Enemy of Women

Solemnly Death came last week to Athanase Vagliano, on the golden Riviera at minute, lovely Roquebrune. Everyone of the smart world has at least passed the place. As your "Blue Train" from Paris halts momentarily at Monte Carlo and then chuffs on to Menton, the prettiest station through which it speeds, the one with the neatest garden and the fairest palms, is Roquebrune. In the great house just visible through dense foliage lived ''The Greek," Europe's "Prince of Gamblers," and there he died--rich.

One lost to Athanase Vagliano and his colleagues of the famed "Greek Syndicate" at Cannes or at Deauville, according to one's means. The Syndicate's game was and is baccarat. One season they lost three millions of francs to M. Andre Citroen, the "Henry Ford of France." In the novel Enemies of Women famed Spaniard Vincente Blasco Ibanez portrayed Athanase Vagliano, under another name, as the evil genius of the Riviera. As a matter of fact the heaviest losers to the Syndicate do seem to have been women. "Once," Vincente Blasco Ibanez has said, "I saw Vagliano win a million francs at a single sit ting." With one franc worth almost four cents, as at present, that would have been $40,000.

Among the charms of baccarat is the fact that by shouting "BANCO," anyone may become the banker of a table if he wins a stake. Usually the Syndicate is allowed to do all the "Banco"-shouting. Last year however an apparently rich Cal ifornian who said his name was "Mr. Day" wanted to play bank and was graciously allowed to oust the Syndicate. On the first coup they wagered a half-million francs against Banker Day at one end of the table and a million at the other. As he dealt the cards they stood to lose $60,000; but he lost instead, at both ends of the table. Thereafter the Syndicate banked for some time alone.

Awful legends naturally enshrouded "The Greek." His ancestors are said to have been Byzantine pirates, but Athanase Vagliano would admit to no more than that he was born in Athens "probably in the '70s."

As a youth he slaved at loading kegs of oil and casks of wine onto tramp-ships, signed on as a sailor, outsmarted many another, and presently owned his own wallowing, chugging tramp steamer. His escalator to Monte Carlo is darkly whispered to have been the white slaving slums of Marseilles. If that trail exists it has been well covered, nay, completely effaced. The smart world will remember "The Greek" solely in his sleek role of banker at Deauville or Cannes.

Early last year "The Greek" withdrew from the "Greek Syndicate." He said that he thought his heart was beginning to be affected by too much playing for high stakes. Today the Syndicate carries on under M. Zografos, the "other Greek," and M. Couloumidjian, a compatriot and relative of Armenian novelist "Michael Arlen" (Dikran Kuyumjian). Last week the physicians who attended Europe's prince of gamblers concealed the cause of Death, refused to say whether he had indeed died of "gambler's heart."