Casino Royale E-Book

Ian Fleming

• Herausgeber: Ian Fleming Publications
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: James Bond 007
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 254

Beschreibung

Meet James Bond, the world's most famous spy.In the novel that introduced James Bond to the world, Ian Fleming's agent 007 is dispatched to a French casino in Royale-les-Eaux. His mission? Bankrupt a ruthless Russian agent who's been on a bad luck streak at the baccarat table. "Le Chiffre," has been a prime target of the British Secret Service for years. If Bond can wipe out his bankroll, Le Chiffre will likely be "retired" by his paymasters in Moscow. But what if the cards won't cooperate?Taut, tense, and effortlessly stylish, Ian Fleming's inaugural James Bond adventure has all the hallmarks that made the series a touchstone for a generation of readers.

Leseprobe

Casino Royale

Casino Royale

IAN FLEMING

Contents

  1: The Secret Agent

  2: Dossier for M

  3: Number 007

  4: L’Ennemi Écoute

  5: The Girl from Headquarters

  6: Two Men in Straw Hats

  7: Rouge et Noir

  8: Pink Lights and Champagne

  9: The Game Is Baccarat

10: The High Table

11: Moment of Truth

12: The Deadly Tube

13: A Whisper of Love, a Whisper of Hate

14: La Vie en Rose?

15: Black Hare and Grey Hound

16: The Crawling of the Skin

17: My Dear Boy

18: A Crag-Like Face

19: The White Tent

20: The Nature of Evil

21: Vesper

22: The Hastening Saloon

23: Tide of Passion

24: Fruit Défendu

25: Black-Patch

26: Sleep Well, My Darling

27: The Bleeding Heart

1

The Secret Agent

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes.

He shifted himself unobtrusively away from the roulette he had been playing and went to stand for a moment at the brass rail which surrounded breast-high the top table in the salle privée.

Le Chiffre was still playing and still, apparently, winning. There was an untidy pile of flecked hundredmille plaques in front of him. In the shadow of his thick left arm there nestled a discreet stack of the big yellow ones worth half a million francs each.

Bond watched the curious, impressive profile for a time, and then he shrugged his shoulders to lighten his thoughts and moved away.

The barrier surrounding the caisse comes as high as your chin and the caissier, who is generally nothing more than a minor bank clerk, sits on a stool and dips into his piles of notes and plaques. These are ranged on shelves. They are on a level, behind the protecting barrier, with your groin. The caissier has a cosh and a gun to protect him, and to heave over the barrier and steal some notes and then vault back and get out of the casino through the passages and doors would be impossible. And the caissiers generally work in pairs.

Bond reflected on the problem as he collected the sheaf of hundred thousand and then the sheaves of ten-thousand-franc notes. With another part of his mind, he had a vision of tomorrow’s regular morning meeting of the casino committee.

‘Monsieur Le Chiffre made two million. He played his usual game. Miss Fairchild made a million in an hour and then left. She executed three bancos of Monsieur Le Chiffre within an hour and then left. She played with coolness. Monsieur le Vicomte de Villorin made one million two at roulette. He was playing the maximum on the first and last dozens. He was lucky. Then the Englishman, Mister Bond, increased his winnings to exactly three million over the two days. He was playing a progressive system on red at table five. Duclos, the chef de partie, has the details. It seems that he is persevering and plays in maximums. He has luck. His nerves seem good. On the soirée, the chemin-de-fer won x, the baccarat won y and the roulette won z. The boule which was again badly frequented still makes its expenses.’

‘Merci, Monsieur Xavier.’

‘Merci, Monsieur le Président.’

Or something like that, thought Bond as he pushed his way through the swing doors of the salle privée and nodded to the bored man in evening clothes whose job it is to bar your entry and your exit with the electric foot-switch which can lock the doors at any hint of trouble.

And the casino committee would balance its books and break up to its homes or cafés for lunch.

As for robbing the caisse, in which Bond himself was not personally concerned, but only interested, he reflected that it would take ten good men, that they would certainly have to kill one or two employees, and that anyway you probably couldn’t find ten non-squeal killers in France, or in any other country for the matter of that.

