Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

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Текущая страница: 45 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

Bond sat down behind a scrawny woman in evening dress and mink whose wrists clanked and glittered with jewellery every time she bid. Beside her sat a bored man in a white dinner-jacket and a dark red evening tie who might have been her husband or her trainer.

A nervous bay came chassying into the ring with the number 201 pasted carelessly on his rump. The harsh chant began. ‘I’m bid six thousand now seven thousand will yer? I’m bid seven thousand and three and four and five only seven and a half for this good-looking colt by Tehran, eight thousand thank you sir and nine will yer do it? Eight thousand five hundred I am bid will yer give me nine eight five will yer give me nine and six and seven and who’ll bid the big figure?’

A pause, a bang of the hammer, a look of sincere reproach towards the ringside seats where the big money sat. ‘Folks, this two-year-old is too cheap. I’m selling more winning colt for this amount of money than I’ve sold all summer long. Now, eight thousand seven hundred and who’ll give me nine? Where’s nine, nine, nine?’ (The mummified hand in the rings and bracelets took the gold-and-bamboo pencil out of the bag and scribbled a calculation on the programme which Bond could see said ‘34th Annual Saratoga Yearling Sales. No. 201. A Bay Colt.’ Then the leaden eyes of the woman looked across the silver ropes into the electric eyes of the horse and she raised the gold pencil.) ‘And nine thousand is bid nine will yer give me ten will yer do it? Any increase on nine thousand do I hear nine one nine one nine one?’ (A pause and a last questing look round the crammed white seats and then a bang of the hammer.) ‘Sold for nine thousand dollars. Thank you, ma’am.’

And the heads turned round and craned and the woman looked bored and said something to the man beside her who shrugged his shoulders.

And 201, ‘A Bay Colt’, was led from the ring and 202 came sidling in to stand for a moment trembling with the shock of the lights, and the wall of unknown faces, and the fog of strange smells.

And there was a movement in the row of seats behind Bond, and Leiter’s face came forward alongside his and Leiter’s mouth said into his ear, ‘It’s done. It’s cost three thousand bucks but he’ll play the double-cross. Foul riding in the last furlong just as he’s due to make his winning sprint. Oh Boy! See you in the morning.’ And the whisper ended, and Bond didn’t look round but went on watching the sales for a while and then slowly walked home under the elms, feeling sorry for a jockey called Tingaling Bell who was playing such a desperately dangerous game, and for a big chestnut called ‘Shy Smile’ who was now not only a Ringer but was going to be ridden foul into the bargain.

12 | THE PERPETUITIES

Bond sat high up in the grandstand and through hired glasses watched ‘Shy Smile’s’ owner eating soft-shell crabs.

The gangster was sitting in the restaurant enclosure four rows below Bond. Opposite him sat Rosy Budd forking down frankfurters and sauerkraut and drinking beer out of a stein. Although most of the other luncheon tables were occupied, there were two waiters hovering round this one and the maître d’hotel made frequent visits to see that all was going well.

Pissaro looked like a gangster in a horror-comic. He had a round bladder-like head in the middle of which the features were crowded together – two pin-point eyes, two black nostrils, a pursed wet pink mouth above the hint of a chin, and a fat body in a brown suit and a white shirt with a long-pointed collar and a figured chocolate bow tie. He paid no attention to the preparations for the first race but concentrated on his food, occasionally glancing across at his companion’s plate as if he might reach across and fork something off it for himself.

Rosy Budd was broad and hard-looking, with a square immobile poker player’s face in which pale eyes were buried deep under thin fair eyebrows. He was wearing a striped seersucker suit and a dark blue tie. He ate slowly and rarely looked up from his plate. When he had finished, he picked up a race programme and studied it, turning over the pages carefully. Without looking up, he gave a curt shake of the head when the maître d’hotel offered him the menu.

Pissaro picked his teeth until a mound of ice cream arrived, and then he bent his head again and started spooning the ice cream rapidly up into his small mouth.

Through his glasses, Bond examined the two men and wondered about them. What did these people amount to? Bond remembered cold, dedicated, chess-playing Russians; brilliant, neurotic Germans; silent, deadly, anonymous men from Central Europe; the people in his own Service – the double-firsts, the gay soldiers of fortune, the men who counted life well lost for a thousand a year. Compared with such men, Bond decided, these people were just teenage pillow-fantasies.

