"The Three Sailors' Gambit" by Lord Dunsany

Over is a real place in Cambridgeshire!

Stavlokratz appears to be a fictional character, indeed a fictional surname. I assume it's meant to sound Slavic? No idea if my pronunciation is convincingly Slavic or not, but it's what you get :-P

Snyth appears to be a fictional surname? Not sure if that 'y' should have a long or short sound to it. Obviously I finally settled on making it sound like Smith, given the variant spelling of Smith as Smyth but which still has the same pronunciation in both forms.

£1 in 1916 might be worth anywhere from £72 to £669 today, depending on how you do your inflation adjustment; probably closer to £72 for our purpose. That's a decent wager. Will certainly buy you plenty of drinks!

The picture used is of Edward Sergeant in Hastings, although in 1929 or 1930, so a bit later than our story, but we can still imagine it being Stavlokratz there in 1916 or so.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13821/13821-h/13821-h.htm#gambit