As he gave a thousand francs to the vestiaire and walked down the steps of the casino, Bond made up his mind that Le Chiffre would in no circumstances try to rob the caisse and he put the contingency out of his mind. Instead he explored his present physical sensations. He felt the dry, uncomfortable gravel under his evening shoes, the bad, harsh taste in his mouth and the slight sweat under his arms. He could feel his eyes filling their sockets. The front of his face, his nose and antrum, were congested. He breathed the sweet night air deeply and focused his senses and his wits. He wanted to know if anyone had searched his room since he had left it before dinner.

He walked across the broad boulevard and through the gardens to the Hôtel Splendide. He smiled at the concierge who gave him his key – No. 45 on the first floor – and took the cable.

It was from Jamaica and read:

KINGSTONJA XXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXX BOND SPLENDIDE ROYALE-LES-EAUX SEINE INFERIEURE HAVANA CIGAR PRODUCTION ALL CUBAN FACTORIES 1915 TEN MILLION REPEAT TEN MILLION STOP HOPE THIS FIGURE YOU REQUIRE REGARDS

DASILVA

This meant that ten million francs was on the way to him. It was the reply to a request Bond had sent that afternoon through Paris to his headquarters in London asking for more funds. Paris had spoken to London where Clements, the head of Bond’s department, had spoken to M who had smiled wryly and told ‘The Broker’ to fix it with the Treasury.

Bond had once worked in Jamaica and his cover on the Royale assignment was that of a very rich client of Messrs Caffery, the principal import and export firm of Jamaica. So he was being controlled through Jamaica, through a taciturn man who was head of the picture desk on the Daily Gleaner, the famous newspaper of the Caribbean.

This man on the Gleaner, whose name was Fawcett, had been bookkeeper for one of the leading turtle-fisheries on the Cayman Islands. One of the men from the Caymans who had volunteered on the outbreak of war, he had ended up as a Paymaster’s clerk in a small naval intelligence organisation in Malta. At the end of the war, when, with a heavy heart, he was due to return to the Caymans, he was spotted by the section of the Secret Service concerned with the Caribbean. He was strenuously trained in photography and in some other arts and, with the quiet connivance of an influential man in Jamaica, found his way to the picture desk of the Gleaner.

In the intervals between sifting photographs submitted by the great agencies – Keystone, Wide-World, Universal, INP and Reuter-Photo – he would get peremptory instructions by telephone from a man he had never met to carry out certain simple operations requiring nothing but absolute discretion, speed and accuracy. For these occasional services he received twenty pounds a month paid into his account with the Royal Bank of Canada by a fictitious relative in England.

Fawcett’s present assignment was to relay immediately to Bond, full rates, the text of messages which he received at home by telephone from his anonymous contact. He had been told by this contact that nothing he would be asked to send would arouse the suspicion of the Jamaican post office. So he was not surprised to find himself suddenly appointed string correspondent for the ‘Maritime Press and Photo Agency’, with press-collect facilities to France and England, on a further monthly retainer of ten pounds.

He felt secure and encouraged, had visions of a BEM and made the first payment on a Morris Minor. He also bought a green eyeshade which he had long coveted and which helped him to impose his personality on the picture desk.

Some of this background to his cable passed through Bond’s mind. He was used to oblique control and rather liked it. He felt it feather-bedded him a little, allowed him to give or take an hour or two in his communications with M. He knew that this was probably a fallacy, that probably there was another member of the Service at Royale-les-Eaux who was reporting independently, but it did give the illusion that he wasn’t only 150 miles across the Channel from that deadly office building near Regent’s Park, being watched and judged by those few cold brains that made the whole show work. Just as Fawcett, the Cayman Islander in Kingston, knew that if he bought that Morris Minor outright instead of signing the hire-purchase agreement, someone in London would probably know and want to know where the money had come from.

Bond read the cable twice. He tore a telegram form off the pad on the desk (why give them carbon copies?) and wrote his reply in capital letters:

THANKS INFORMATION SHOULD SUFFICE

BOND

He handed this to the concierge and put the cable signed ‘DaSilva’ in his pocket. The employers (if any) of the concierge could bribe a copy out of the local post office, if the concierge hadn’t already steamed the envelope open or read the cable upside down in Bond’s hands.

