Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

2 | THE COLUMBITE KING

The ninth was the top floor of the building. Most of it was occupied by Communications, the hand-picked inter-services team of operators whose only interest was the world of microwaves, sunspots, and the Heaviside Layer. Above them, on the flat roof, were the three squat masts of one of the most powerful transmitters in England, explained on the bold bronze list of occupants in the entrance hall of the building by the words ‘Radio Tests Ltd.’ The other tenants were declared to be ‘Universal Export Co.’, ‘Delaney Bros. (1940) Ltd.’, ‘The Omnium Corporation’, and ‘Enquiries (Miss E. Twining, O.B.E.)’.

Miss Twining was a real person. Forty years earlier she had been a Loelia Ponsonby. Now, in retirement, she sat in a small office on the ground floor and spent her days tearing up circulars, paying the rates and taxes of her ghostly tenants, and politely brushing off salesmen and people who wanted to export something or have their radios mended.

It was always very quiet on the ninth floor. As Bond turned to the left outside the lift and walked along the softly carpeted corridor to the green baize door that led to the offices of M. and his personal staff, the only sound he heard was a thin high-pitched whine that was so faint that you almost had to listen for it.

Without knocking he pushed through the green door and walked into the last room but one along the passage.

Miss Moneypenny, M.’s private secretary, looked up from her typewriter and smiled at him. They liked each other and she knew that Bond admired her looks. She was wearing the same model shirt as his own secretary, but with blue stripes.

‘New uniform, Penny?’ said Bond.

She laughed. ‘Loelia and I share the same little woman,’ she said. ‘We tossed and I got blue.’

A snort came through the open door of the adjoining room. The Chief of Staff, a man of about Bond’s age, came out, a sardonic grin on his pale, overworked face.

‘Break it up,’ he said. ‘M.’s waiting. Lunch afterwards?’

‘Fine,’ said Bond. He turned to the door beside Miss Moneypenny, walked through and shut it after him. Above it, a green light went on. Miss Moneypenny raised her eyebrows at the Chief of Staff. He shook his head.

‘I don’t think it’s business, Penny,’ he said. ‘Just sent for him out of the blue.’ He went back into his own room and got on with the day’s work.

When Bond came through the door, M. was sitting at his broad desk, lighting a pipe. He made a vague gesture with the lighted match towards the chair on the other side of the desk and Bond walked over and sat down. M. glanced at him sharply through the smoke and then threw the box of matches on to the empty expanse of red leather in front of him.

‘Have a good leave?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ said Bond.

‘Still sunburned, I see.’ M. looked his disapproval. He didn’t really begrudge Bond a holiday which had been partly convalescence. The hint of criticism came from the puritan and the jesuit who live in all leaders of men.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Bond non-committally. ‘It’s very hot near the equator.’

‘Quite,’ said M. ‘Well-deserved rest.’ He screwed up his eyes without humour. ‘Hope the colour won’t last too long. Always suspicious of sunburned men in England. Either they’ve not got a job of work to do or they put it on with a sun-lamp.’ He dismissed the subject with a short sideways jerk of his pipe.

He put the pipe back in his mouth and pulled at it absent-mindedly. It had gone out. He reached for the matches and wasted some time getting it going again.

‘Looks as if we’ll get that gold after all,’ he said finally. ‘There’s been some talk of the Hague Court, but Ashenheim’s a fine lawyer.’¹

‘Good,’ said Bond.

There was silence for a moment. M. gazed into the bowl of his pipe. Through the open windows came the distant roar of London’s traffic. A pigeon landed on one of the window-sills with a clatter of wings and quickly took off again.

Bond tried to read something in the weatherbeaten face he knew so well and which held so much of his loyalty. But the grey eyes were quiet and the little pulse that always beat high up on the right temple when M. was tense showed no sign of life.

Suddenly Bond suspected that M. was embarrassed. He had the feeling that M. didn’t know where to begin. Bond wanted to help. He shifted in his chair and took his eyes off M. He looked down at his hands and idly picked at a rough nail.

M. lifted his eyes from his pipe and cleared his throat.

‘Got anything particular on at the moment, James?’ he asked in a neutral voice.

‘James.’ That was unusual. It was rare for M. to use a Christian name in this room.

‘Only paper-work and the usual courses,’ said Bond. ‘Anything you want me for, sir?’

