‘I decided to go out for breakfast,’ Blake said. ‘I was tucking into a plate of bacon and eggs in one of those small places near the Quai. The bill came to about forty francs. I gave the waiter a five-hundred-franc note – we’ve been seeing so many of them I’d almost forgotten they were anything out of the ordinary. He still hadn’t brought my change after ten minutes, so I went to the cash desk. Suddenly two men appeared and asked me to go with them to the manager’s office. Police! They made me sit down and asked me a lot of questions about where I had obtained the five-hundred-franc note. I asked if it were forged, and they said no, but these large notes were being passed all over the town and they wanted to know the source.’
‘What did you tell them?’ I asked, pouring more black coffee.
‘What else but the truth? I said I was playing roulette in the Casino Municipale and had been fortunate enough to win substantially. Do you know, one of them more or less called me a liar to my face! That did it as far as I was concerned. I asked if they were charging me with anything. They said no, so I went to the cash desk and demanded my change – then simply walked out. Do you think it’s significant?’
‘Five-hundred-franc notes are on the conspicuous side. We want to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. I’ll have a word with the others when we meet at two o’clock. I’m going
to the airport now to meet my wife off the lunchtime flight.’
‘I’ll drive you, shall I?’
When Pauline came off the plane, she looked ravishing.
Blake drove us back to the hotel, and over lunch I told her how much money we had won. When she didn’t seem particularly impressed I said, ‘You’re not surprised we’ve done so well?’
‘I’m only surprised you’re still playing. I thought you would have been banned by now.’
‘Between you and me, I’m about as surprised as you are.’
At the Massena I gave the group a general warning about the inadvisability of using 500-franc notes in restaurants and cafés.
As the three musketeers were presumably still sleeping off the champagne they had consumed the night before I decided to save my warning against other forms of notoriety until later.
We arrived in the casino at the usual time of 2.45 p.m. As soon as play started three officials came to the table and tried to look over the shoulders of our six players. Mrs Richardson immedi-ately turned her notepad upside down. The others followed her example.
At 4.30 p.m. Maurice Nathan commenced a progression on manque (low). It went in fits and starts, not a steady predom-inance but protracted winning runs and then almost equally long adverse sequences when his line several times came down to two figures. It took him about an hour and a half to reach a stake above 2,000 francs. A hush fell on the crowd round the table, broken only by the clicking of the ivory ball and the calls of the croupiers. The Chef de Casino came to the table. He had not smiled for several days.
At 5.45 p.m. Maurice Nathan looked up from his notepad and smiled. From the toppling piles of plaques and chips in front of him he carefully picked one pink 5-franc chip and placed it on manque. He had reached the table limit.
No casino official could be expected to see something like this without becoming hostile. We were making it all too obvious that
not only could we win large sums (Nathan’s mushroom brought him 40,300 francs – £2,900; $8,150), but that we would then deny them the chance to recover the money. This was a complete reversal of what is expected to happen between the player and the table (expected by the casino staff, of course – most players have the illusion they will win). Hunch gamblers will lose their fluky wins sooner or later and system players, if they are using an orthodox method, reach the table limit only when they are trying to recover previous losses, that is, when the table has been winning heavily.
On this occasion the quiet, almost mousy Maurice Nathan made it even more noticeable by the triumphant way he began to smile at everybody standing round the table, including the Chef de Casino. He had found in winning dramatically before a wide-eyed audience the chance to reveal the latent daredevil.
Instead of shoving the larger denomination stuff into his pockets he left all his plaques and chips lying there in front of him.
For the first time in my obsessional affair with roulette I found myself praying that we would not have any more wins that day.
The expressions of the Chef de Casino and his associates were alarming.
The inevitable happened. Of course. Almost as a punishment for my loss of nerve George Milton hit a progression on passe.
A man giving away gold bars in Trafalgar Square could not have drawn such a feverish audience. Eyes strained through tobacco smoke to see what he was writing in his notepad.
Members of the staff appeared with notebooks of their own, each busily writing down every stake and result of Milton’s progres-sion.
As soon as Milton reached the table limit, crazy piles of rectan-gular plaques and round chips rising before him like the turrets of a gothic castle, I retreated to the bar.
No sooner was the whisky in my hand than two men approached me. Speaking in excellent English, one of them said,
‘Mr Leigh?’
‘Yes!’
‘We understand you informed the Chef de Casino that you and your friends are a group formed to play roulette to a system.’
‘That is correct.’
‘We wonder, would you care to tell us something more about the system you are playing?’
‘By all means.’ I pulled out my notebook and handed it to the one who was doing the talking. ‘If you’d like to write down your questions and sign the page at the bottom, I will be happy to answer anything you ask.’
They frowned at each other, talked rapidly in French, shrugged and walked away.
Blake hurried towards me. ‘What did they want?’ he asked.
‘They wanted to interrogate me on our system. Strange, isn’t it, how eager officials always are to ask questions and how reluc-tant to commit themselves on paper? I shouldn’t panic.’