He took his key and said good night and turned to the stairs, shaking his head at the liftman. Bond knew what an obliging danger-signal a lift could be. He didn’t expect anyone to be moving on the first floor, but he preferred to be prudent.

Walking quietly up on the balls of his feet, he regretted the hubris of his reply to M via Jamaica. As a gambler he knew it was a mistake to rely on too small a capital. Anyway, M probably wouldn’t let him have any more. He shrugged his shoulders and turned off the stairs into the corridor and walked softly to the door of his room.

Bond knew exactly where the switch was and it was with one flow of motion that he stood on the threshold with the door full open, the light on and a gun in his hand. The safe, empty room sneered at him. He ignored the half-open door of the bathroom and, locking himself in, he turned up the bed-light and the mirror-light and threw his gun on the settee beside the window. Then he bent down and inspected one of his own black hairs which still lay undisturbed where he had left it before dinner, wedged into the drawer of the writing-desk.

Next he examined a faint trace of talcum powder on the inner rim of the porcelain handle of the clothes cupboard. It appeared immaculate. He went into the bathroom, lifted the cover of the lavatory cistern and verified the level of the water against a small scratch on the copper ballcock.

Doing all this, inspecting these minute burglar-alarms, did not make him feel foolish or self-conscious. He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession. Routine precautions were to him no more unreasonable than they would be to a deep-sea diver or a test pilot, or to any man earning danger-money.

Satisfied that his room had not been searched while he was at the casino, Bond undressed and took a cold shower. Then he lit his seventieth cigarette of the day and sat down at the writing-table with the thick wad of his stake money and winnings beside him and entered some figures in a small notebook. Over the two days’ play, he was up exactly three million francs. In London he had been issued with ten million, and he had asked London for a further ten. With this on its way to the local branch of the Crédit Lyonnais, his working capital amounted to twenty-three million francs, or some twenty-three thousand pounds.

For a few moments Bond sat motionless, gazing out of the window across the dark sea, then he shoved the bundle of banknotes under the pillow of the ornate single bed, cleaned his teeth, turned out the lights and climbed with relief between the harsh French sheets. For ten minutes he lay on his left side reflecting on the events of the day. Then he turned over and focused his mind towards the tunnel of sleep.

His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the .38 Colt Police Positive with the sawn barrel. Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal and cold.

2

Dossier for M

Two weeks before, this memorandum had gone from Station S of the Secret Service to M, who was then and is today head of this adjunct to the British defence ministries:

To: M

From: Head of S

Subject: A project for the destruction of Monsieur Le Chiffre (alias ‘The Number’, ‘Herr Nummer’, ‘Herr Ziffer’, etc.), one of the Opposition’s chief agents in France and undercover Paymaster of the Syndicat des Ouvriers d’Alsace, the communist-controlled trade union in the heavy and transport industries of Alsace and, as we know, an important fifth column in the event of war with Redland.

Documentation: Head of Archives’ biography of Le Chiffre is attached at Appendix A. Also, Appendix B, a note on SMERSH.We have been feeling for some time that Le Chiffre is getting into deep water. In nearly all respects he is an admirable agent of the USSR, but his gross physical habits and predilections are an Achilles heel of which we have been able to take advantage from time to time and one of his mistresses is a Eurasian (No. 1860) controlled by Station F, who has recently been able to obtain insight into his private affairs.

Briefly, it seems that Le Chiffre is on the brink of a financial crisis. Certain straws in the wind were noticed by 1860 – some discreet sales of jewellery, the disposal of a villa at Antibes, and a general tendency to check the loose spending which has always been a feature of his way of life. Further inquiries were made with the help of our friends of the Deuxième Bureau (with whom we have been working jointly on this case) and a curious story has come to light.

In January 1946, Le Chiffre bought control of a chain of brothels, known as the Cordon Jaune, operating in Normandy and Brittany. He was foolish enough to employ for this purpose some fifty million francs of the moneys entrusted to him by Leningrad Section III for the financing of SODA, the trade union mentioned above.

Normally the Cordon Jaune would have proved a most excellent investment and it is possible that Le Chiffre was motivated more by a desire to increase his union funds than by the hope of lining his own pocket by speculating with his employers’ money. However that may be, it is clear that he could have found many investments more savoury than prostitution, if he had not been tempted by the by-product of unlimited women for his personal use.