‘As a matter of fact there is,’ said M. He frowned at Bond. ‘But it’s really got nothing to do with the Service. Almost a personal matter. Thought you might give me a hand.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Bond. He was relieved for M.’s sake that the ice had been broken. Probably one of the old man’s relations had got into trouble and M. didn’t want to ask a favour of Scotland Yard. Blackmail, perhaps. Or drugs. He was pleased that M. should have chosen him. Of course he would take care of it. M. was such a desperate stickler about Government property and personnel. Using Bond on a personal matter must have seemed to him like stealing the Government’s money.

‘Thought you’d say so,’ said M. gruffly. ‘Won’t take up much of your time. An evening ought to be enough.’ He paused. ‘Well now, you’ve heard of this man Sir Hugo Drax?’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Bond, surprised at the name. ‘You can’t open a paper without reading something about him. Sunday Express is running his life. Extraordinary story.’

‘I know,’ said M. shortly. ‘Just give me the facts as you see them. I’d like to know if your version tallies with mine.’

Bond gazed out of the window for a moment to marshal his thoughts. M. didn’t like haphazard talk. He liked a fully detailed story with no um-ing and er-ing. No afterthoughts or hedging.

‘Well, sir,’ said Bond finally. ‘For one thing the man’s a national hero. The public have taken to him. I suppose he’s in much the same class as Jack Hobbs or Gordon Richards. They’ve got a real feeling for him. They consider he’s one of them, but a glorified version. A sort of superman. He’s not much to look at, with all those scars from his war injuries, and he’s a bit loud-mouthed and ostentatious. But they rather like that. Makes him a sort of Lonsdale figure, but more in their class. They like his friends calling him “Hugger” Drax. It makes him a bit of a card and I expect it gives the women a thrill. And then when you think what he’s doing for the country, out of his own pocket and far beyond what any government seems to be able to do, it’s really extraordinary that they don’t insist on making him Prime Minister.’

Bond saw the cold eyes getting chillier, but he was determined not to let his admiration for Drax’s achievements be dampened by the older man. ‘After all, sir,’ he continued reasonably, ‘it looks as if he’s made this country safe from war for years. And he can’t be much over forty. I feel the same as most people about him. And then there’s all this mystery about his real identity. I’m not surprised people feel rather sorry for him, although he is a multi-millionaire. He seems to be a lonely sort of man in spite of his gay life.’

M. smiled drily. ‘All that sounds rather like a trailer for the Express story. He’s certainly an extrordinary man. But what’s your version of the facts? I don’t expect I know much more than you do. Probably less. Don’t read the papers very carefully, and there are no files on him except at the War Office and they’re not very illuminating. Now then. What’s the gist of the Express story?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Bond. ‘But the facts are pretty slim. Well,’ he looked out of the window again and concentrated, ‘in the German break-through in the Ardennes in the winter of ’44, the Germans made a lot of use of guerrillas and saboteurs. Gave them the rather spooky name of Werewolves. They did quite a lot of damage of one sort or another. Very good at camouflage and stay-behind tricks of all sorts and some of them went on operating long after Ardennes had failed and we had crossed the Rhine. They were supposed to carry on even when we had overrun the country. But they packed up pretty quickly when things got really bad.

‘One of their best coups was to blow up one of the rear liaison H.Q.s between the American and British armies. Reinforcement Holding Units I think they’re called. It was a mixed affair, all kinds of Allied personnel – American signals, British ambulance drivers – a rather shifting group from every sort of unit. The Werewolves somehow managed to mine the mess-hall and, when it blew, it took with it quite a lot of the field hospital as well. Killed or wounded over a hundred. Sorting out all the bodies was the hell of a business. One of the English bodies was Drax. Half his face was blown away. Total amnesia that lasted a year and at the end of that time they didn’t know who he was and nor did he. There were about twenty-five other unidentified bodies that neither we nor the Americans could sort out. Either not enough bits, or perhaps people in transit, or there without authorization. It was that sort of a unit. Two commanding officers, of course. Sloppy staff work. Lousy records. So after a year in various hospitals they took Drax through the War Office file of Missing Men. When they came to the papers of a no-next-of-kin called Hugo Drax, an orphan who had been working in the Liverpool docks before the war, he showed signs of interest, and the photograph and physical description seemed to tally more or less with what our man must have looked like before he was blown up. From that time he began to mend. He started to talk a bit about simple things he remembered, and the doctors got very proud of him. The War Office found a man who had served in the same Pioneer unit as this “Hugo Drax” and he came along to the hospital and said he was sure the man was Drax. That settled it. Advertising didn’t produce another Hugo Drax and he was finally discharged late in 1945 in that name with back pay and a full disability pension.’