The results went up for the third race, and now there was only half an hour to go before The Perpetuities. Bond put down his glasses and picked up his programme, waiting for the big board on the other side of the track to start flickering as the money went on the tote and the odds began to move.

He took a final look at the details. ‘Second Day. August 4’, said the programme. ‘The Perpetuities Stakes. $25,000 added. 52nd Running. For Three-Year-Olds. By subscription of $50 each, to accompany the nomination. Starters to pay $250 additional. With the $25,000 added of which $5,000 to second, $2,500 to third and $1,250 to fourth. A trophy to be presented to the owner of the winner. One Mile and a Quarter.’ And then the list of twelve horses with owners, trainers and jockeys and the Morning Line forecast of the odds.

The joint favourites, No. 1, Mr C. V. Whitney’s ‘Come Again’, and No. 3, Mr William Woodward’s ‘Pray Action’, were both forecast at six to four on. Mr P. Pissaro’s ‘Shy Smile’, trainer R. Budd, jockey T. Bell, was forecast at 15 to 1, the bottom horse in the betting. His number was 10.

Bond turned his glasses on the restaurant enclosure. The two men had gone. Bond’s eyes followed on across the track to where the lights were flashing on the big board. The favourite was now No. 3, at 2 to 1 on. ‘Come Again’ had gone out to evens. ‘Shy Smile’ was quoted at 20 to 1, but he went down to 18s as Bond watched the board.

Another quarter of an hour to go. Bond sat back and lit a cigarette, going over again in his mind what Leiter had told him, wondering if it was going to work.

Leiter had tracked the jockey down to his rooming house and had flashed his private detective’s licence at him. And then he had quite calmly blackmailed him into throwing the race. If ‘Shy Smile’ won, Leiter would go to the Stewards, expose the Ringer, and Tingaling Bell would never ride again. But there was one chance for the jockey to save himself. If he took it, Leiter promised to say nothing about the Ringer. ‘Shy Smile’ must win the race but be disqualified. This could be achieved if, in the final sprint, the jockey interfered with the running of the horse closest to him so that it could be shown that he had prevented this other horse from being the winner. Then there would be an objection, which had to be upheld. It would be easy for Bell, at the last corner before the run in, to do this in such a way that he could argue to his employers that it had just been a bit of over-keen riding, that another horse had crowded him over to the left, that his horse had stumbled. There was no conceivable reason why he should not wish to win (Pissaro had promised him an extra $1000 if he did) and it was just one of those strokes of bad luck that happen in racing. And Leiter would now give Tingaling $1000 and there would be another $2000 for him if he did what he was told.

And Bell had bought it. Without any hesitation. And he had asked for the $2000 to be passed to him after the day’s racing in the ‘Acme Mud and Sulphur Baths’ where he went every evening to take a mud bath to keep his weight down. Six o’clock. And Leiter had promised that this would be done. And Bond now had the $2000 in his pocket and he had reluctantly agreed to help Leiter out by going to the Acme Baths to make the pay-off if ‘Shy Smile’ failed to win the race.

Would it work?

Bond picked up his glasses and swept them round the course. He noted the four thick posts at the quarter miles that held the automatic cameras that recorded the whole race and whose film was available to the Stewards within minutes of each finish. It was this last one near the winning post whose eye would see and record all that happened at the final bend. Bond felt a tingle of excitement. Five minutes to go and the starting-gate was being pulled into position a hundred yards up to his left. Once round the course, plus an extra furlong, and the winning post was just below him. He put his glasses on the big board. No change in the favourites or in ‘Shy Smile’s’ price. And now here came the horses, cantering easily down to the start. First came No.1, ‘Come Again’, the second favourite. A big black horse carrying the light blue and brown colours of the Whitney Stable. And there was a cheer for the favourite, ‘Pray Action’, a fast-looking grey carrying the Woodward white with red spots of the famous Belair Stud, and, at the tail of the field, there was the big chestnut with the blaze face and four white stockings, and the pale-faced jockey wearing a jacket of lavender silk with a big black diamond on chest and back.

The horse moved so well that Bond glanced across at the board and was not surprised to see his price come quickly back to 17s, then 16s. Bond went on watching the board. In a minute the big money would go on (all except the remains of Bond’s $1000 which would stay in his pocket) and the price would come down with a run. The loudspeaker was announcing the race. Away to the left the horses were being marshalled behind the starting-gate. Ping, ping, ping, the lights opposite No. 10 on the board started to wink and flash – 15,14,12,11, and finally 9 to 1. Then the lights stopped talking and the tote was closed. And how many more thousands had gone away by Western Union to harmless telegraphic addresses in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, San Francisco and a dozen more off-the-course books throughout the States?

