Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon. Henri Charriere

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      ‘Out of the miners’ pockets.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘By shooting craps every night, and by sometimes losing.’

      ‘I get you, mate. When do we leave?’

      ‘Wait a minute.’ He was very pleased with the effect of his words: slowly he stood up, pulled a table out into the middle of the room, spread a blanket over it and brought out six pairs of dice. ‘Have a good look.’ Very carefully I examined them. They were not loaded.

      ‘No one could say those dice were cogged, could they?’

      ‘Nobody.’

      He brought a gauge out of a felt case, gave it to me and said, ‘Measure.’ One of the sides had been carefully filed and polished, reducing it less than a tenth of a millimetre. All you could see was shine. ‘Try and throw seven or eleven.’ I rolled the dice. Neither seven nor eleven. ‘My turn now.’ Jojo deliberately made a little ruck in the blanket. He held the dice with the tips of his fingers. ‘That’s what we call the nippers,’ he observed. ‘Here we go! And there’s seven! And there’s eleven! And eleven! And seven! You want six! Boom, there’s six! Six with four and two or five and one? There you are. Is the gentleman satisfied?’

      I was fascinated, utterly fascinated. I’d never seen such a thing: it was extraordinary. You couldn’t make out the slightest false move.

      ‘Listen, mate, I’ve been shooting craps for ever. I started on the Butte when I was eight. I’ve risked shooting them, mate, I’ve risked shooting them with dice like that, and do you know where? On the crap-table at the Gare de l’Est, in the days of Roger Sole and Co.’

      ‘I remember. There were some very quaint specimens there.’

      ‘You don’t have to tell me. And among the regulars, as well as the wide boys and the pimps and the odds and sods, there were cops as famous as Jojo-le-Beau, the pimp-cop from La Madeleine, and specialists from the gambling squad. And they were done as brown as the rest. So you see there’s no coming unstuck if you shoot these craps in a miners’ camp.’

      ‘True enough.’

      ‘But get this: the one place is as dangerous as the other. At the Gare de l’Est the crooks were as quick on the draw as the miners. Just one difference: in Paris you shoot and you light out as quick as you can. At the mine, you shoot and stay put. There are no pigs: the miners make their own laws.’ He paused, slowly emptied his glass, and went on, ‘Well now, Papillon, are you coming with me?’

      I reflected for a moment; but not for long. The adventure tempted me. It was risky, without doubt; those miners would not be choir-boys – far from it; but there might be big money to be picked up. Come on, Papillon, banco on Jojo! And again I said to him, ‘When do we leave?’

      ‘Tomorrow afternoon, if you like: at five, after the heat of the day. That’ll give us time to get things together. We’ll travel by night at first. You got a gun?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘A good knife?’

      ‘No knife.’

      ‘Never mind. I’ll look after that. Ciao.’

      I went back to the house, thinking about Maria. She’d certainly rather I went into the bush than to Caracas. I’d leave Picolino with her. And then tomorrow, on my way for the diamonds! And seven! And eleven! Once, siete! Et sept, et onze! I was there already: all I had left to do was to learn all the numbers in Spanish, English, Brazilian and Italian.

      I found José at home. I told him I’d changed my mind. Caracas would be for another time; at present I was going off with an old white-haired Frenchman called Jojo to the diamond-mines.

      ‘What are you going with him as?’

      ‘As his partner, of course.’

      ‘He always gives his partners half his winnings.’

      ‘That’s the rule. Do you know men who’ve worked with him?’

      ‘Three.’

      ‘Did they make plenty of money?’

      ‘I don’t know. I dare say they did. Each one of them made three or four trips.’

      ‘And what about after those three or four trips?’

      ‘After? They never came back.’

      ‘Why not? Did they settle down there at the mines?’

      ‘No. They were dead.’

      ‘Is that right? Fever?’

      ‘No. Killed by the miners.’

      ‘Oh. Jojo must be a lucky guy, if he always got out of it.’

      ‘Yes. But Jojo, he’s very knowing. He never wins much himself: he works it so that his partner wins.’

      ‘I see. So it’s the other man who’s in danger; not him. It’s as well to know. Thanks, José.’

      ‘You’re not going, now that I’ve told you that?’

      ‘One last question, and give me the straight answer: is there a chance of coming back with a lot of dough after two or three trips?’

      ‘Sure.’

      ‘So Jojo is rich. Why does he go back there, then? I saw him loading the mules.’

      ‘To begin with Jojo doesn’t risk anything, as I said. Secondly, he was certainly not going off. Those mules belong to his father-in-law. He made up his mind to go because he met you.’

      ‘But what about the stuff he was loading, or getting ready to load?’

      ‘How do you know it was for him?’

      ‘Oh-ho. What other advice have you got?’

      ‘Don’t go.’

      ‘Not that. I’ve made up my mind to go. What else?’

      José bent his head as if to think. A long pause. When he looked up again his face was bright. His eyes shone with intelligence, and slowly, drawing out his words, he said, ‘Listen to the advice of a man who knows that world through and through. Every time there’s a big game, a real big game – when there’s a heap of diamonds in front of you and everything is at the boiling-point, get up unexpectedly and don’t sit there with your winnings. Say you’ve got a belly-ache and go straight to the john. You don’t come back, of course; and that night you sleep somewhere else, not in your own place.’

      ‘Pretty good, José. And what else?’

      ‘Although the buyers at the mine pay a good deal less than the ones in El Callao or Ciudad Bolivar, you want to sell them all the diamonds you win – sell them every day. And don’t ever take the cash. Make them give you receipts in your name so СКАЧАТЬ