The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Part 14

"Yes, an orphanage!" orphanage!" the policeman cried. "I was brought up in one so I ought to know what it's like!" With that, the policeman turned away and went quickly down the stairs towards the street. the policeman cried. "I was brought up in one so I ought to know what it's like!" With that, the policeman turned away and went quickly down the stairs towards the street.

Henry didn't move. The policeman's words, and more especially the genuine fury with which they had been spoken, smacked our hero right between the eyes.

"An orphanage?" he said aloud. "That's quite a thought. But why only one orphanage? Why not lots of them?" And now, very quickly, there began to come to him the great and marvellous idea that was to change everything.

Henry shut the front door and went back into his flat. All at once, he felt a powerful excitement stirring in his belly. He started pacing up and down, ticking off the points that would make his marvellous idea possible.

"One," he said, "I can get hold of a very large sum of money each day of my life.

"Two. I must not go to the same casino more than once every twelve months.

"Three. I must not win too much from any one casino or somebody will get suspicious. I suggest I keep it down to twenty thousand pounds a night.

"Four. Twenty thousand pounds a night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year comes to how much?"

Henry took a pencil and paper and worked this one out.

"It comes to seven million, three hundred thousand pounds," he said aloud.

"Very well. Point number five. I shall have to keep moving. No more than two or three nights at a stretch in any one city or the word will get around. Go from London to Monte Carlo. Then to Cannes. To Biarritz. To Deauville. To Las Vegas. To Mexico City. To Buenos Aires. To Na.s.sau. And so on.

"Six. With the money I make, I will set up an absolutely first-cla.s.s orphanage in every country I visit. I will become a Robin Hood. I will take money from the bookmakers and the gambling proprietors and give it to the children. Does that sound corny and sentimental? As a dream, it does. But as a reality, if I can really make it work, it wouldn't be corny at all, or sentimental. It would be rather tremendous.

"Seven. I will need somebody to help me, a man who will sit at home and take care of all that money and buy the houses and organize the whole thing. A money man. Someone I can trust. What about John Winston?"

John Winston was Henry's accountant. He handled his income-tax affairs, his investments and all other problems that had to do with money. Henry had known him for eighteen years and a friends.h.i.+p had developed between the two men. Remember, though, that up until now, John Winston had known Henry only as the wealthy idle playboy who had never done a day's work in his life.

"You must be mad," John Winston said when Henry told him his plan. "n.o.body has ever devised a system for beating the casinos."

From his pocket, Henry produced a brand-new unopened pack of cards. "Come on," he said. "We'll play a little blackjack. You're the dealer. And don't tell me those cards are marked. It's a new pack."

Solemnly, for nearly an hour, sitting in Winston's office whose windows looked out over Berkeley Square, the two men played blackjack. They used matchsticks as counters, each match being worth twenty-five pounds. After fifty minutes, Henry was no less than thirty-four thousand pounds up!

John Winston couldn't believe it. "How do you do it?" he said.

"Put the pack on the table," Henry said. "Face down."

Winston obeyed.

Henry concentrated on the top card for four seconds. "That's a knave of hearts," he said. It was.

"The next one is. . . a three of hearts." It was. He went right through the entire pack, naming every card.

"Go on," John Winston said. "Tell me how you do it." This usually calm and mathematical man was leaning forward over his desk, staring at Henry with eyes as big and bright as two stars. "You do realize you are doing something completely impossible?" he said.

"It's not impossible," Henry said. "It is only very difficult. I am the one man in the world who can do it."

The telephone rang on John Winston's desk. He lifted the receiver and said to his secretary, "No more calls please, Susan, until I tell you. Not even my wife." He looked up, waiting for Henry to go on.

Henry then proceeded to explain to John Winston exactly how he had acquired the power. He told him how he had found the notebook and about Imhrat Khan and then he described how he had been working non-stop for the past three years, training his mind to concentrate.

When he had finished, John Winston said, "Have you tried walking on fire?"

"No," Henry said. "And I'm not going to."

"What makes you think you'll be able to do this thing with the cards in a casino?"

Henry then told him about his visit to Lord's House the night before.

"Six thousand, six hundred pounds!" John Winston cried. "Did you honestly win that much in real money?"

"Listen," Henry said. "I just won thirty-four thousand from you in less than an hour!"

"So you did."

"Six thousand was the very least I could win," Henry said. "It was a terrific effort not to win more."

