LITMIR.BIZ

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Bond neared the end of the corridor he could hear a piano swinging a rather sad tune. At the door of 350 he knew the music came from behind it. He recognized the tune. It was ‘Feuilles Mortes’. He knocked.

      ‘Come in.’ The hall-porter had telephoned and the voice was waiting for him.

      Bond walked into the small living-room and closed the door behind him.

      ‘Lock it,’ said the voice. It came from the bedroom.

      Bond did as he was told and walked across the middle of the room until he was opposite the open bedroom door. As he passed the portable long-player on the writing desk the pianist began on ‘La Ronde’.

      She was sitting, half-naked, astride a chair in front of the dressing-table, gazing across the back of the chair into the triple mirror. Her bare arms were folded along the tall back of the chair and her chin was resting on her arms. Her spine was arched, and there was arrogance in the set of her head and shoulders. The black string of her brassiere across the naked back, the tight black lace pants and the splay of her legs whipped at Bond’s senses.

      The girl raised her eyes from looking at her face and inspected him in the mirror, briefly and coolly.

      ‘I guess you’re the new help,’ she said in a low, rather husky voice that made no commitment. ‘Take a seat and enjoy the music. Best light record ever made.’

      Bond was amused. He obediently took the few steps to a deep armchair, moved it a little so that he could still see her through the doorway, and sat down.

      ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he said, taking out his case and putting a cigarette in his mouth.

      ‘If that’s the way you want to die.’

      Miss Case resumed the silent contemplation of her face in the mirror while the pianist played ‘J’attendrai’. Then it was the end of the record.

      Indifferently she flexed her hips back off the chair and stood up. She half turned her head and the blonde hair that fell heavily to the base of her neck curved with the movement and caught the light.

      ‘If you like it, turn it over,’ she said carelessly. ‘Be with you in a moment.’ She moved out of sight.

      Bond walked over to the gramophone and picked up the record. It was George Feyer with rhythm accompaniment. He looked at the number and memorized it. It was Vox 500. He examined the other side and, skipping ‘La Vie en Rose’ because it had memories for him, put the needle down at the beginning of ‘Avril au Portugal’.

      Before he left the gramophone he pulled the blotter softly from under it and held it up to the standard lamp beside the writing-desk. He held it sideways under the light and glanced along it. It was unmarked. He shrugged his shoulders and slipped it back under the machine and walked back to his chair.

      He thought that the music was appropriate to the girl. All the tunes seemed to belong to her. No wonder it was her favourite record. It had her brazen sexiness, the rough tang of her manner and the poignancy that had been in her eyes as they had looked moodily back at him out of the mirror.

      Bond had had no picture in his mind of the Miss Case who was to shadow him to America. He had taken for granted that it would be some tough, well-used slattern with dead eyes – a hard, sullen woman who had ‘gone the route’ and whose body was no longer of any interest to the gang she worked for. This girl was tough all right, tough of manner, but whatever might be the history of her body, the skin had shone with life under the light.

      What was her first name? Bond got up again and walked over to the gramophone. There was a Pan-American Airways label attached to the grip. It said ‘Miss T. Case’. T? Bond walked back to his chair. Teresa? Tess? Thelma? Trudy? Tilly? None of them seemed to fit. Surely not Trixie, or Tony or Tommy.

      He was still playing with the problem when she appeared quietly in the doorway of the bedroom and stood with one elbow resting high up against the door-jamb and her head bent sideways on to her hand. She looked down at him reflectively.

      Bond got unhurriedly to his feet and looked back at her.

      She was dressed to go out except for her hat, a small black affair that swung from her free hand. She wore a smart black tailor-made over a deep olive-green shirt buttoned at the neck, golden-tan nylons and black, square-toed crocodile shoes that looked very expensive. There was a slim gold wrist-watch on a black strap at one wrist and a heavy gold chain bracelet at the other. One large baguette-cut diamond flared on the third finger of her right hand and a flat pearl ear-ring in twisted gold showed on her right ear where the heavy pale gold hair fell away from it.

      She was very beautiful in a devil-may-care way, as if she kept her looks for herself and didn’t mind what men thought of them, and there was an ironical tilt to the finely drawn eyebrows above the wide, level, rather scornful grey eyes that seemed to say, ‘Sure. Come and try. But brother, you’d better be tops.’

      The eyes themselves had the rare quality of chatoyance. When jewels have chatoyance the colour in the lustre changes with movement in the light, and the colour of this girl’s eyes seemed to vary between a light grey and a deep grey-blue.

      Her skin was lightly tanned and without make-up except for a deep red on the lips, which were full and soft and rather moody so as to give the effect of what is called ‘a sinful mouth’. But not, thought Bond, one that often sinned – if one was to judge by the level eyes and the hint of authority and tension behind them.

      The eyes now looked impersonally into his.

      ‘So you’re Peter Franks,’ she said and the voice was low and attractive, but with a touch of condescension.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I’ve been wondering what T stands for.’

      She thought for a moment. ‘I guess you can find out at the desk,’ she said. ‘It stands for Tiffany.’ She walked over to the gramophone and stopped the record in the middle of ‘Je n’en connais pas la fin’. She turned round. ‘But it’s not in the public domain,’ she added coldly.

      Bond shrugged his shoulders and moved over to the window-sill and leant easily against it with his ankles crossed.

      His nonchalance seemed to irritate her. She sat down in front of the writing-desk. ‘Now then,’ she said, and her voice had an edge to it, ‘let’s get down to business. In the first place, why did you take on this job?’

      ‘Somebody died.’

      ‘Oh.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘They told me your line was stealing.’ She paused. ‘Hot blood or cold blood?’

      ‘Hot blood. A fight.’

      ‘So you want to get out?’

      ‘That’s about it. And the money.’

      She changed the subject. ‘Got a wooden leg? False teeth?’

      ‘No. Everything’s real.’

      She frowned. ‘I’m always telling them to find me a man with a wooden leg. Well, have you got any hobbies or anything? Any ideas about where you’re going to carry the stones?’

      ‘No,’ said Bond. ‘I play cards and golf. But I thought the handles of trunks and suitcases were good places for this sort of stuff.’

      ‘So do the customs men,’ she said dryly. She sat silent for a moment, reflecting. Then she pulled a piece of paper and a pencil towards her. ‘What sort of golf balls do you use?’ she asked unsmilingly.

      ‘They’re called Dunlop 65’s.’ He was equally serious. ‘Maybe you’ve got something there.’

      She made no comment, but wrote the name down. She looked up. ‘Got a passport?’

      ‘Well, I have,’ admitted Bond. ‘But it’s in my real name.’

      ‘Oh.’ She was suspicious again. ‘And what might that be?’

      ‘James Bond.’

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