‘But he still says he doesn’t really know who he is,’ interrupted M. ‘He’s a member of Blades. I’ve often played cards with him and talked to him afterwards at dinner. He says he sometimes gets a strong feeling of “having been there before”. Often goes to Liverpool to try and hunt up his past. Anyway, what else?’

Bond’s eyes were turned inwards, remembering. ‘He seems to have disappeared for about three years after the war,’ he said. ‘Then the City started to hear about him from all over the world. The Metal Market heard about him first. Seems he’d cornered a very valuable ore called Columbite. Everybody was wanting the stuff. It’s got an extraordinarily high melting point. Jet engines can’t be made without it. There’s very little of it in the world, only a few thousand tons are produced every year, mostly as a by-product of the Nigerian tin mines. Drax must have looked at the Jet Age and somehow put his finger on its main scarcity. He must have got hold of about £10,000 from somewhere because the Express says that in 1946 he’d bought three tons of Columbite, which cost him around £3,000 a ton. He got a £5,000 premium on this lot from an American aircraft firm who wanted it in a hurry. Then he started buying futures in the stuff, six months, nine months, a year forward. In three years he’d made a corner. Anyone who wanted Columbite went to Drax Metals for it. All this time he’d been playing about with futures in other small commodities – Shellac, Sisal, Black Pepper – anything where you could build up a big position on margin. Of course he gambled on a rising commodity market but he had the guts to keep his foot right down on the pedal even when the pace got hot as hell. And whenever he took a profit he ploughed the money back again. For instance, he was one of the first men to buy up used ore-dumps in South Africa. Now they’re being re-mined for their uranium content. Another fortune there.’

M.’s quiet eyes were fixed on Bond. He puffed at his pipe, listening.

‘Of course,’ continued Bond, lost in his story, ‘all this made the City wonder what the hell was going on. The commodity brokers kept on coming across the name of Drax. Whatever they wanted Drax had got it and was holding out for a much higher price than they were prepared to pay. He operated from Tangier – free port, no taxes, no currency restrictions. By 1950 he was a multi-millionaire. Then he came back to England and started spending it. He simply threw it about. Best houses, best cars, best women. Boxes at the Opera, at Goodwood. Prize-winning Jersey herds. Prize-winning carnations. Prize-winning two-year-olds. Two yachts; money for the Walker Cup team; £100,000 for the Flood Disaster Fund; Coronation Ball for Nurses at the Albert Hall – there wasn’t a week when he wasn’t hitting the headlines with some splash or other. And all the time he went on getting richer and the people simply loved it. It was the Arabian Nights. It lit up their lives. If a wounded soldier from Liverpool could get there in five years, why shouldn’t they or their sons? It sounded almost as easy as winning a gigantic football pool.

‘And then came his astonishing letter to the Queen: “Your Majesty, may I have the temerity … ” and the typical genius of the single banner-line across the Express next day: “TEMERITY DRAX”, and the story of how he had given to Britain his entire holding in Columbite to build a super atomic rocket with a range that would cover nearly every capital in Europe – the immediate answer to anyone who tried to atom-bomb London. £10,000,000 he was going to put up out of his own pocket, and he had the design of the thing and was prepared to find the staff to build it.

‘And then there were months of delay and everyone got impatient. Questions in the House. The Opposition nearly forced a vote of Confidence. And then the announcement by the Prime Minister that the design had been approved by the Woomera Range experts of the Ministry of Supply, and that the Queen had been graciously pleased to accept the gift on behalf of the people of Britain and had conferred a knighthood on the donor.’

Bond paused, almost carried away by the story of this extraordinary man.

‘Yes,’ said M. ‘“Peace in Our Time – This Time”. I remember the headline. A year ago. And now the rocket’s nearly ready. “The Moonraker”. And from all I hear it really should do what he says. It’s very odd.’ He relapsed into silence, gazing out of the window.

He turned back and faced Bond across the desk.

‘That’s about it,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t know much more than you do. A wonderful story. Extraordinary man.’ He paused, reflecting. ‘There’s only one thing … ’ M. tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth.

‘What’s that, sir?’ asked Bond.

M. seemed to make up his mind. He looked mildly across at Bond.

‘Sir Hugo Drax cheats at cards.’

