The big triangles of red and black at the far end of the table were both piled with gold and notes, the borders of several numbers were covered with adventurous stakes.
There was a swift "click" as the ball went home.
Number 11 had turned up.
Basil Gregory had the impulse to rise from his seat and go striding up and down those glittering halls, hugging his secret, spurning those other players who knew nothing.
Everything had occurred exactly as he had planned with Emile Deschamps. At the precise moment arranged between them the wireless message had come to the spinning ball and it had fallen, as it was directed, obedient to the unseen and unsuspected powers of science.
He drew towards him six thousand three hundred francs—two hundred and fifty two English pounds!
He looked at his watch again. The next slot in the wheel that was to be magnetised was 33. But it was not yet time. It had been arranged that he was to lose occasionally in order to divert suspicion.
He placed the maximum of nine louis upon zero. To his consternation, zero won. Again he received the enormous sum of six thousand and odd francs. He leant back in his chair, outwardly indifferent and calm, but throbbing in every nerve and pulse with wild excitement. It was true then!
A few hundred yards away, in the little bedroom on the roof, Emile Deschamps was pressing key after key with absolute precision. And as he pressed the little spinning ball, flung from the hand of the croupier, must perforce obey the invisible power that vibrated through the air.
That he had won upon zero—when he meant to lose—seemed only a minor incident in the riot of his progress.