THE scene in the big gambling room had changed. It was much quieter. The orchestra had gone, and so had the droves of women, and there were only a few players at the tables. There were two or three 'shills' at the roulette, attractive girls in smart evening dresses who had been given fifty dollars with which to warm up the dead tables, and there was a very drunk man clinging on to the high surrounding wall of one of the crap tables and shouting exhortations to the dice.
And something else had changed. The dealer at the centre blackjack table nearest the bar was Tiffany Case.
So that was her job at The Tiara.
And then Bond saw that all the blackjack dealers were pretty women and that they were all dressed in the same smart Western outfit in grey and black-short grey skirt with a wide black metal-studded belt, grey blouse with a black handkerchief round the neck, a grey sombrero hanging down the back by a black cord, black half-Wellingtons over flesh-coloured nylons.
Bond looked at his watch again and moved slowly into the room. So Tiffany was going to false-deal him to win five thousand dollars. And of course they had chosen the moment when she had just come on duty and the first show of the big-name revue was still running in The Platinum Room. He would be alone with her at the table. No witnesses in case she muffed a deal from the bottom of the pack.
At exactly 10.5 Bond strolled easily up to the table and sat down facing her.
"Good evening."
"Hi." She gave him a thin, correct smile.
"What's the maximum?"
"A Grand."
As Bond slapped the ten l00-dollar notes down across the betting line, the pit-boss strolled over and stood beside Tiffany Case. He barely glanced at Bond. "Mebbe the guy would like a new deck, Miss Tiffany," he said. He handed her a fresh pack.
The girl stripped the cover off it and handed him the used cards.
The pit-boss stood back a few paces and appeared to lose interest.
The girl snapped the pack with a fluid motion of the hands, broke it and put the two halves flat on the table and executed what appeared to be a faultless Scarne shuffle. But Bond saw that the two halves did not quite marry and that when she lifted the pack off the table and carried out an innocent reshuffle she would be getting the two halves of the pack back into their original order. She repeated the manoeuvre again and put the pack down in front of Bond in an invitation to cut. Bond cut the cards and watched with approval as she carried out the difficult single-handed Annulment, one of the hardest gambits in card-sharping.
So the 'new' deck was fixed and the only result of all this fair play routine was to get all the cards back into the order in which they were arranged when they left the wrappers. But it was brilliant manipulation and Bond was full of admiration for the assurance of the girl's hands.
He looked up into her grey eyes. Was there a hint of complicity in them, a hint of amusement at the odd game they were playing across the narrow green board?
She dealt him two cards and then gave two to herself. Suddenly Bond realized that he would have to be careful. He must play the exactly conventional game or he might upset the whole sequence in which the cards had been prepared.
Printed across the table were the words 'The Dealer Must Draw on Sixteen and Stand on Seventeen'. They would presumably have given him fool-proof winning cards, but just in case there was another player or a kibitzer, they would have to make his winning seem a natural run of luck and not, for instance, just deal him twenty-one each time and seventeens to the girl.
He glanced at his two cards. A knave and a ten. He looked up at the girl and shook his head. She turned up sixteen and drew a card, busting herself with a king. She had a rack beside her which contained only silver dollars and counters for twenty, but the pit-boss was quickly at her side with a 1000-dollar plaque. She took it and tossed it over to Bond. He put it over the line and pocketed his notes. She flipped out two more cards to him and two to herself. Bond had seventeen and again shook his head. She had twelve and drew a three and then a nine-twenty-four and bust again. Again the pit-boss stepped up with a plaque. Bond slipped it into his pocket and left his original stake. This time he had nineteen and she turned up a ten and seven on which, by the rule, she had to stand. Another plaque went into Bond's pocket.
The wide doors at the far end of the room had opened and a stream of people were milling into the gambling room from the dinner revue. Soon they would be round the tables. This was his last play. After this he must get up from the table and leave her. She was looking at him impatiently. He picked up the two cards that she had given him. Twenty. And she also turned up two tens. Bond smiled at the refinement. She quickly dealt him two more cards just as three more players came up to the table and hitched themselves up on the stools. He had nineteen and she had sixteen.
And that was that. The pit-boss didn't even bother to hand the girl the fourth plaque, but tossed it across the table to Bond with an expression on his face that was very like a sneer.
"Jee-sus," said one of the new players, as Bond pocketed the plaque and stood up.
Bond looked across the table at the girl. "Thank you," he said. "You deal beautifully."
"I'll say!" said the player who had spoken.
Tiffany Case looked hard at Bond. "You're welcome," she said. She held his eyes for a fraction of a second and then looked down at her cards, shuffled them thoroughly, and handed them to one of the new players for a cut.
Bond turned his back on the table and moved off round the room, thinking of her, and occasionally glancing across at the straight, imperious little figure in the exciting Western uniform. Others obviously found her as attractive as Bond did, for soon there were eight men sitting at her table and others standing watching her.
Bond felt a pang of jealou............