to him.
    But his enterprise with Merkin did not mean Lankin had not made the wager he undertook every spring with whatever White’s club denizens covertly took part. His absolute success in the yearly “Susan” gamble meant he had few who would go against him, but this particular year, the bet had changed slightly. The gaming men of White’s had protested that he rigged the wager each year by choosing a beauty who was vulnerable in some way through recent loss