007 Complete Series - 21 James Bond Novels in One Volume. Ian Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ est fait.' and the gun would fire whether the gunman had reached ten or not.

      'Six.'

      Bond decided. It was a chance. He carefully moved his hands to the edge of the table, gripped it, edged his buttocks right back, feeling the sharp gun-sight grind into his coccyx.

      'Sept.'

      The chef de partie turned to Le Chiffre with his eyebrows lifted, waiting for the banker's nod that he was ready to play.

      Suddenly Bond heaved backwards with all his strength. His momentum tipped the cross-bar of the chair-back down so quickly that it cracked across the malacca tube and wrenched it from the gunman's hand before he could pull the trigger.

      Bond went head-over-heels on to the ground amongst the spectators' feet, his legs in the air. The back of the chair splintered with a sharp crack. There were cries of dismay. The spectators cringed away and then, reassured, clustered back. Hands helped him to his feet and brushed him down. The huissier bustled up with the chef de partie. At all costs a scandal must be avoided.

      Bond held on to the brass rail. He looked confused and embarrassed. He brushed his hands across his forehead.

      'A momentary faintness,' he said. 'It is nothing--the excitement, the heat.'

      There were expressions of sympathy. Naturally, with this tremendous game. Would Monsieur prefer to withdraw, to lie down, to go home? Should a doctor be fetched?

      Bond shook his head. He was perfectly all right now. His excuses to the table. To the banker also.

      A new chair was brought and he sat down. He looked across at Le Chiffre. Through his relief at being alive, he felt a moment of triumph at what he saw--some fear in the fat, pale face.

      There was a buzz of speculation round the table. Bond's neighbours on both sides of him bent forward and spoke solicitously about the heat and the lateness of the hour and the smoke and the lack of air.

      Bond replied politely. He turned to examine the crowd behind him. There was no trace of the gunman, but the huissier was looking for someone to claim the malacca stick. It seemed undamaged. But it no longer carried a rubber tip. Bond beckoned to him.

      'If you will give it to that gentleman over there,' he indicated Felix Leiter, 'he will return it. It belongs to an acquaintance of his.'

      The huissier bowed.

      Bond grimly reflected that a short examination would reveal to Leiter why he had made such an embarrassing public display of himself.

      He turned back to the table and tapped the green cloth in front of him to show that he was ready.

      Chapter 13

       'A WHISPER OF LOVE, A WHISPER OF HATE'

       Table of Content

      'La partie continue,' announced the chef impressively. 'Un banco de trente-deux millions.'

      The spectators craned forward. Le Chiffre hit the shoe with a flat-handed slap that made it rattle. As an afterthought he took out his benzedrine inhaler and sucked the vapour up his nose.

      'Filthy brute,' said Mrs Du Pont on Bond's left.

      Bond's mind was clear again. By a miracle he had survived a devastating wound. He could feel his armpits still wet with the fear of it. But the success of his gambit with the chair had wiped out all memories of the dreadful valley of defeat through which he had just passed.

      He had made a fool of himself. The game had been interrupted for at least ten minutes, a delay unheard of in a respectable casino, but now the cards were waiting for him in the shoe. They must not fail him. He felt his heart lift at the prospect of what was to come.

      It was two o'clock in the morning. Apart from the thick crowd round the big game, play was still going on at three of the chemin-de-fer games and at the same number of roulette tables.

      In the silence round his own table, Bond suddenly heard a distant croupier intone: 'Neuf. Le rouge gagne, impair et manque.'

      Was this an omen for him or for Le Chiffre?

      The two cards slithered towards him across the green sea.

      Like an octopus under a rock, Le Chiffre watched him from the other side of the table.

      Bond reached out a steady right hand and drew the cards towards him. Would it be the lift of the heart which a nine brings, or an eight brings?

      He fanned the two cards under the curtain of his hand. The muscles of his jaw rippled as he clenched his teeth. His whole body stiffened in a reflex of self-defence.

      He had two queens, two red queens.

      They looked roguishly back at him from the shadows. They were the worst. They were nothing. Zero. Baccarat.

      "A card," said Bond fighting to keep hopelessness out of his voice. He felt Le Chiffre's eyes boring into his brain.

      The banker slowly turned his own two cards face up.

      He had a count of three--a king and a black three.

      Bond softly exhaled a cloud of tobacco smoke. He still had a chance. Now he was really faced with the moment of truth. Le Chiffre slapped the shoe, slipped out a card, Bond's fate, and slowly turned it face up.

      It was a nine, a wonderful nine of hearts, the card known in gipsy magic as 'a whisper of love, a whisper of hate', the card that meant almost certain victory for Bond.

      The croupier slipped it delicately across. To Le Chiffre it meant nothing. Bond might have had a one, in which case he now had ten points, or nothing, or baccarat, as it is called. Or he might have had a two, three, four, or even five. In which case, with the nine, his maximum count would be four.

      Holding a three and giving nine is one of the moot situations at the game. The odds are so nearly divided between to draw or not to draw. Bond let the banker sweat it out. Since his nine could only be equalled by the banker drawing a six, he would normally have shown his count if it had been a friendly game.

      Bond's cards lay on the table before him, the two impersonal pale pink-patterned backs and the faced nine of hearts. To Le Chiffre the nine might be telling the truth or many variations of lies.

      The whole secret lay in the reverse of the two pink backs where the pair of queens kissed the green cloth.

      The sweat was running down either side of the banker's beaky nose. His thick tongue came out slyly and licked a drop out of the corner of his red gash of a mouth. He looked at Bond's cards, and then at his own, and then back at Bond's.

      Then his whole body shrugged and he slipped out a card for himself from the lisping shoe.

      He faced it. The table craned. It was a wonderful card, a five.

      'Huit à la banque,' said the croupier.

      As Bond sat silent, Le Chiffre suddenly grinned wolfishly. СКАЧАТЬ