_______________

1 This refers to Bond’s previous assignments; described in Live and Let Die by the same author.

3 | ‘BELLY STRIPPERS’, ETC.

‘Cheats at cards?’

M. frowned. ‘That’s what I said,’ he commented drily. ‘It doesn’t seem to you odd that a multi-millionaire should cheat at cards?’

Bond grinned apologetically. ‘Not as odd as all that, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve known very rich people cheat themselves at Patience. But it just didn’t fit in with my picture of Drax. Bit of an anti-climax.’

‘That’s the point,’ said M. ‘Why does he do it? And don’t forget that cheating at cards can still smash a man. In so-called “Society”, it’s about the only crime that can still finish you, whoever you are. Drax does it so well that nobody’s caught him yet. As a matter of fact I doubt if anyone has begun to suspect him except Basildon. He’s the Chairman of Blades. He came to me. He’s got a vague idea I’ve got something to do with Intelligence and I’ve given him a hand over one or two little troubles in the past. Asked my advice. Said he didn’t want a fuss at the club, of course, but above all he wants to save Drax from making a fool of himself. He admires him as much as we all do and he’s terrified of an incident. You couldn’t stop a scandal like that getting out. A lot of M.P.s are members and it would soon get talked about in the Lobby. Then the gossip-writers would get hold of it. Drax would have to resign from Blades and the next thing there’d be a libel action brought in his defence by one of his friends. Tranby Croft all over again. At least, that’s how Basildon’s mind is working and I must say I can see it that way too. Anyway,’ said M. with finality, ‘I’ve agreed to help and,’ he looked levelly at Bond, ‘that’s where you come in. You’re the best card-player in the Service, or,’ he smiled ironically, ‘you should be after the casino jobs you’ve been on, and I remembered that we’d spent quite a lot of money putting you through a course in card-sharping before you went after those Roumanians in Monte Carlo before the war.’

Bond smiled grimly. ‘Steffi Esposito,’ he said softly. ‘That was the chap. American. Made me work ten hours a day for a week learning a thing called the Riffle Stack and how to deal Seconds and Bottoms and Middles. I wrote a long report about it at the time. Must be buried in Records. He knew every trick in the game. How to wax the aces so that the pack will break at them; Edge Work and Line Work with a razor on the backs of the high cards; Trimming; Arm Pressure Holdouts – mechanical gadgets up your sleeve that feed you cards. Belly Strippers – trimming a whole pack less than a millimetre down both sides, but leaving a slight belly on the cards you’re interested in – the aces, for instance. Shiners, tiny mirrors built into rings, or fitted into the bottom of a pipe-bowl. Actually,’ Bond admitted, ‘it was his tip about “Luminous Readers” that helped me on that Monte Carlo job. A croupier was using an invisible ink the team could pick out with special glasses. But Steffi was a wonderful chap. Scotland Yard found him for us. He could shuffle the pack once and then cut the four aces out of it. Absolute magic.’

‘Sounds a bit too professional for our man,’ commented M. ‘That sort of work needs hours of practice every day, or an accomplice, and I can’t believe he’d find that at Blades. No, there’s nothing sensational about his cheating and for all I know it might be a fantastic run of luck. It’s odd. He’s not a particularly good player – he only plays bridge by the way – but quite often he brings off bids or doubles or finesses that are absolutely phenomenal – quite against the odds. Or the conventions. But they come off. He’s always a big winner and they play high at Blades. He hasn’t lost on a weekly settlement since he joined a year ago. We’ve got two or three of the finest players in the world in the club and none of them has ever had a record like that over twelve months. It’s getting talked about in a sort of joking way and I think Basildon’s right to do something about it. What system do you suppose Drax has got?’

Bond was longing for his lunch. The Chief of Staff must have given him up half an hour ago. He could have talked to M. about cheating for hours, and M., who never seemed to be interested in food or sleep, would have listened to everything and remembered it afterwards. But Bond was hungry.

‘Assuming he’s not a professional, sir, and can’t doctor the cards in any way, there are only two answers. He’s either looking, or else he’s got a system of signals with his partner. Does he often play with the same man?’

‘We always cut for partners after each rubber,’ said M. ‘Unless there’s a challenge. And on guest nights, Mondays and Thursdays, you stick to your guest. Drax nearly always brings a man called Meyer, his metal broker. Nice chap. Jew. Very fine player.’

‘I might be able to tell if I watched,’ said Bond.

