Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon. Henri Charriere

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      As I knew these guys were watching me, I left my pile there in front of me for everyone to see. I didn’t want to behave like a living safe-deposit today.

      Two or three times I told Jojo, in quick crook’s slang, that he was making me win too often. He looked as if he didn’t understand. I had worked the lavatory trick on them yesterday and I had not come back; so it was no good doing it now – if these four types meant to move in tonight, they were not going to wait for me to return: they’d get me between the shack and the shit-house.

      I felt the tension mount: the four images in each corner were more on edge than ever. Particularly one who kept smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the butt of the other.

      So now I started making bancos right and left, in spite of Jojo’s ugly looks. To crown it all I won instead of losing and, far from shrinking, my pile kept on piling up. It was all there in front of me, mostly in five-hundred-bolivar notes. I was so keyed up that as I took the dice I put my cigarette down on them and it burnt two holes in a folded five hundred. I played and lost this note together with three others in a two-thousand-bolo banco. The winner got up, said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and went out.

      In the heat of the game I took no notice of how the time passed, and then all at once to my amazement I saw the note there on the blanket again. I knew perfectly well who’d won it, a very thin bearded white man of about forty with a pale mark on the lobe of his left ear, standing out against the sunburn. But he was not here any more. In a couple of seconds I had put the scene together again: he’d gone out alone, I was certain of that. Yet not one of those four types had stirred. So that meant they had one or two accomplices outside. They must have a system of signalling from where they were that a guy was coming out loaded with cash and diamonds.