Streaking Read Free

should strike . Yours is an attainable model, a copiable performance—in every respect but one. Unlike you, they lose. Not all of them, but more than enough, and always if they come back often enough. In order to sustain the kind of hope I need them to bring to my tables, I need authentic, consistent winners—and they are much harder to come by than you might suppose. In the bad old days, of course, we pretended, but the regulations are much tighter now and the employment of shills is strictly forbidden. We have reason to be grateful that there are genuinely lucky men around, and I shall be truly sorry not to see you again.”
    â€œI’ll be sorry too,” Canny said, softly—although any intention he might have had to return, once the estate was sorted out and the businesses were running smoothly again, had evaporated while Meurdon was speaking. “But I might be able to help you out one last time, before the car picks me up, if you don’t mind.”
    It was Meurdon’s turn to smile “Don’t let me detain you, Monsieur Kilcannon. “And— bon chance !”

CHAPTER TWO
    As soon as Canny stepped back into the larger room he felt the change in its atmosphere. The atmosphere really was subtly different, of course, because the air in the gaming arena was more carefully maintained—against much greater challenges—than the air in Meurdon’s office, but in Canny’s estimation the potential with which it was charged went beyond any mere mechanical conditioning. It was pregnant with possibility.
    According to the family records—legends, as Canny had always defiantly thought of them—the Kilcannon luck always sank to a low ebb whenever the patriarch died, and remained at a low ebb until it was dutifully renewed, but Lord Credesdale wasn’t dead yet, and while he was still ailing Canny’s share of the family fortune might actually increase, as if it were flowing out of the old man’s decaying husk into his still-vibrant flesh. The time was ripe for a coup —if he wanted to bring off a coup .
    In a way, he did. But in another way, he didn’t.
    He did because he knew that this would be his farewell to the playboy lifestyle. He might recover some of the threads, but it would never be the same even if he did, because he wouldn’t be the same. Once Daddy was dead, he’d be the Earl of Credesdale—no longer a son fighting for scraps of his a fortune that really belonged to his father, but his own man, in control of his own destiny. He would never again be the person he was now, and he couldn’t deny a certain urge to celebrate that conclusion.
    On the other hand, he had just been informed that other eyes were following his luck, not merely watching it but weighing it, not merely marveling at it but wondering what could possibly sustain it. In circumstances like that, scoring a spectacular win might qualify as an extremely undiplomatic thing to do, perhaps a stupid thing to do.
    His father would have been horrified by the fact that he was even thinking about it—but Canny wasn’t sure whether that qualified as an argument against or an argument for.
    What the hell , he thought, eventually. He was daring me, wasn’t he?
    The potential seemed to hang most heavily of all above the roulette table, and it drew him with smooth efficiency while he put up no resistance. Stevie Larkin, the English football player Meurdon had referred to as Canny’s “friend” was one of three team-mates playing the roulette wheel. They were sitting to the croupier’s right, directly across from a trio of models, one of whom was said—if only by the tabloids—to be one of the ten most beautiful women in the world. Although the club the footballers played for was Italian, the other two were Croatian and Algerian; at the top level, the sport was a perfect model of twentieth-century globalization.
    Canny had been casually