«My hand is so exquisite that I am forced to redouble, my dear Drax,» he said. He looked across at his partner. «Tommy,» he said. «Charge this to me if it goes wrong.»
«Rot,» said his partner. «Meyer? Better take Drax out.»
«Too frightened,» said the middle-aged florid man who was playing with Drax. «No bid.» He picked up his cigar from the brass ashtray and put it carefully into the middle of his mouth.
«No bid here,» said Basildon’s partner.
«And nothing here,» came Drax’s voice.
«Five clubs redoubled,» said Basildon. «Your lead, Meyer.»
Bond looked over Drax’s shoulder. Drax had the ace of spades and the ace of hearts. He promptly made them both and led another heart which Basildon took on the table with the king.
«Well,» said Basildon. «There are four trumps against me including the queen. I shall play Drax to have her.» He finessed against Drax. Meyer took the trick with the queen.
«Hell and damnation,» said Basildon. «What’s the queen doing in Meyer’s hand? Well, I’m damned. Anyway the rest are mine.» He fanned his cards down on the table. He looked defensively at his partner. «Can you beat it, Tommy? Drax doubles and Meyer has the queen.» There was not more than a natural exasperation in his voice.
Drax chuckled. «Didn’t expect my partner to have a Yarborough did you?» he said cheerfully to Basildon. «Well, that’s just the four hundred above the line. Your deal.» He cut the cards to Basildon and the game went on.
So it had been Drax’s deal the hand before. That might be important. Bond lit a cigarette and reflectively examined the back of Drax’s head.
M.’s voice cut in on Bond’s thoughts. «You remember my friend Commander Bond, Basil? Thought we’d come along and play some bridge this evening.»
Basildon smiled up at Bond. «Evening,» he said. He waved a hand round the table from the left to right. «Meyer, Dangerfield, Drax.» The three men looked up briefly and Bond nodded a greeting to the table in general. «You all know the Admiral,» added the Chairman, starting to deal.
Drax half turned in his chair. «Ah, the Admiral,» he said boisterously. «Glad to have you aboard, Admiral. Drink?»
«No, thanks,» said M. with a thin smile. «Just had one.»
Drax turned and glanced up at Bond, who caught a glimpse of a tuft of reddish moustache and a rather chilly blue eye. «What about you?» asked Drax perfunctorily.
«No, thanks,» said Bond.
Drax swiveled back to the table and picked up his cards. Bond watched the big blunt hands sort them.
Then he moved round the table with a second clue to ponder.
Drax didn’t sort his cards into suits as most players do, but only into reds and blacks, ungraded, making his hand very difficult to kibitz and almost impossible for one of his neighbours, if they were so inclined to decipher.
Bond knew it for the way people hold their hands who are very careful card-players indeed.
Bond went and stood beside the chimneypiece. He took out a cigarette and lit it at the flame from a small gas-jet enclosed in a silver grille—a relic of the days before the use of matches—that protruded from the wall beside him.
From where he stood he could see the hand of Meyer, and by moving a pace to the right, of Basildon. His view of Sir Hugo Drax was uninterrupted and he inspected him carefully while appearing to interest himself only in the game.
Drax gave the impression of being a little larger than life. He was physically big—about six foot tall, Bond guessed—and his shoulders were exceptionally broad. He had a big square head and the tight reddish hair was parted in the middle. On either side of the parting the hair dipped down in a curve towards the temples with the object, Bond assumed, of hiding as much as possible of the tissue of shining puckered skin that covered most of the right half of his face. Other relics of plastic surgery could be detected in the man’s right ear, which was not a perfect match with its companion on the left, and the right eye, which had been a surgical failure. It was considerably larger than the left eye, because of a contraction of the borrowed skin used to rebuild the upper and lower eyelids, and it looked painfully bloodshot. Bond doubted if it was capable of closing completely and he guessed that Drax covered it with a patch at night.
To conceal as much as possible of the unsightly taut skin that covered half his face, Drax had grown a bushy reddish moustache and had allowed his whiskers to grow down to the level of the lobes of his ears. He also had patches of hair on his cheek-bones.
The heavy moustache served another purpose. It helped to hide a naturally prognathous upper jaw and a marked protrusion of the upper row of teeth. Bond reflected that this was probably due to sucking his thumb as a child, and it had resulted in an ugly splaying, or diastema, of what Bond had heard his dentist call ‘the centrals’. The moustache helped to hide these ‘ogre’s teeth’ and it was only when Drax uttered, as he frequently did, his short braying laugh that the splay could be seen.
The general effect of the face—the riot of red-brown hair, the powerful nose and jaw, the florid skin—was flamboyant. It put Bond in mind of a ring-master at a circus. The contrasting sharpness and coldness of the left eye supported the likeness.
A bullying, boorish, loud-mouthed vulgarian. That would have been Bond’s verdict if he had not known something of Drax’s abilities. As it was, it crossed his mind that much of the effect might be Drax’s idea of a latter-day Regency buck—the harmless disguise of a man with a smashed face who was also a snob.
Looking for further clues, Bond noticed that Drax was sweating rather freely. Despite the occasional growl of thunder outside it was a cool evening, and yet Drax was constantly mopping his face and neck with a huge bandana handkerchief. He smoked incessantly, stubbing out the cork-tipped Virginia cigarettes after a dozen lungfuls of smoke and almost immediately lighting another from a box of fifty in his coat pocket. His big hands, their backs thickly covered with reddish hair, were always on the move, fiddling with his cards, handling the cigarette lighter that stood beside a plain flat silver cigarette-case in front of him, twisting a lock of hair on the side of his head, using the handkerchief on his face and neck. Occasionally he put a finger greedily to his mouth and worried a nail. Even at a distance Bond could see that every finger-nail was bitten down to the quick.
The hands themselves were strong and capable but the thumbs had something ungainly about them which it took Bond a moment or two to define. He finally detected that they were unnaturally long and reached level with the top joint of the index finger.
Bond concluded his inspection with Drax’s clothes which were expensive and in excellent taste—a dark blue pinstripe in lightweight flannel, double-breasted with turnback cuffs, a heavy white silk shirt with a stiff collar, an unobtrusive tie with a small grey and white check, modest cuff-links, which looked like Cartier, and a plain gold Patek Philippe watch with a black leather strap.
Bond lit another cigarette and concentrated on the game, leaving his subconscious to digest the details of Drax’s appearance and manner that had seemed to him significant and that might help to explain the riddle of his cheating, the nature of which had still to be discovered.
Half an hour later the cards had completed the circle.
«My deal,» said Drax with authority. «Game all and we have a satisfactory inflation above the line. Now then, Max, see if you can’t pick up a few aces. I’m tired of doing all the work.» He dealt smoothly and slowly round the table, keeping up a running fire of rather heavy-handed banter with the company. «Long rubber,» he said to M. who was sitting smoking his pipe between Drax and Basildon. «Sorry to have kept you out so long. How about a challenge after dinner? Max and I’ll take on you and Commander Thingummy. What did you say his name was? Good player?»