‘I’m worried,’ he said gravely.
The second shift played until 3 a.m. without another mushroom.
All six players and myself were kept under strict surveillance by the staff. When we left Blake was carrying 67,000 francs from the day’s two progressions. Although we were well into October the temperature was still in the eighties and the combined effect of the heat and my customary twelve hours in the casino had made me too tired to find any great thrill in the sight of the money.
Blake and I had 6,700 francs each (£490 – $1,365) while the others had £355 ($994) apiece.
As soon as Blake had handed out the cash I stood up.
‘It’s very hot and we’re all tired, so I’ll be brief. The fact is that we are at the dangerous stage of this operation. You are finding that the novelty is wearing off – perhaps even the money is losing its thrill. We’ve had four successful days at the casino, and the management is clearly worried. Some of you may even think we’ve proved our point. Well, I haven’t proved my point. To me this money is only the beginning. If we falter now, we’ll be
written off as a bunch of lucky amateurs who folded up before the real test. We can make gambling history, instead of just slip-ping off home with a few hundred pounds’ profit. Of course we’re getting heavy looks from the staff. Did you expect bouquets?’
‘I don’t know who could have been suggesting that we give up,’
Blake said sternly. ‘I’m certainly in no doubt that we should go on to the bitter end.’
‘Bitter end?’ said Keith Robinson. ‘Seems pretty sweet to me.’
He held up his wad of francs. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I’ve never had it so good. They can stare themselves blind at me for all I care. When they start whacking us over the skull with lead pipes that’ll be the time to start moving.’
‘Of course we’re going on,’ said Terry Baker quietly. ‘I’ll work double shifts if anybody’s thinking of walking out on us.’
‘Does everybody feel that way?’ I asked. The eight or nine present all nodded. ‘And do you agree that the team has a right to expect a hundred per cent from each member? Yes, I’m glad of that because it makes the next thing I have to say easier. Quite apart from our winnings in the casino this whole town seems to be seething with gossip about wild parties – I’ve even heard them described as orgies. At the very least this is advertising our pres-ence in the worst possible way. Now I’m not here to supervise morals. What I am concerned about is the risk of any one of us becoming known to the local police as an undesirable visitor. It’s just the excuse they’re looking for to throw us out of the country.’
Careful as I had been not to look at anyone in particular, Alec Sherlock immediately assumed, rightly, that I was referring to him.
‘There’s no harm in a few bottles of champagne,’ he said.
‘No harm at all if that’s as far as it goes.’
‘Come along and see for yourself.’
‘I’m older than you. I need all the sleep I can get. I’m not mentioning anybody by name. What I am saying boils down to two points. One, the casino bars people who are suspected of
association with criminals. Two, the group might have two or three days when it doesn’t win anything. As we are all painfully aware, the Riviera is not the cheapest place in the world. I hope you are all putting enough to one side to see you through a lean spell.’
‘We haven’t been spending all that much,’ said Sherlock. Terry Baker stared at his feet.
‘A good deal more than you ever spent at home on cham-pagne, I’d imagine,’ I said sharply. ‘Three hundred pounds in one night?’
‘Yeah, well, you’re only young twice I always say,’ said Keith Robinson. ‘Don’t worry – we’ve got a few bob tucked away under the mattress, haven’t we?’ He looked at Sherlock and Terry Baker.
They both nodded. ‘Rely on us, Norman,’ he said, getting up.
‘We’ll be with you to the death. You two ready to blow?’
He said this to Baker and Sherlock. For a moment it looked as though Terry had decided to stay with the rest of us, but what chance did common sense have against the pull of a wild night with the boys, especially when his wife and child were due to arrive the next day?
As we were leaving his suite, Blake asked me to stay behind for a minute.
‘I’m worried,’ he said.
‘Oh, I was laying it on a bit thick. Baker’s got a wife and child.
The others can throw their money into the Mediterranean for all I care –’
‘No, it’s something else that’s bothering me. Have you noticed that there’s a pattern to the incidence of these progressions? I first spotted it in London. They generally seem to occur shortly after the same player has had one which petered out.’
‘I have noticed that. Almost like a warning, isn’t it?’
‘We’ve been having more than our fair share of these false starts in the last two days. I have the distinct feeling we’re building up to a colossal bunching of limit reachers and table breakers!’
‘What’s worrying about that?’
‘The management is hostile enough as it is. I imagine they’d go berserk if we started having more progressions in a day.’
‘It’s a risk we have to take,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk home. Good night, Blake.’
It was almost five when I got back to our room. Pauline woke up while I was undressing. ‘Emma said I was to tell you she spoke to her friend Philippe in the restaurant tonight,’ she said. ‘He came across to our table. She said I wasn’t to tell you in front of the others. He told her he knows all about her now. He said the whole town knows there’s a successful team working in the municipal casino. She asked him if there was anything wrong in what you were doing and he said he could guarantee we wouldn’t be doing it for much longer, but wouldn’t say why.’
