last won more seldom and less than the other two.

Thus every Wednesday a considerable sum found its way from the
pocketbook of the baroness into that of one of her colleagues, to find
its way back again the next morning. The purpose of this clever scheme
was that the "pigeons" who visited the luxurious salons of the
baroness, and whose money paid the expenses of these salons, should
not have the smallest grounds for suspicion that the dear baroness's
apartment was nothing but a den of sharpers. Her guests all considered
her charming, to begin with, and also rich and independent and
passionate by nature. This explained her love of play and the
excitement it brought, and which she would not give up, in spite of
her repeated heavy losses.

Her colleagues, the Knights of Industry, acted on a carefully devised
and rigidly followed plan. They were far from putting their uncanny
skill in motion every Wednesday. So long as they had no big game in
sight, the game remained clean and honest. In this way the band might
lose two or three thousand rubles, but such a loss had no great
importance, and was soon made up when some fat "pigeon" appeared.

It sometimes happened that this wily scheme of honest play went on for
five or six weeks in succession, so that the small fry, winning the
band's money, remained entirely convinced that it was playing in an
honorable and respectable private house, and very naturally spread
abroad the fame of it throughout the whole city. But when the fat
pigeon at last appeared, the band put forth all its forces, all the
wiles of the black art, and in a few hours made up for the generous
losses of a month of honorable and irreproachable play on the green
cloth.