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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.
Largo laughed sharply. He stitched gaiety and bravado back on his face. «Aha!» His
voice was boisterous again. «My friend wishes to put the evil eye upon my cards. We
have a way to deal with that where I come from.» He lifted a hand, and with only the
first and little fingers outstretched in a fork, he prodded once, like a snake striking
toward Bond's face. To the crowd it was a playful piece of theater, but Bond, within the
strong aura of the man's animal magnetism, felt the ill temper, the malevolence behind
the old Mafia gesture.
Bond laughed good-naturedly. «That certainly put the hex on me. But what did it do to
the cards? Come on, your spectre against my spectre!»
Again the look of doubt came over Largo's face. Why again the use of this word? He
gave the shoe a hefty slap. «All right, my friend. We are wrestling the best of three falls.
Here comes the third.»
Quickly his first two fingers licked out the four cards. The table had hushed. Bond
faced his pair inside his hand. He had a total of five a ten of clubs and a five of hearts.
Five is a marginal number. One can either draw or not. Bond folded the cards face
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down on the table. He said, with the confident look of a man who has a six or a seven,
«No card, thank you.»
Largo's eyes narrowed as he tried to read Bond's face. He turned up his cards, flicked
them into the middle of the table with a gesture of disgust. He also had a count of five.
Now what was he to do? Draw or not draw? He looked again at the quiet smile of
confidence on Bond's face and drew. It was a nine, the nine of spades. By drawing
another card instead of standing on his five and equaling Bond, he had drawn and now
had a four to Bond's five.
Impassively Bond turned up his cards. He said, «I'm afraid you should have killed the
evil eye in the pack, not in me.»
There was a buzz of comment round the table. «But if the Italian had stood on his five
. . .» «I always draw on a five.» «I never do.» «It was bad luck.» «No, it was bad play.»
Now it was an effort for Largo to keep the snarl off his face. But he managed it, the
forced smile lost its twist, the balled fists relaxed. He took a deep breath and held out
his hand to Bond. Bond took it, folding his thumb inside his palm just in case Largo
might give him a bone-crusher with his vast machine tool of a hand. But it was a firm
grasp and no more. Largo said, «Now I must wait for the shoe to come round again.
You have taken all my winnings. I have a hard evening's work ahead of me just when I
was going to take my niece for a drink and a dance.» He turned to Domino. «My dear, I
don't think you know Mr. Bond, except on the telephone. I'm afraid he has upset my
plans. You must find someone else to squire you.»
Bond said, «How do you do. Didn't we meet in the tobacconist's this morning?»
The girl screwed up her eyes. She said indifferently, «Yes? It is possible. I have such
a bad memory for faces.»
Bond said, «Well, could I give you a drink? I can just afford even a Nassau drink now,
thanks to the generosity of Mr. Largo. And I have finished here. This sort of thing can't
last. I mustn't press my luck.»
The girl got up. She said ungraciously, «If you have nothing better to do.» She turned
to Largo: «Emilio, perhaps if I take this Mr. Bond away, your luck will turn again. I will be
in the supper room having caviar and champagne. We must try and get as much of
your funds as we can back in the family.»
Largo laughed. His spirits had returned. He said, «You see, Mr. Bond, you are out of
the frying pan into the fire. In Dominetta's hands you may not fare so well as in mine.
See you later, my dear fellow. I must now get back to the salt mines where you have
consigned me.»
Bond said, «Well, thanks for the game. I will order champagne and caviar for three.
My spectre also deserves his reward.» Wondering again whether the shadow that
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flickered in Largo's eyes at the word had more significance than Italian superstition, he
got up and followed the girl between the crowded tables to the supper room. Domino
made for a shadowed table in the farthest corner of the room. Walking behind her,
Bond had noticed for the first time she had the smallest trace of a limp. He found it
endearing, a touch of childish sweetness beneath the authority and blatant sex appeal
of a girl to whom he had been inclined to award that highest, but toughest, French title
a courtisane de marque .
When the Clicquot rosé and fifty dollars' worth of Beluga caviar came anything less,
he had commented to her, would be no more than a spoonful he asked her about the
limp. «Did you hurt yourself swimming today?»
She looked at him gravely. «No. I have one leg an inch shorter than the other. Does it
displease you?»
«No. It's pretty. It makes you something of a child.» «Instead of a hard old kept
woman. Yes?» Her eyes challenged him.
«Is that how you see yourself?»
«It's rather obvious isn't it? Anyway, it's what everyone in Nassau thinks.» She looked
him squarely in the eyes, but with a touch of pleading.
«Nobody's told me that. Anyway, I make up my own mind about men and women.
What's the good of other people's opinions? Animals don't consult each other about
other animals. They look and sniff and feel. In love and hate, and everything in
between, those are the only tests that matter. But people are unsure of their own
instincts. They want reassurance. So they ask someone else whether they should like a
particular person or not. And as the world loves bad news, they nearly always get a bad
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