‘No, because he doesn’t know himself. We won’t be frightened off that easily.’
As I climbed into bed she asked me, unable to control the worried note in her voice: ‘When does this stop, Norman?’
‘It stops when we are stopped,’ I said firmly. Pauline accepted this and not once again in the fraught days that followed did she ever hint that she wanted me to give up.
The following day dawned hotter than ever – I say ‘dawned’, but it was midday when I awoke. Pauline was already up. After breakfast we decided to take a stroll, ending up at Blake’s hotel just after twelve. Blake’s morning swim had cooled him off only temporarily. Incredibly he was back into his heavy blue suit. The heat was beginning to tell on his sixteen or seventeen stones. As we went out on the terrace of his hotel for a coffee he seemed to be moving with some effort, constantly touching his face with a large white handkerchief.
‘I was followed this morning,’ he told us.
‘I’m not unduly surprised,’ I said casually. ‘Round about now they’re just beginning to think of ways to frighten us off. But we’re not criminals and we’re not robbing the casino: that’s their problem. Nonetheless we’re making serious inroads into the safe.’
*
‘I’m sure the same man has been watching me for a day or two,’
said Mrs Harper-Biggs when I asked the first shift if they had noticed anything. ‘I didn’t like to say anything. Old women like me have a reputation for panicking unnecessarily.’
‘Why would they want to follow us?’ asked Maurice Nathan.
‘We are an unusual phenomenon, therefore we invite investi-gation,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it. In fact, if you catch sight of the same man again, why not write down your name and address on a bit of paper and simply hand it to the man? Tell him it will save a lot of time and effort on his part if he simply comes along to see you at your hotel.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Mrs Heppenstall commented calmly.
‘Yes, I’d love to see the look on his face,’ said Mrs Harper-Biggs.
It was on this day that Fredericks began to emerge from his shell. Although he was on the second shift he turned up that lunchtime at the Café Massena, so changed in appearance we didn’t recognise him at first. He had been very busy that morning. He was wearing windscreen-shaped dark glasses, his mousy hair had been shampooed and restyled in a forwards direc-tion to cover his thin patch – most startling of all, he had on a dove-grey silk suit that must have cost at least a couple of hundred pounds. He took our exclamations of surprise with undoubted pleasure. ‘I got a bit tired of looking like a dowdy office worker,’ he said.
‘It looks very nice, Thomas,’ said Mrs Richardson.
To go with his new image Fredericks went so far that partic-ular lunchtime as to order not his usual ice-cream but a vermouth.
‘Give him a couple of days and he’ll be dashing off with the three musketeers for champagne orgies,’ said Milton.
‘Has anybody seen a place that mends clothes in this town?’
Maurice Nathan asked. He showed us a small tear in the pocket of his sports jacket. ‘Silly, really. I was in such a hurry to get here
on time I barged against the door and caught the pocket on the handle.’
‘Round here they’ll charge you the earth to mend it,’ said Mrs Richardson. ‘Why don’t you bring it round to my apartment when we finish this shift and I’ll sew it up?’
‘Oh no, this is your holiday. I wouldn’t want to land you with housework –’
‘If I don’t have anything to do tonight I’ll only end up watching another dreary French film in the fleapit.’
‘There is a cinema that shows English and American films,’ I said.
‘Ah yes – we all went there the other night. What was that film called, Lettice?’
‘Guns Across the Rio Grande,’ Mrs Heppenstall said authorita-tively, adding with a trace of her old shy self, ‘I like cowboy films because it doesn’t really matter who gets shot, does it?’
‘I couldn’t enjoy it for thinking how much it cost,’ said Mrs Richardson. ‘Two pounds to see a bunch of cowboys? No thank you. No, Maurice, I insist. I can have that sewn up in three minutes.’
This exchange, trivial in itself, may serve to illustrate how sensibly some of the party, especially the three ladies, took to the life of professional gambling. In fact, as I told Pauline that after-noon while we were watching play, I often thought I would have done better to recruit a team of women from the start. These three certainly showed more common sense than some of the men. Mrs Harper-Biggs occasionally went up into the hills behind the town to look for bugs and beetles. Mrs Richardson’s one indulgence was to have her hair done every morning. ‘It costs the earth,’ she told Pauline, ‘but I don’t suppose I’ll ever again have five pounds to throw away on one hairdo.’ Mrs Heppenstall guiltily revealed that she was having regular manicures. They saved a few francs by going to a backstreet cinema which showed French films for the purely local audience; they organised such exotic escapades as supermarket explorations; Nathan hired a car
and drove them to Monte Carlo for an early morning sightseeing trip. For two days or more we heard nothing else but descriptions of Prince Rainier’s wonderful palace and of how they had actually seen Princess Grace, or someone remarkably like her.
‘If I had twelve like them I think I would chance it and go for broke in the Salle Privée in Monte Carlo,’ I told Pauline one day.
‘I had a few words with Sherlock last night – but you can’t tell a
‘I had a few words with Sherlock last night – but you can’t tell a