'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. He must have won.
The croupier's spatula reached almost apologetically across the table. There was not a man at the table who did not believe Bond was defeated.
The spatula flicked the two pink cards over on their backs. The gay red queens smiled up at the lights.
'Et le neuf.'
A great gasp went up round the table, and then a hubbub of talk.
Bond's eyes were on Le Chiffre. The big man fell back in his chair as if slugged above the heart. His mouth opened and shut once or twice and his right hand felt at his throat. Then he rocked back. His lips were grey.
As the huge stack of plaques was shunted across the table to Bond the banker reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and threw a wad of notes on to the table.
The croupier riffled through them.
'Un banco de dix millions,' he announced. He slapped down their equivalent in ten plaques of a million each.
This is the kill, thought Bond. This man has reached the point of no return. This is the last of his capital. He has come to where I stood an hour ago and he is making the last gesture that I made. But if this man loses, there is no one to come to his aid, no miracle to help him.
Bond sat back and lit a cigarette. On a small table beside him half a bottle of Clicquot and a glass had materialized. Without asking who the benefactor was, Bond filled the glass to the brim and drank it down in two long draughts.
Then he leant back with his arms curled forward on the table in front of him like the arms of a wrestler seeking a hold at the opening of a bout of ju-jitsu.
The players on his left remained silent.
'Banco,' he said, speaking straight at Le Chiffre.
Once more the two cards were borne over to him and this time the croupier slipped them into the green lagoon between the outstretched arms.
Bond curled his right hand in, glanced briefly down and flipped the cards face up into the middle of the table.
'Le Neuf,' said the croupier.
Le Chiffre was gazing down at his own two black kings.
'Et le baccarat,' and the croupier eased across the table the fat tide of plaques.
Le Chiffre watched them go to join the serried millions in the shadow of Bond's left arm, then he stood up slowly and without a word he brushed past the players to the break in the rail. He unhooked the velvet-covered chain and............