Fate rebuked him with terrifying swiftness.

Barely three months later, on 13 April, there was passed in France Law No. 46685 entitled Loi Tendant à la Fermeture des Maisons de Tolérance et au Renforcement de la Lutte contre le Proxénitisme.

(When M came to this sentence he grunted and pressed a switch on the intercom.

‘Head of S?’

‘Sir.’

‘What the hell does this word mean?’ He spelt it out. ‘Pimping, sir.’

‘This is not the Berlitz School of Languages, Head of S. If you want to show off your knowledge of foreign jawbreakers, be good enough to provide a crib. Better still, write in English.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

M released the switch and turned back to the memorandum.)

This law [he read], known popularly as ‘La Loi Marthe Richard’, closing all houses of ill-fame and forbidding the sale of pornographic books and films, knocked the bottom out of his investment almost overnight and suddenly Le Chiffre was faced with a serious deficit in his union funds. In desperation he turned his open houses into maisons de passe where clandestine rendezvous could be arranged on the borderline of the law, and he continued to operate one or two cinémas bleus underground, but these shifts in no way served to cover his overheads, and all attempts to sell his investment, even at a heavy loss, failed dismally. Meanwhile the Police des Moeurs were on his trail and in a short while twenty or more of his establishments were closed down.

The police were, of course, only interested in this man as a big-time brothel-keeper and it was not until we expressed an interest in his finances that the Deuxième Bureau unearthed the parallel dossier which was running with their colleagues of the police department.

The significance of the situation became apparent to us and to our French friends and, in the past few months, a veritable rat-hunt has been operated by the police after the establishments of the Cordon Jaune, with the result that today nothing remains of Le Chiffre’s original investment and any routine inquiry would reveal a deficit of around fifty million francs in the trade-union funds of which he is the treasurer and paymaster.

It does not seem that the suspicions of Leningrad have been aroused yet but, unfortunately for Le Chiffre, it is possible that at any rate SMERSH is on the scent. Last week a high-grade source of Station P reported that a senior official of this efficient organ of Soviet vengeance had left Warsaw for Strasbourg via the Eastern sector of Berlin. There is no confirmation of this report from the Deuxième Bureau, nor from the authorities in Strasbourg (who are reliable and thorough), and there is also no news from Le Chiffre’s headquarters there, which we have well covered by a double agent (in addition to 1860).

If Le Chiffre knew that SMERSH was on his tail or that they had the smallest suspicion of him, he would have no alternative but to commit suicide or attempt to escape, but his present plans suggest that while he is certainly desperate, he does not yet realise that his life may be at stake. It is these rather spectacular plans of his that have suggested to us a counter-operation which, though risky and unconventional, we submit at the end of this memorandum with confidence.

In brief, Le Chiffre plans, we believe, to follow the example of most other desperate till-robbers and make good the deficit in his accounts by gambling. The Bourse is too slow. So are the various illicit traffics in drugs, or rare medicines, such as aureo- and strepto-mycin and cortisone. No race tracks could carry the sort of stakes he will have to play and, if he won, he would more likely be killed than paid off.

In any case, we know that he has withdrawn the final twenty-five million francs from the treasury of his union and that he has taken a small villa in the neighbourhood of Royale-les-Eaux, just north of Dieppe, for a week from a fortnight tomorrow.

Now, it is expected that the Casino at Royale will see the highest gambling in Europe this summer. In an effort to wrest the big money from Deauville and Le Touquet, the Société des Bains de Mers de Royale have leased the baccarat and the two top chemin-de-fer tables to the Mahomet Ali Syndicate, a group of émigré

Egyptian bankers and businessmen with, it is said, a call on certain royal funds, who have for years been trying to cut in on the profits of Zographos and his Greek associates resulting from their monopoly of the highest French baccarat banks.

With the help of discreet publicity, a considerable number of the biggest operators in America and Europe have been encouraged to book at Royale this summer and it seems possible that this old-fashioned watering-place will regain some of its Victorian renown.

