When we had visited the rooms with Bailey Thompson the night before, and explained our plan in detail on the spot, we had, by his advice, and very wisely, reversed it. Previously, we had designed to begin at the first, the _roulette_ tables, and drive the people gradually before us into the last room, towards the _trente-et-quarante_; but that, as he pointed out, would force us to work with our backs to the exit and bring us between two fires as it were; whereas, if we began in the farthest rooms and cleared the _trente-et-quarante_ tables first, we should have our faces to the doors, and, by driving everybody before us, secure the further advantage of increasing the confusion that would arise from the people rushing in to see what was wrong and meeting the people rushing out. And through that surging, terrified mass we ought to have no difficulty in forcing a passage, if only we kept our unloaded revolvers up to the mark and frowned unflinchingly.
As for masking ourselves, which we had also at first designed, Thompson was strongly against it; it would all take time, and might only obscure our vision; for, as he truly pointed out, that sort of thing scarcely ever fits properly.... I gave a nervous glance at my watch, and found it nearly ten-twenty.
I was standing just by the last _roulette_ table, and saw one or two little things that, as I have said, are still distinctly photographed in my memory. There were two young men standing behind me, and one said, “I’ll just chuck a louis on the table and see where it will fall.” It fell on the number eighteen, and eighteen actually turned up! He laughed excitedly as the croupier pushed him thirty-five times his stake. “That’s not bad for my one gentle little louis, eh?” he giggled.
Opposite, a brown-faced English yachtsman, over from Mentone, was steadily backing the colors with notes of five hundred francs. He was always right; he changed from side to side, and always hit the right red or black. He was watched by two common Englishmen, with long upper lips and ridiculous pantaloon beards, dressed in shiny broadcloth. “That feller’s won another twenty-pound,” said one of them, gaping. “We must bring Louisa in to see this.”