A handbell clanged sharply. There was an electric smell in the air, and a muting of the noise of the crowds. Then down thundered the ragged charging line towards the grandstand and past and away in a scud of hooves and flying earth and tanbark. There was a glimpse of sharp, pale faces half-hidden by goggles, a stream of pounding shoulders and hindquarters, a flash of wild white eyes and a confusion of numbers amongst which Bond caught only the vital No. 10 well to the fore and close in to the rails. And then the dust was settling and the brown-black mass was at the first corner and slowly streaming round the bottom straight and Bond felt the glasses slip in the sweat round his eyes.

No. 5, a black outsider, was leading by a length. Was this some unknown horse that was going to steal the show? But then there was No. 1 level with him and then No. 3. And No. 10 half a length behind the leaders. Just these four out in front and the rest bunched three lengths away. Round the corner and now No. 1 was in the lead. The Whitney black. And No. 10 was fourth. Down the long straight opposite and No. 3 was moving up – with Tingaling Bell on the chestnut at his heels. They both passed No. 5 and were well up with No. 1 who was still leading by half a length. And then the first top bend and the top straight, and No. 3 was leading with ‘Shy Smile’ second and No. 1 a length behind. And ‘Shy Smile’ was coming up level with the leader. He was level, and they were coming into the final corner. Bond held his breath. Now! Now! He could almost hear the whirr of the concealed camera in the big white post. No. 10 was ahead, right on the bend, but No. 3 was inside on the rails. And the crowd was howling for the favourite. Now Bell was inching towards the grey, his head well down on his horse’s neck on the outside, so that he could pretend that he couldn’t see the grey horse on the rails. Inch by inch the horses drew closer and, suddenly, ‘Shy Smile’s’ head hid No. 3’s head, then his quarters were in front and, yes, ‘Pray Action’s’ boy suddenly stood right up in his stirrups, forced to take-up by the foul, and at once ‘Shy Smile’ was a length ahead.

There was an angry roar from the crowd. Bond lowered his glasses and sat back and watched as the foam-flecked chestnut thundered past the post below him with ‘Pray Action’ five lengths behind and ‘Come Again’ just failing to beat him into second place.

Not bad, thought Bond, as the crowd howled around him. Not bad at all.

And how brilliantly the jockey had done it! His head so well down that even Pissaro would have to admit Bell couldn’t see the other horse. The natural curve-in for the final straight. The head still well down as he passed the post and the whip flailing for the last few lengths as if Tingaling still thought himself only half a length ahead of No. 3.

Bond watched for the results to be posted. There was a chorus of whistles and cat-calls. ‘No. 10, “Shy Smile”, five lengths. No. 3, “Pray Action:, ½ length. No. 1, “Come Again”, three lengths. No. 7, “Pirandello”, three lengths.’

And the horses came cantering back for the weighing-in, and the crowd yelled for blood as Tingaling Bell, grinning all over his face, threw his whip to the valet and slipped off the sweating chestnut and carried his saddle to the scales.

And then there was a great burst of cheering. Opposite the name of ‘Shy Smile’ the word OBJECTION, white on black, had been slipped in, and the loudspeaker was saying: ‘Attention please. In this race there has been an objection lodged by Jockey T. Lucky on No. 3, “Pray Action”, against the riding of Jockey T. Bell on No. 10, “Shy Smile”. Do not destroy your tickets. I repeat, Do not destroy your tickets.’

Bond took out his handkerchief and wiped his hands. He could imagine the scene in the projection room behind the judges’ box. Now they would be examining the film. Bell would be standing there looking hurt, and, beside him, No. 3’s jockey looking still more hurt. Would the owners be there? Would the sweat be running down Pissaro’s fat jowls into his collar? Would some of the other owners be there, pale and angry?

And then came the loudspeaker again and the voice saying:

‘Attention please. In this race, No. 10, “Shy Smile”, has been disqualified and No. 3, “Pray Action”, has been declared the winner. The result is now official.’

