A man is murdered outside a gambling club in London's West End after a journalist who had dallied to take a last drink has tried to stop a frightened girl from making a 'phone call. The journalist is kidnapped by a naked female croupier who is handling a gun instead of a roulette wheel. He comes to on a Sussex farm, where he makes a discovery that pitches him headlong into a sequence of violence and intrigue concerning a gambling racket and the faceless men who run it.