"You will be the richest man on earth."

"I don't want to be the richest man on earth," Henry said. "Not any more." He then told him about his plan for orphanages.

When he had finished, he said, "Will you join me, John? Will you be my money man, my banker, my administrator and everything else? There will be millions coming in every year."

John Winston, a cautious and prudent accountant, would not agree to anything at all on the spur of the moment. "I want to see you in action first," he said.

So that night, they went together to the Ritz Club on Curzon Street. "Can't go to Lord's House again now for some time," Henry said.

On the first spin of the roulette wheel, Henry staked 100 on number twenty-seven. It came up. The second time he put it on number four; that came up too. A total of 7,500 profit.

An Arab standing next to Henry said. "I have just lost fifty-five thousand pounds. How do you do it?"

"Luck," Henry said. "Just luck."

They moved into the Blackjack Room and there, in half an hour, Henry won a further 10,000. Then he stopped.

Outside in the street, John Winston said, "I believe you now. I'll come in with you."

"We start tomorrow," Henry said.

"Do you really intend to do this every single night?"

"Yes," Henry said. "I shall move very fast from place to place, from country to country. And every day I shall send the profits back to you through the banks."

"Do you realize how much it will add up to in a year?"

"Millions," Henry said cheerfully. "About seven million a year."

"In that case, I can't operate in this country," John Winston said. "The taxman will have it all."

"Go anywhere you like," Henry said. "It makes nO difference to me. I trust you completely."

"I shall go to Switzerland," John Winston said. "But not tomorrow. I can't just pull up and fly away. I'm not an unattached bachelor like you with no responsibilities. I must talk to my wife and children. I must give notice to my partners in the firm. I must sell my house. I must find another house in Switzerland. I must take the kids out of school. My dear man, these things take time!"

Henry drew from his pocket the 17,500 he had just won and handed them to the other man. "Here's some petty cash to tide you over until you get settled," he said. "But do hurry up. I want to get cracking."

Within a week, John Winston was in Lausanne, with an office high up on the lovely hillside above Lake Geneva. His family would follow him as soon as possible.

And Henry went to work in the casinos.

One year later, he had sent a little over eight million pounds to John Winston in Lausanne. The money was sent five days a week to a Swiss company called ORPHANAGES S.A. n.o.body except John Winston and Henry knew where the money came from or what was going to happen to it. As for the Swiss authorities, they never want to know where money comes from. Henry sent the money through the banks. The Monday remittance was always the biggest because it included Henry's take for Friday, Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, when the banks were closed. He moved with astonis.h.i.+ng speed, and often the only clue that John Winston had to his whereabouts was the address of the bank which had sent the money on a particular day. One day it would come perhaps from a bank in Manila. The next day from Bangkok. It came from Las Vegas, from Curacao, from Freeport, from Grand Cayman, from San Juan, from Na.s.sau, from London, from Biarritz. It came from anywhere and everywhere so long as there was a big casino in the city.

For seven years, all went well. Nearly fifty million pounds had arrived in Lausanne, and had been safely banked away. Already John Winston had got three orphanages established, one in France, one in England, and one in the United States. Five more were on the way.

Then came a bit of trouble. There is a grapevine among casino owners, and although Henry was always extraordinarily careful not to take too much from any one place on any one night, the news was bound to spread in the end.

They got wise to him one night in Las Vegas when Henry rather imprudently took one hundred thousand dollars from each of three separate casinos that all happened to be owned by the same mob.

What happened was this. The morning after, when Henry was in his hotel room packing to leave for the airport, there was a knock on his door. A bell-hop came in and whispered to Henry that two men were waiting for him in the lobby. Other men, the bell-hop said, were guarding the rear exit. These were very hard men, the bell-hop said, and he did not give much for Henry's chances of survival if he were to go downstairs at this moment.

"Why do you come and tell me?" Henry asked him. "Why are you on my side?"

"I'm not on anyone's side," the bell-hop said. "But we all know you won a lot of money last night and I figured you might give me a nice present for tipping you off."

"Thanks," Henry said. "But how do I get away? I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can get me out of here."

"That's easy," the bell-hop said. "Take your own clothes off and put on my uniform. Then walk out through the lobby with your suitcase. But tie me up before you leave. I've gotta be lying here on the floor tied up hand and foot so they won't think I helped you. I'll say you had a gun and I couldn't do nothing."

"Where's the cord to tie you up with?" Henry asked.

