THUNDERBALL: by Ian Fleming

The big brown hand gave the shoe a soft slap. Largo eased out the pink tongue of playing card and moved it across the baize to Bond. He took one for himself and then pressed out one more for each of them. Bond picked up his first card and flicked it face up into the middle of the table. It was a nine, the nine of diamonds. Bond glanced sideways at Largo. He said, “That is always a good start—so good that I will also face my second card.” He casually flicked it out to join the nine. It turned over in mid-air and fell besides the nine. It was a glorious ten, the ten of spades. Unless Largo’s two cards also added up to nine or nineteen, Bond had won.

Largo laughed, but the laugh had a hard edge to it. “You certainly make me try,” he said gaily. He threw his cards to follow Bond’s. They were the eight of hearts and the king of clubs. Largo had lost by a pip—two naturals, but one just better than the other, the crudest way to lose. Largo laughed hugely. “Somebody had to be second,” he said to the table at large. “What did I say? The English can pull what they like out of the shoe.”

The croupier pushed the chips across to Bond. Bond made a small pile of them. He gestured at the heap in front of Largo: “So, it seems, can the Italians. I told you this afternoon we should go into partnership.”

Largo laughed delightedly. “Well, let’s just try once again. Put in what you have won and I will banco it in partnership with Mr. Snow on your right. Yes, Mr. Snow?”

Mr. Snow, a tough-looking European who, Bond remembered, was one of the shareholders, agreed. Bond put in the eight hundred and they each put in four against him. Bond won again, this time with a six against a five for the table—once more by one point.

Largo shook his head mournfully. “Now indeed we have seen the writing on the wall. Mr. Snow, you will have to continue alone. This Mr. Bond has green fingers against me, I surrender.”

Now Largo was smiling only with his mouth. Mr. Snow suivied and pushed forward sixteen hundred dollars to cover Bond’s stake. Bond thought: I have made sixteen hundred dollars in two coups, over five hundred pounds. And it would be fun to pass the bank and for the bank to go down on the next hand. He withdrew his stake and said, “ La main passe .” There was a buzz of comment. Largo said dramatically, “Don’t do it to me! Don’t tell me the bank’s going to go down on the next hand! If it does I shoot myself. Okay, okay, I will buy Mr. Bond’s bank and we will see.” He threw some plaques out on to the table—sixteen hundred dollars’ worth.

And Bond heard his own voice say banco! He was bancoing his own bank—telling Largo that he had done it to him once, then twice, and now he was going to do it, inevitably, again!

Largo turned round to face Bond. Smiling with his mouth, he narrowed his eyes and looked carefully, with a new curiosity, at Bond’s face. He said quietly, “But you are hunting me, my dear fellow. You are pursuing me. What is this? Vendetta?”

Bond thought: I will see if an association of words does something to him. He said, “When I came to the table I saw a spectre.” He said the word casually, with no hint at double meaning.

The smile came off Largo’s face as if he had been slapped. It was at once switched on again, but now the whole face was tense, strained, and the eyes had gone watchful and very hard. His tongue came out and touched his lips. “Really? What do you mean?”

Bond said lightly, “The spectre of defeat. I thought your luck was on the turn. Perhaps I was wrong.” He gestured at the shoe. “Let’s see.”

The table had gone quiet. The players and spectators felt that a tension had come between these two men. Suddenly there was the smell of enmity where before there had been only jokes. A glove had been thrown down, by the Englishman. Was it about the girl? Probably. The crowd licked its lips.

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