There was a sigh of relief round the table. The spell had been broken! And a whisper of envy as the heavy, mother-of-pearl plaques piled nearly a foot high, four million, six hundred thousand francs’ worth, well over three thousand pounds, were shunted across to Bond with the flat of the croupier’s spatula. Bond tossed a plaque for a thousand New Francs to the croupier, received the traditional ‘Merci, monsieur! Pour le personnel!’ and the game went on.
James Bond lit a cigarette and paid little attention as the shoe went shunting round the table away from him. He had made a packet, dammit! A bloody packet! Now he must be careful. Sit on it. But not too careful, not sit on all of it! This was a glorious evening. It was barely past midnight. He didn’t want to go home yet. So be it! He would run his bank when it came to him, but do no bancoing of the others – absolutely none. The cards had got hot. His run had shown that. There would be other runs now, and he could easily burn his fingers chasing them.
Bond was right. When the shoe got to Number Five, to one of the Lille tycoons two places to the left of Bond, an ill-mannered, loud-mouthed player who smoked a cigar out of an amber-and-gold holder and who tore at the cards with heavily manicured, spatulate fingers and slapped them down like a German tarot player, he quickly got through the third coup and was off. Bond, in accordance with his plan, left him severely alone and now, at the sixth coup, the bank stood at two hundred thousand New Francs – two million of the old, and the table had got wary again. Everyone was sitting on his money.
The croupier and the Chef de Jeu made their loud calls, ‘Un banco de deux cent mille! Faites vos jeux, messieurs. II reste à compléter! Un banco de deux cent mille!’
And then there she was! She had come from nowhere and was standing beside the croupier, and Bond had no time to take in more than golden arms, a beautiful golden face with brilliant blue eyes and shocking pink lips, some kind of a plain white dress, a bell of golden hair down to her shoulders, and then it came. ‘Banco!’
Everyone looked at her and there was a moment’s silence. And then ‘Le banco est fait’ from the croupier, and the monster from Lille (as Bond now saw him) was tearing the cards out of the shoe, and hers were on their way over to her on the croupier’s spatula.
She bent down and there was a moment of discreet cleavage in the white V of her neckline.
‘Une carte.’
Bond’s heart sank. She certainly hadn’t anything better than a five. The monster turned his up. Seven. And now he scrabbled out a card for her and flicked it contemptuously across. A simpering queen!
The croupier delicately faced her other two cards with the tip of his spatula. A four! She had lost!
Bond groaned inwardly and looked across to see how she had taken it.
What he saw was not reassuring. The girl was whispering urgently to the Chef de Jeu. He was shaking his head, sweat was beading on his cheeks. In the silence that had fallen round the table, the silence that licks its lips at the strong smell of scandal, which was now electric in the air, Bond heard the Chef de Jeu say firmly, ‘Mais c’est impossible. Je regrette, madame. Il faut vous arranger à la caisse.’
And now that most awful of all whispers in a casino was running among the watchers and the players like a slithering reptile: ‘Le coup du déshonneur! C’est le coup du déshonneur! Quelle honte! Quelle honte!’
Oh, my God! thought Bond. She’s done it! She hasn’t got the money! And for some reason she can’t get any credit at the caisse!
The monster from Lille was making the most of the situation. He knew that the casino would pay in the case of a default. He sat back with lowered eyes, puffing at his cigar, the injured party.
But Bond knew of the stigma the girl would carry for the rest of her life. The Casinos of France are a strong trade union. They have to be. Tomorrow the telegrams would go out: ‘Madame la Comtesse Teresa di Vicenzo, passport number X, is to be put on the black list.’ That would be the end of her casino life in France, in Italy, probably also in Germany, Egypt and, today, England. It was like being declared a bad risk at Lloyd’s or with the City security firm of Dun and Bradstreet. In American gambling circles, she might even have been liquidated. In Europe, for her, the fate would be almost as severe. In the circles in which, presumably, she moved, she would be bad news, unclean. The ‘coup du déshonneur’ simply wasn’t done. It was social ostracism.
Not caring about the social ostracism, thinking only about the wonderful girl who had outdriven him, shown him her tail, between Abbeville and Montreuil, James Bond leant slightly forward. He tossed two of the precious pearly plaques into the centre of the table. He said, with a slightly bored, slightly puzzled intonation, ‘Forgive me. Madame has forgotten that we agreed to play in partnership this evening.’ And, not looking at the girl, but speaking with authority to the Chef de Jeu, ‘I beg your pardon. My mind was elsewhere. Let the game continue.’
The tension round the table relaxed. Or rather it changed to another target, away from the girl. Was it true what this Englishman had said? But it must be! One does not pay two million francs for a girl. But previously there had been no relationship between them – so far as one could see. They had been at opposite sides of the table. No signs of complicity had been exchanged. And the girl? She had shown no emotion. She had looked at the man, once, with directness. Then she had quietly moved away from the table, towards the bar. There was certainly something odd here – something one did not understand. But the game was proceeding. The Chef de Jeu had surreptitiously wiped a handkerchief across his face. The croupier had raised his head, which, previously, had seemed to be bowed under some kind of emotional guillotine. And now the old pattern had re-established itself. ‘La partie continue. Un banco de quatre cent mille!’
James Bond glanced down at the still formidable pile of counters between his curved, relaxed arms. It would be nice to get that two million francs back. It might be hours before a banco of equal size offered the chance. After all, he was playing with the casino’s money! His profits represented ‘found’ money and, if he lost, he could still go away with a small profit – enough and to spare to pay for his night at Royale. And he had taken a dislike to the monster from Lille. It would be amusing to reverse the old fable – first to rescue the girl, then to slay the monster. And it was time for the man’s run of luck to end. After all, the cards have no memory!
James Bond had not enough funds to take the whole banco, only half of it, what is known as ‘avec la table’, meaning that the other players could make up the remaining half if they wanted to. Bond, forgetting the conservative strategy he had sworn himself to only half an hour before, leant slightly forward and said, ‘Avec la table,’ and pushed two hundred thousand New Francs over the line.