"Right here in my pocket," the bell-hop said, grinning.

Henry put on the bell-hop's gold and green uniform, which wasn't too bad a fit. Then he tied the man up good and proper with the cord and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth. Finally, he pushed ten one-hundred dollar bills under the carpet for the bell-hop to collect later.

Down in the lobby, two short, thick, black-haired thugs were watching the people as they came out of the elevators. But they hardly glanced at the man in the green and gold bellhop's uniform who came out carrying a suitcase and who walked smartly across the lobby and out through the swing-doors that led to the street.

At the airport, Henry changed his flight and took the next plane to Los Angeles. Things were not going to be quite so easy from now on, he told himself. But that bell-hop had given him an idea.

In Los Angeles, and in nearby Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where the film people live, Henry sought out the very best make-up man in the business. This was Max Engelman. Henry called on him. He liked him immediately.

"How much do you earn?" Henry asked him.

"Oh, about forty thousand dollars a year," Max told him.

"I'll give you a hundred thousand," Henry said, "if you will come with me and be my make-up artist."

"What's the big idea?" Max asked him.

"I'll tell you," Henry said. And he did.

Max was only the second person Henry had told. John Winston was the first. And when Henry showed Max how he could read the cards, Max was flabbergasted.

"Great heavens, man!" he cried. "You could make a fortune!"

"I already have," Henry told him. "I've made ten fortunes. But I want to make ten more." He told Max about the orphanages. With John Winston's help, he had already set up three of them, with more on the way.

Max was a small dark-skinned man who had escaped from Vienna when the n.a.z.is went in. He had never married. He had no ties. He became wildly enthusiastic. "It's crazy!" he cried. "It's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life! I'll join you, man! Let's go!"

From then on, Max Engelman travelled everywhere with Henry and he carried with him in a trunk such an a.s.sortment of wigs, false beards, sideburns, moustaches and make-up materials as you have never seen. He could turn his master into any one of thirty or forty unrecognizable people, and the casino managers, who were all watching for Henry now, never once saw him again as Mr Henry Sugar. As a matter of fact, only a year after the Las Vegas episode, Henry and Max actually went back to that dangerous city, and on a warm starry night Henry took a cool eighty thousand dollars from the first of the big casinos he had visited before. He went disguised as an elderly Brazilian diplomat, and they never knew what had hit them.

Now that Henry no longer appeared as himself in the casinos, there were, of course, a number of other details that had to be taken care of, such as false ident.i.ty cards and pa.s.sports. In Monte Carlo, for example, a visitor must always show his pa.s.sport before being allowed to enter the casino. Henry visited Monte Carlo eleven more times with Max's a.s.sistance, every time with a different pa.s.sport and in a different disguise.

Max adored the work. He loved creating new characters for Henry. "I have an entirely fresh one for you today!" he would announce. "Just wait till you see it! Today you will be an Arab sheikh from Kuwait!"

"Do we have an Arab pa.s.sport?" Henry would ask. "And Arab papers?"

"We have everything," Max would answer. "John Winston has sent me a lovely pa.s.sport in the name of His Royal Highness Sheikh Abu Bin Bey!"

And so it went on. Over the years, Max and Henry became as close as brothers. They were crusading brothers, two men who moved swiftly through the skies, milking the casinos of the world and sending the money straight back to John Winston in Switzerland, where the company known as ORPHANAGES S.A. grew richer and richer.

Henry died last year, at the age of sixty-three; his work was completed. He had been at it for just on twenty years.

His personal reference book listed three hundred and seventy-one major casinos in twenty-one different countries or islands. He had visited them all many times and he had never lost.

According to John Winston's accounts, he had made altogether one hundred and forty-four million pounds.

He left twenty-one well-established well-run orphanages scattered about the world, one in each country he visited. All these were administered and financed from Lausanne by John and his staff.

But how do I, who am neither Max Engelman nor John Winston, happen to know all this? And how did I come to write the story in the first place?

I will tell you.

Soon after Henry's death, John Winston telephoned me from Switzerland. He introduced himself simply as the head of a company calling itself ORPHANAGES S.A., and asked me if I would come out to Lausanne to see him with a view to writing a brief history of the organization. I don't know how he got hold of my name. He probably had a list of writers and stuck a pin into it. He would pay me well, he said. And he added. "A remarkable man has died recently. His name was Henry Sugar. I think people ought to know a bit about what he has done."