Amidst the thunder of the crowd, Bond got stiffly up from his seat and walked off in the direction of the bar. And now for the pay-off. Perhaps a Bourbon and branch-water would give him some ideas about getting the money to Tingaling Bell. He was uneasy about it. And yet the Acme Baths sounded an easy enough place. Nobody knew him in Saratoga. But after that he would have to stop working for Pinkertons. Call up Shady Tree and complain about not getting his five thousand. Worry him about his own payoff. It had been fun helping Leiter push these people around. Next would come Bond’s turn.

He pushed his way into the crowded bar.

13 | ACME MUD AND SULPHUR

In the small red bus there was only a negress with a withered arm and, beside the driver, a girl who kept her sick hands out of sight and whose head was completely shrouded in a thick black veil which fell to her shoulders, like a bee-keeper’s hat, without touching the skin of her face.

The bus, which said ‘Acme Mud and Sulphur Baths’ on its sides and ‘Every Hour on the Hour’ above the windscreen, went through the town without picking up any more customers and turned off the main road down a badly maintained gravel track through a plantation of young firs. After half a mile, it rounded a corner and went down a short hill towards a cluster of dingy grey clapboard buildings. A tall yellow-brick chimney stuck up out of the centre of the buildings and from it a thin wisp of black smoke rose straight up into the still air.

There was no sign of life in front of the Baths, but as the bus pulled up on the weedy gravel patch near what seemed to be the entrance, two old men and a limping coloured woman emerged through the wire-screened doors at the top of the steps and waited for the passengers to alight.

Outside the bus the smell of sulphur hit Bond with sickening force. It was a horrible smell, from somewhere down in the stomach of the world. Bond moved away from the entrance and sat down on a rough bench under a group of dead-looking firs. He sat there for a few minutes to steel himself for what was going to happen to him through the screen doors and to shake off his sense of oppression and disgust. It was partly, he decided, the reaction of a healthy body to the contact with disease, and it was partly the tall grim Belsen chimney with its plume of innocent smoke. But most of all it was the prospect of going in through those doors, buying the ticket, and then stripping his clean body and giving it over to the nameless things they did in this grisly ramshackle establishment.

The bus rattled off and he was alone. It was absolutely quiet. Bond noticed that the two side windows and the entrance door made two eyes and a mouth. The place seemed to be looking at him, watching him, waiting for him. Would he come in? Would they have him?

Bond moved impatiently inside his clothes. He got to his feet and walked straight across the gravel and up the wooden steps and the frame doors banged to behind him.

He found himself in a dingy reception room. The sulphur fumes were stronger. There was a reception desk behind an iron grill. Framed testimonials hung on the walls, some of them with red paper seals below the signature, and there was a glass-fronted showcase full of packages in transparent wrapping. Above it a notice said, in badly handwritten capitals, ‘Take Home an Acme-Pak. Treat Yourself in Privacy.’ There was a list of prices pasted on to a card advertising a cheap deodorant. The slogan still showed. It said: ‘Let your Armpits be your Charm-pits.’

A faded woman with a screw of orange hair above a face like a sad cream-puff raised her head slowly and looked at him through the bars, keeping one finger on her place in True Love Stories.

‘Can I help you?’ It was the voice reserved for strangers, for people who didn’t know the ropes.

Bond looked through the bars with the cautious abhorrence she had expected. ‘I’d like a bath.’

‘Mud or Sulphur?’ She reached for the tickets with her free hand.

‘Mud.’

‘Would you care for a book of tickets? They’re cheaper.’

‘Just one, please.’

‘Dollar fifty.’ She pushed through a mauve ticket and kept a finger on it until Bond had put his money down.

‘Which way do I go?’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Follow the passage. Better leave your valuables.’ She slipped a large white envelope under the grill. ‘Write your name on it.’ She watched sideways as Bond put his watch and the contents of his pockets into the envelope and scribbled his name on it.

The twenty hundred-dollar bills were inside Bond’s shirt. He wondered about them. He pushed the envelope back. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

There was a low wicket at the back of the room and two white-painted wooden hands whose drooping index fingers pointed right and left. On one hand was written ‘MUD’ and on the other ‘SULPHUR’. Bond went through the wicket and turned to the right along a dank corridor with a cement floor which sloped downwards. He followed it and pushed through a swing door at the end and found himself in a long high room with a skylight in the roof and cabins along the walls.

It was hot and steamy and sulphurous in the room. Two youngish, soft-looking men, naked except for grey towels round their waists, were playing gin rummy at a deal table near the entrance. On the table were two ashtrays full of cigarette butts, and a kitchen plate piled with keys. The men looked up as Bond entered and one of them picked up a key from the plate and held it out. Bond walked over and took it.

