Charles Wells – the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo – had several highly unusual friends. They included a Vicar who had once served a prison sentence for fraud, and a self-appointed ship-broker who had once been convicted for stealing jewellery from his employer.
Even Wells’ mistress – a French woman named Jeannette Pairis – is believed to have taken part in a phoney register-office marriage in order to gain British citizenship.
As they often say, birds of a feather flock together.