The wheel swung, the ball spun. "Noir et vingt," croaked the croupier.
And now, as the rakes pursued their remorseless way, and swept in all the stakes upon the table except Basil's maximums, there was a low murmur of surprise and consternation. Anywhere else but in the Casino it would have been a babel of tongues.
In one single minute Basil Gregory had won the huge sum of 24,000 francs—960 English pounds.
Standing by the director of the table, who sat above and behind the croupier who spun the wheel, there was now seen a tall and unobtrusive man with a pale face, a short black beard, and wearing evening dress. It was one of the heads of the permanent staff of the Administration—a mysterious being who only entered the rooms upon special occasion, a person invested with unknown powers—one of the gods!
Basil had emptied his mind of thought.
He had focussed his whole being upon what he was doing. The huge pile of wealth before him affected him no more than if the notes and gold—and by now there were many notes and but little gold—were but so many counters. Mechanically he folded bundle after bundle of thousand franc notes and placed them in the inner pocket of his coat.
And then, in the stir and rustle, he heard a sharp exclamation—unremarked by the crowd around in that moment of tension, but like an arrow through his own consciousness.
He looked up.
Opposite him, down towards the end of the table, two ladies were sitting. He had been vaguely conscious of them before, but, during all his play, he had made a point of not allowing his thoughts or glances to be distracted by the other players.
It was from one of those ladies, the young one, that he, and he alone, heard a little gasping cry.