Be that as it may, it is here that Le Chiffre will, we are confident, endeavour on or after 15 June to make a profit at baccarat of fifty million francs on a working capital of twenty-five million. (And, incidentally, save his life.)

Proposed Counter-Operation

It would be greatly in the interests of this country and of the other nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that this powerful Soviet agent should be ridiculed and destroyed, that his communist trade union should be bankrupted and brought into disrepute, and that this potential fifth column, with a strength of fifty thousand, capable in time of war of controlling a wide sector of France’s northern frontier, should lose faith and cohesion. All this would result if Le Chiffre could be defeated at the tables. (N.B. Assassination is pointless. Leningrad would quickly cover up his defalcations and make him into a martyr.)

We therefore recommend that the finest gambler available to the Service should be given the necessary funds and endeavour to out-gamble this man.

The risks are obvious and the possible loss to the Secret funds is high, but other operations on which large sums have been hazarded have had fewer chances of success, often for a smaller objective.

If the decision is unfavourable, the only alternative would be to place our information and our recommendations in the hands of the Deuxième Bureau or of our American colleagues of the Combined Intelligence Agency in Washington. Both of these organisations would doubtless be delighted to take over the scheme.

Signed: S.

Appendix A

Name: Le Chiffre.

Aliases: Variations on the words ‘cypher’ or ‘number’ in different languages; e.g. ‘Herr Ziffer’.

Origin: Unknown.

First encountered as a displaced person, inmate of Dachau DP camp in the US Zone of Germany, June 1945. Apparently suffering from amnesia and paralysis of vocal cords (? both feigned). Dumbness succumbed to therapy, but subject continued to claim total loss of memory except associations with Alsace Lorraine and Strasbourg whither he was transferred in September 1945, on Stateless Passport No. 304–596. Adopted the name ‘Le Chiffre’ (‘since I am only a number on a passport’). No Christian names.

Age: About 45.

Description: Height 5 ft. 8 in. Weight 18 stone. Complexion very pale. Clean-shaven. Hair red-brown, en brosse. Eyes very dark brown with whites showing all round iris. Small, rather feminine mouth. False teeth of expensive quality. Ears small, with large lobes, indicating some Jewish blood. Hands small, well-tended, hirsute. Feet small. Racially, subject is probably a mixture of Mediterranean with Prussian or Polish strains. Dresses well and meticulously, generally in dark double-breasted suits. Smokes incessantly Caporals, using a denicotinising holder. At frequent intervals inhales from benzedrine inhaler. Voice soft and even. Bilingual in French and English. Good German. Traces of Marseillais accent. Smiles infrequently. Does not laugh.

Habits: Mostly expensive, but discreet. Large sexual appetites. Flagellant. Expert driver of fast cars. Adept with small arms and other forms of personal combat, including knives. Carries three Eversharp razor blades, in hat-band, heel of left shoe and cigarette case. Knowledge of accountancy and mathematics. Fine gambler. Always accompanied by two armed guards, well-dressed, one French, one German (details available).

Comment: A formidable and dangerous agent of the USSR, controlled by Leningrad Section III through Paris.

Signed: Archivist

Appendix B

Subject: SMERSH

Sources: Own archives and scanty material made available by Deuxième Bureau and CIA Washington.

SMERSH is a conjunction of two Russian words: ‘Smyert Shpionam’, meaning roughly: ‘Death to Spies’.

Ranks above MWD (formerly NKVD) and is believed to come under the personal direction of Beria.

Headquarters: Leningrad (substation at Moscow).

Its task is the elimination of all forms of treachery and backsliding within the various branches of the Soviet Secret Service and Secret Police at home and abroad. It is the most powerful and feared organisation in the USSR and is popularly believed never to have failed in a mission of vengeance.

It is thought that SMERSH was responsible for the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico (22 August 1940) and may indeed have made its name with this successful murder after attempts by other Russian individuals and organisations had failed.

SMERSH was next heard of when Hitler attacked Russia. It was then rapidly expanded to cope with treachery and double agents during the retreat of the Soviet forces in 1941. At that time it worked as an execution squad for the NKVD and its present selective mission was not so clearly defined.

The organisation itself was thoroughly purged after the war and is now believed to consist of only a few hundred operatives of very high quality divided into five sections:

Department I: In charge of counter-intelligence among Soviet organisations at home and abroad.