‘Twelve,’ said the man. ‘Got ya ticket?’

Bond handed it over and the man made a gesture towards the cabins behind him. He jerked his head towards a door at the end of the room. ‘Baths through there.’ The two men went back to their game.

There was nothing in the frowzy cabin but a folded towel from which constant washing had removed all the nap. Bond undressed and tied the towel round his waist. He folded the bulky packet of notes and stuffed them into the breast pocket of his coat under his handkerchief. He hoped it would be the last place that a petty thief would look in a quick search. He hung up his gun in the shoulder holster on a prominent hook and walked out and locked the door behind him.

Bond had no idea what he would see through the door at the end of the room. His first reaction was that he had walked into a morgue. Before he could collect his impressions, a fat bald negro with a down-turned straggling moustache came over and looked him up and down. ‘What’s wrong with you, Mister?’ he asked indifferently.

‘Nothing,’ said Bond shortly. ‘Just want to try a mud bath.’

‘Okay,’ said the negro. ‘Any heart trouble?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. Over here.’ Bond followed the negro across the slippery concrete floor to a wooden bench alongside a pair of dilapidated shower cubicles in one of which a naked body hung with mud was being hosed down by a man with a cauliflower ear.

‘Be right with you,’ said the negro casually, his big feet slapping against the wet floor as he sauntered off about his business. Bond watched the huge rubbery man, and his skin cringed at the thought of putting his body into the dangling pudgy hands with their lined pink palms.

Bond had a natural affection for coloured people, but he reflected how lucky England was compared with America where you had to live with the colour problem from your schooldays up. He smiled as he remembered something Felix Leiter had said to him on their last assignment together in America. Bond had referred to Mr Big, the famous Harlem criminal, as ‘that damned nigger’. Leiter had picked him up. ‘Careful now, James,’ he had said. ‘People are so damn sensitive about colour around here that you can’t even ask a barman for a jigger of rum. You have to ask for a jegro.’

The memory of Leiter’s wisecrack cheered Bond up. He took his eyes off the negro and looked over the rest of the Acme Mud Bath.

It was a square grey concrete room. From the ceiling, four naked electric light bulbs, spotted with fly droppings, threw an ugly glare on the dripping walls and floor. Against the walls were trestle tables. Bond automatically counted them. Twenty. On each table was a heavy wooden coffin with a three-quarter lid. In most of the coffins the profile of a sweating face showed above the wooden sides and pointed up at the ceiling. A few eyes were rolled inquisitively towards Bond, but most of the congested red faces looked asleep.

One coffin stood open, its lid up against the wall and its side hinged down. This seemed to be the one destined for Bond. The negro was draping a heavy, unclean-looking sheet over it and smoothing it down to form a lining to the box. When he had finished, he went to the middle of the room and chose two from a line of pails filled to the top with steaming dark brown mud, and dropped them with a double clang beside the open box. Then he dug his huge hand into one of them and smeared the thick viscous stuff along the bottom of the shroud and went on doing this until the whole bottom of it was two inches thick with mud. He then left it – to cool, Bond supposed – and went to a dented hip-bath full of ice blocks and groped around and extracted several dripping hand towels. He put these over his arm and made a round of the occupied coffins, stopping every now and then to wrap a cool towel round the sweating forehead of one of the occupants.

Nothing else was happening, and the room was quite silent except for the hiss of the hose close to Bond. This stopped and a voice said, ‘All right, Mr Weiss. That should fix you for today,’ and a fat naked man with a great deal of black body-hair tottered weakly out of the shower cubicle and waited while the man with the cauliflower ear helped him into a terrycloth bath robe, gave him a quick rub down inside it, and led him to the door through which Bond had come.

Then the man with the cauliflower ear walked over to a door in the far corner of the room and went out. For a few moments light streamed through the door, and Bond saw grass outside and a blessed glimpse of blue sky, and then the man came back with two more steaming buckets of mud. He kicked the door shut behind him and added to the line of buckets in the middle of the room.

The negro went over to Bond’s coffin and touched the mud with the flat of his hand. He turned and beckoned to Bond. ‘Okay, Mister,’ he said.

Bond walked over and the man took his towel and hung his key on a hook above the box.

Bond stood naked in front of him.

‘You ever had one of these before?’

‘No.’

‘Thought mebbe not, so I’m giving you the mud at 110. If you’re acclimated, you can take 120 or even 130. Lie down there.’