‘That’s what I was going to say,’ said M. ‘How about coming along tonight? At any rate you’ll get a good dinner. Meet you there about six. I’ll take some money off you at piquet and we’ll watch the bridge for a little. After dinner we’ll have a rubber or two with Drax and his friend. They’re always there on Monday. All right? Sure I’m not taking you away from your work?’

‘No, sir,’ said Bond with a grin. ‘And I’d like to come very much. Bit of a busman’s holiday. And if Drax is cheating, I’ll show him I’ve spotted it and that should be enough to warn him off. I wouldn’t like to see him get into a mess. That all, sir?’

‘Yes, James,’ said M. ‘And thank you for your help. Drax must be a bloody fool. Obviously a bit of a crank. But it isn’t the man I’m worried about. I wouldn’t like to chance anything going wrong with this rocket of his. And Drax more or less is the Moonraker. Well, see you at six. Don’t bother about dressing. Some of us do for dinner and some of us don’t. Tonight we won’t. Better go along now and sandpaper your fingertips or whatever you sharpers do.’

Bond smiled back at M and got to his feet. It sounded a promising evening. As he walked over to the door and let himself out he reflected that here at last was an interview with M. that didn’t cast a shadow.

M.’s secretary was still at her desk. There was a plate of sandwiches and a glass of milk beside her typewriter. She looked sharply at Bond, but there was nothing to be read in his expression.

‘I suppose he gave up,’ said Bond.

‘Nearly an hour ago,’ said Miss Moneypenny reproachfully. ‘It’s half-past two. He’ll be back any minute now.’

‘I’ll go down to the canteen before it closes,’ he said. ‘Tell him I’ll pay for his lunch next time.’ He smiled at her and walked out into the corridor and along to the lift.

There were only a few people left in the officers’ canteen. Bond sat by himself and ate a grilled sole, a large mixed salad with his own dressing laced with mustard, some Brie cheese and toast, and half a carafe of white Bordeaux. He had two cups of black coffee and was back in his office by three. With half his mind preoccupied with M.’s problem, he hurried through the rest of the N.A.T.O. file, said goodbye to his secretary after telling her where he would be that evening, and at four-thirty was collecting his car from the staff garage at the back of the building.

‘Supercharger’s whining a bit, sir,’ said the ex-R.A.F. mechanic who regarded Bond’s Bentley as his own property. ‘Take it down tomorrow if you won’t be needing her at lunch-time.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bond, ‘that’ll be fine.’ He took the car quietly out into the park and over to Baker Street, the two-inch exhaust bubbling fatly in his wake.

He was home in fifteen minutes. He left the car under the plane trees in the little square and let himself into the ground floor flat of the converted Regency house, went into the book-lined sitting-room and, after a moment’s search, pulled Scarne on Cards out of its shelf and dropped it on the ornate Empire desk near the broad window.

He walked through into the smallish bedroom with the white and gold Cole wallpaper and the deep red curtains, undressed and threw his clothes, more or less tidily, on the dark blue counterpane of the double bed. Then he went into the bathroom and had a quick shower. Before leaving the bathroom he examined his face in the glass and decided that he had no intention of sacrificing a lifetime prejudice by shaving twice in one day.

In the glass, the grey-blue eyes looked back at him with the extra light they held when his mind was focused on a problem that interested him. The lean, hard face had a hungry, competitive edge to it. There was something swift and intent in the way he ran his fingers along his jaw and in the impatient stroke of the hairbrush to put back the comma of black hair that fell down an inch above his right eyebrow. It crossed his mind that, with the fading of his sunburn, the scar down the right cheek that had shown so white was beginning to be less prominent, and automatically he glanced down his naked body and registered that the almost indecent white area left by his bathing trunks was less sharply defined. He smiled at some memory and went through into the bedroom.

Ten minutes later, in a heavy white silk shirt, dark blue trousers of Navy serge, dark blue socks, and well-polished black moccasin shoes, he was sitting at his desk with a pack of cards in one hand and Scarne’s wonderful guide to cheating open in front of him.

For half an hour, as he ran quickly through the section on Methods, he practised the vital Mechanic’s Grip (three fingers curled round the long edge of the cards, and the index finger at the short upper edge away from him), Palming and Nullifying the Cut. His hands worked automatically at these basic manoeuvres while his eyes read, and he was glad to find that his fingers were supple and assured and that there was no noise from the cards even with the very difficult single-handed Annulment.

