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The casino’s next move was more subtle.

The first shift had been playing for an hour and a half when Mrs Harper-Biggs simultaneously got a seat and started a progression on her chance, impair (the odd numbers). After nine spins her line read something like 3, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 and her next stake was 19 francs, nothing to excite any casual observer.

However, four or five women standing at her corner of the table began to ask her questions, the usual things people ask at a roulette table: What number came up last? What colour is predominating? What system are you using?

These women were of differing ages, fairly well dressed but nothing out of the ordinary. Until then there had been nothing to suggest that they were together.

As I moved nearer, Mrs Harper-Biggs was on spin 14, and her line read 7, 10, 13, 17. She won 24 francs and added that figure to the end of her line, giving her a stake for spin 15 of 7 + 4 = 31.

This lost. On spin 16 her stake was 10 + 17 = 27. This won. Only 27 francs, but the women round her increased the intensity of their questions, speaking rapidly in French. I knew then they were no ordinary players but an organized group deliberately setting out to upset her concentration.

Mrs Harper-Biggs did not need me to tell her to ignore them.

They began to ask the same questions in English. Mrs

Harper-Biggs went on ignoring them, only a tightening of her mouth indicating that she was conscious of their presence. By spin 23 her line read 17, 27, 37, 54 giving her a stake of 71 francs. She lost, bringing her line down to two figures, 27, 37.

Then she had four wins in a row. By spin 27 her line was 27, 37, 64, 91, 118, giving her a stake of 145 francs. The women tried to put her off by pushing even closer, firing questions from all sides, even going so far as to nudge her elbow. At this she looked up and gave the offending female a glare of the kind that had no doubt kept the late Mr Harper-Biggs in line.

I eased myself between the woman on her left hand and the chair to lend her moral support.

By spin 33 her line read 37, 64, 91, 118, 155, 192, 229, 266.

This looked very promising, with enough of the lower figures left to give her a chance of progressing slowly to the limit and thereby having more winning bets on the way than would have been the case if wins and losses had alternated in such a way as to delete the smaller figures early in the sequence.

During all this these determined she-wolves kept yapping at her from all sides. A hardened professional gambler would have found it hard to maintain concentration, but for her, a rather grand lady of uncertain temperament, to keep on with her calcu-lations and find the exact plaques and chips for each stake was a tremendous feat of concentration. I was proud of her.

It was a long and profitable ordeal. It took her over two hours to reach the table limit. By that time, however, the team of women had decided she could not be upset and had turned their attentions on Mrs Richardson, who had started a small progres-sion on her chance, red. I had no doubt then that they were working under instructions to concentrate on flustering whichever of our players was having a winning sequence.

They started asking Mrs Richardson the same questions. Mrs Richardson ignored them. Meanwhile the croupiers were sending out the usual alert by handclap, and a fair crowd was assembling at the table.

One of the women leaned over and started fiddling with Mrs Richardson’s chips.

‘I’ll help you put them in order,’ she said in French. Mrs Richardson calmly pushed her arm away. I eased over and stood by her.

‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Richardson grimly.

‘Don’t give them the satisfaction of upsetting you,’ I said, arranging her chips and plaques in some semblance of order. Red was predominating in fits and starts, and at several stages her line was down to two figures, but always it took life again.

Mrs Harper-Biggs reached the limit at about twenty minutes to seven. Her progression had lasted over two hours. Mrs Richardson reached the limit about half an hour later, although hers had lasted less than two hours. (This may sound like an account of unbroken triumph, but during this time the other four members of the shift were losing steadily on short sequences.) There were two winning progressions on that shift of six hours at thirty spins to the hour.

As a collective unit our six players made over a thousand separate bets in that shift. To get the two winning progressions Mrs Harper-Biggs and Mrs Richardson possibly had fewer than two hundred winning bets between them.

As Mrs Richardson pulled the scattered piles of plaques and chips together the Chef de Casino came close to the table and glowered at her.

Mrs Richardson gave him a sweet smile and started betting again – one miserable 5-franc chip. The Chef muttered some-thing and stalked off.

The rest of that day passed without incident, excepting the blanket refusal to serve any of us with coffee or drinks, a small argument over seats when the shifts changed and a noticeable slowness on the part of the croupiers when any of our team asked them to change a high-denomination plaque into smaller chips.

There were no more progressions. The first shift went off to eat, but several of them returned later in the evening. Only Mrs Heppenstall, Mrs Harper-Biggs and Hopplewell were missing

when we met in Blake’s hotel for the share-out. Everybody was complaining about the strain of having to stand and go without refreshment.

‘I don’t mind telling you I was near to screaming when those women kept pestering me,’ said Mrs Richardson.

‘They gave up in the end,’ I said. ‘I thought you and Mrs H-B did extraordinarily well. If that’s the best they can do we’ve got them beaten.’

‘Was I seeing things, or did anybody else notice lights flashing?’ Fredericks asked.

‘I saw something flashing, too,’ said Maurice Nathan. ‘I thought it was bulbs burning out in the chandeliers.’

‘No, it was a flash camera,’ said Sherlock. ‘I saw the bloke taking pictures.’

Nobody else had seen a photographer, it seemed.

‘Who knows, in a few weeks you may see photographs of your-selves as part of the international jet-set elite,’ I said. ‘How did we do, anyway, Mr Blake?’

‘Not bad, considering the difficulties we were under. Two progressions – a healthy figure of fifty-five thousand three hundred and eighty-five francs.’

‘Can’t be bad,’ said Keith Robinson, rubbing his hands together. Terry Baker thought otherwise.

‘I don’t think it’s all that brilliant,’ he complained. ‘We’re getting a lot of abortive runs petering out halfway. I still think we would save a lot of time by going for the high stakes in the Monte Carlo casino rather than carrying on here day after day for dribs and drabs.’

‘I dare say three or four hundred pounds a day hardly meets your bar bill,’ Blake said icily.

There was an embarrassed pause. Baker blushed and for a few seconds it seemed that he might bluster. Then, calmly, he said,

‘All right. No point in denying it. I’ve been chucking money away like a drunken sailor. Still, my wife’s arriving tomorrow, so the party’s over. From now on I’ll behave.’