Bond gingerly climbed into the box and lay down, his skin smarting at its first contact with the hot mud. He slowly stretched himself out full length and lowered his head on to the clean towel that had been placed over the kapok pillow.

When he was settled, the negro dug both hands into one of the buckets of fresh mud and proceeded to slap it all over Bond’s body.

The mud was a deep chocolate brown and it felt smooth and heavy and slimy. A smell of hot peat came up to Bond’s nostrils. He watched the shining, blubbery arms of the negro working over the obscene black mound that had once been his body. Had Felix Leiter known what this was going to be like? Bond grinned savagely at the ceiling. If this was one of Felix’s jokes …

At last the negro had finished and Bond was loaded with hot mud. Only his face and an area round his heart were still white. He felt stifled and the sweat began to pour down his forehead.

With a swift movement the negro bent down and picked up the edges of the sheet and wrapped them tightly round Bond’s body and his arms. Then he reached up for the other half of the dirty shroud and bound this also round him. Bond could just move his fingers and his head, but otherwise he had less freedom of movement than in a strait jacket. Then the man closed the open side of the coffin, lowered the heavy wooden lid, and that was that.

The negro took a slate down from the wall above Bond’s head and glanced at a clock high up on the far wall and scribbled the time down. It was just six o’clock.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Feel good?’

Bond gave a neutral grunt.

The negro moved away about his business and Bond stared dumbly up at the ceiling. He felt the sweat running down from his hair into his eyes. He cursed Felix Leiter.

At three minutes past six the door opened to admit the naked, scrawny figure of Tingaling Bell. He had a sharp weasely face and a miserable body on which each bone showed. He walked cockily into the middle of the room.

‘Hi, Tingaling,’ said the man with the cauliflower ear. ‘Heard you had some trouble today. Too bad.’

‘Them stewards is a heap of obscenity,’ said Tingaling sourly. ‘Why would I want to ride across Tommy Lucky? One of my best pals. And why would I need to? The race was sewn up. Hey, you black bastard,’ he put out his foot to trip up the negro, who was passing with a pail of mud, ‘you got to get six ounces off me. Just had me a plate of French fries. On top of that they’ve given me a heap of lead to carry in the Oakridge tomorrow.’

The negro stepped over the outstretched foot and chuckled fatly. ‘Don’t worry, baby,’ he said affectionately. ‘Ah kin always break yo’ arm off. Get yo’ weight down easy dat way. Be right with you.’

The door opened again and one of the card players put his head in.

‘Hey, Boxer,’ he said to the man with the cauliflower ear, ‘Mabel says she can’t get on to the delicatessen to order your chow. Phone’s busted. Line down or sumpn.’

‘Aw Cheesus,’ said the other. ‘Tell Jack to bring it on his next ride.’

‘Okay.’

The door closed. A telephone breakdown in America is a rare thing, and this was the moment when a small danger signal might have shrilled in Bond’s mind. But it didn’t. Instead, he looked at the clock. Another ten minutes in the mud. The negro sauntered across with the cold towels over his arm and wrapped one round Bond’s hair and forehead. It was a delicious relief, and Bond had a moment of thinking that perhaps the whole business was just supportable.

The seconds ticked by. The jockey, with a crackle of obscenities, lowered himself into the box directly in front of Bond, and Bond guessed that he was being given the mud at 130 degrees. He was wound up in the shroud and the lid was banged shut over him.

The negro wrote 6.15 on the jockey’s slate.

Bond closed his eyes and wondered how he was going to slip the man his money. In the rest-room after the bath? There was presumably somewhere one went to lie down after all this. Or in the passage on the way out? Or in the bus? No. Better not in the bus. Better not be seen with him.

‘All right. Nobody move now. Just take it easy and no one’ll get hurt.’

It was a hard, deadly voice that meant business.

Bond’s eyes snapped open and his body tingled at the reek of danger that had come into the room.

The door to the outside, the door through which the mud came, was standing open. A man stood in the opening and another man was advancing into the middle of the room. They both had guns in their hands and they both had black hoods over their heads with holes cut for the eyes and mouth.

There was silence in the room except for the sound of water falling in the shower cubicles. Each cubicle contained a naked man. They peered out into the room through the veil of water, their mouths gulping for air and the hair streaming into their eyes. The man with the cauliflower ear was a motionless pillar. His eyes shifted whitely and the hose in his hand poured water over his feet.