Department II: Operations, including executions.

Department III: Administration and Finance.

Department IV: Investigations and legal work. Personnel.

Department V: Prosecutions: the section which passes final judgement on all victims.

Only one SMERSH operative has come into our hands since the war: Goytchev, alias Garrad-Jones. He shot Petchora, medical officer at the Yugoslav Embassy, in Hyde Park, 7 August 1948. During interrogation he committed suicide by swallowing a coat-button of compressed potassium cyanide. He revealed nothing beyond his membership of SMERSH, of which he was arrogantly boastful.

We believe that the following British double agents were victims of SMERSH: Donovan, Harthrop-Vane, Elizabeth Dumont, Ventnor, Mace, Savarin. (For details see Morgue: Section Q.)

Conclusion: Every effort should be made to improve our knowledge of this very powerful organisation and destroy its operatives.

3

Number 007

Head of S (the section of the Secret Service concerned with the Soviet Union) was so keen on his plan for the destruction of Le Chiffre, and it was basically his own plan, that he took the memorandum himself and went up to the top floor of the gloomy building overlooking Regent’s Park and through the green baize door and along the corridor to the end room.

He walked belligerently up to M’s Chief of Staff, a young sapper who had earned his spurs as one of the secretariat to the Chiefs of Staff committee after having been wounded during a sabotage operation in 1944, and had kept his sense of humour in spite of both experiences.

‘Now look here, Bill. I want to sell something to the Chief. Is this a good moment?’

‘What do you think, Penny?’ The Chief of Staff turned to M’s private secretary who shared the room with him.

Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical.

‘Should be all right. He won a bit of a victory at the FO this morning and he’s not got anyone for the next half an hour.’ She smiled encouragingly at Head of S whom she liked for himself and for the importance of his section.

‘Well, here’s the dope, Bill.’ He handed over the black folder with the red star which stood for Top Secret. ‘And for God’s sake look enthusiastic when you give it him. And tell him I’ll wait here and read a good code-book while he’s considering it. He may want some more details, and anyway I want to see you two don’t pester him with anything else until he’s finished.’

‘All right, sir.’ The Chief of Staff pressed a switch and leant towards the intercom on his desk.

‘Yes?’ asked a quiet, flat voice.

‘Head of S has an urgent docket for you, sir.’

There was a pause.

‘Bring it in,’ said the voice.

The Chief of Staff released the switch and stood up.

‘Thanks, Bill. I’ll be next door,’ said Head of S.

The Chief of Staff crossed his office and went through the double doors leading into M’s room. In a moment he came out and over the entrance a small blue light burned the warning that M was not to be disturbed.

Later, a triumphant Head of S said to his Number Two: ‘We nearly cooked ourselves with that last paragraph. He said it was subversion and blackmail. He got pretty sharp about it. Anyway, he approves. Says the idea’s crazy, but worth trying if the Treasury will play and he thinks they will. He’s going to tell them it’s a better gamble than the money we’re putting into deserting Russian colonels who turn double after a few months’ “asylum” here. And he’s longing to get at Le Chiffre, and anyway he’s got the right man and wants to try him out on the job.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Number Two.

‘One of the Double Os – I guess 007. He’s tough and M thinks there may be trouble with those gunmen of Le Chiffre’s. He must be pretty good with the cards or he wouldn’t have sat in the Casino in Monte Carlo for two months before the war watching that Romanian team work their stuff with the invisible ink and the dark glasses. He and the Deuxième bowled them out in the end and 007 turned in a million francs he had won at chemmy. Good money in those days.’

James Bond’s interview with M had been short.

‘What about it, Bond?’ asked M when Bond came back into his room after reading Head of S’s memorandum and after gazing for ten minutes out of the waiting-room window at the distant trees in the park.

Bond looked across the desk into the shrewd, clear eyes.

‘It’s very kind of you, sir, I’d like to do it. But I can’t promise to win. The odds at baccarat are the best after trente-et-quarante – evens except for the tiny cagnotte – but I might get a bad run against me and get cleaned out. Play’s going to be pretty high – opening’ll go up to half a million, I should think.’