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 1,600 dollars to cover Bond’s stake. Bond thought: I have made 1,600 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 – 1,600 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 switched 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, towards Bond’s face. To the crowd it was a playful piece of theatre, 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 flicked 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 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 equalling 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.’