At five-thirty he slapped the cards on the table and shut the book.

He went into his bedroom, filled the wide black case with cigarettes and slipped it into his hip pocket, put on a black knitted silk tie and his coat and verified that his cheque book was in his notecase.

He stood for a moment, thinking. Then he selected two white silk handkerchiefs, carefully rumpled them, and put one into each side-pocket of his coat.

He lit a cigarette and walked back into the sitting-room and sat down at his desk again and relaxed for ten minutes, gazing out of the window at the empty square and thinking about the evening that was just going to begin and about Blades, probably the most famous private card club in the world.

The exact date of the foundation of Blades is uncertain. The second half of the eighteenth century saw the opening of many coffee houses and gaming rooms, and premises and proprietors shifted often with changing fashions and fortunes. White’s was founded in 1755, Almack’s in 1764, and Brooks’s in 1774, and it was in that year that the Scavoir Vivre, which was to be the cradle of Blades, opened its doors on to Park Street, a quiet backwater off St. James’s.

The Scavoir Vivre was too exclusive to live and it blackballed itself to death within a year. Then, in 1776, Horace Walpole wrote: ‘A new club is opened off St. James’s Street that piques itself in surpassing all its predecessors’ and in 1778 ‘Blades’ first occurs in a letter from Gibbon, the historian, who coupled it with the name of its founder, a German called Longchamp at that time conducting the Jockey Club at Newmarket.

From the outset Blades seems to have been a success, and in 1782 we find the Duke of Wirtemberg writing excitedly home to his younger brother: ‘This is indeed the “Ace of Clubs”! There have been four or five quinze tables going in the room at the same time, with whist and piquet, after which a full Hazard table. I have known two at the same time. Two chests each containing 4,000 guinea rouleaus were scarce sufficient for the night’s circulation.’

Mention of Hazard perhaps provides a clue to the club’s prosperity. Permission to play this dangerous but popular game must have been given by the Committee in contravention of its own rules which laid down that ‘No game is to be admitted to the House of the Society but Chess, Whist, Picket, Cribbage, Quadrille, Ombre and Tredville’.

In any event the club continued to flourish and remains to this day the home of some of the highest ‘polite’ gambling in the world. It is not as aristocratic as it was, the redistribution of wealth has seen to that, but it is still the most exclusive club in London. The membership is restricted to two hundred and each candidate must have two qualifications for election; he must behave like a gentleman and he must be able to ‘show’ £100,000 in cash or gilt-edged securities.

The amenities of Blades, apart from the gambling, are so desirable that the Committee has had to rule that every member is required to win or lose £500 a year on the club premises, or pay an annual fine of £250. The food and wine are the best in London and no bills are presented, the cost of all meals being deducted at the end of each week pro rata from the profits of the winners. Seeing that about £5,000 changes hands each week at the tables the impost is not too painful and the losers have the satisfaction of saving something from the wreck; and the custom explains the fairness of the levy on infrequent gamblers.

Club servants are the making or breaking of any club and the servants of Blades have no equal. The half-dozen waitresses in the dining-room are of such a high standard of beauty that some of the younger members have been known to smuggle them undetected into débutante balls, and if, at night, one or other of the girls is persuaded to stray into one of the twelve members’ bedrooms at the back of the club, that is regarded as the member’s private concern.

There are one or two other small refinements which contribute to the luxury of the place. Only brand-new currency notes and silver are paid out on the premises and, if a member is staying overnight, his notes and small change are taken away by the valet who brings the early morning tea and The Times and are replaced with new money. No newspaper comes to the reading room before it has been ironed. Floris provides the soaps and lotions in the lavatories and bedrooms; there is a direct wire to Ladbroke’s from the porter’s lodge; the club has the finest tents and boxes at the principal race-meetings, at Lord’s, Henley, and Wimbledon, and members travelling abroad have automatic membership of the leading club in every foreign capital.

In short, membership of Blades, in return for the £100 entrance fee and the £50 a year subscription, provides the standard of luxury of the Victorian age together with the opportunity to win or lose, in great comfort, anything up to £20,000 a year.

Bond, reflecting on all this, decided that he was going to enjoy his evening. He had only played at Blades a dozen times in his life, and on the last occasion he had burnt his fingers badly in a high poker game, but the prospect of some expensive bridge and of the swing of a few, to him, not unimportant hundred pounds made his muscles taut with anticipation.