‘Well, it certainly went with a bang,’ said Basildon gratefully. ‘I expect he’ll put two and two together and either stay away or play straight in future. Expensive evening for him. Don’t let’s have any arguments about your winnings,’ he added. ‘You’ve done everyone – and particularly Drax – a good turn tonight. Things might have gone wrong. Then it would have been your fingers that would have got burned. Cheque will reach you on Saturday.’
They had said good-night and Bond, in a mood of anti-climax, had gone off to bed. He had taken a mild sleeping pill to try and clear his mind of the bizarre events of the evening and prepare himself for the morning and the office. Before he slept he reflected, as he had often reflected in other moments of triumph at the card table, that the gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.
When he closed the door behind him Loelia Ponsonby looked curiously at the dark shadows under his eyes. He noticed the glance, as she had intended.
He grinned. ‘Partly work and partly play,’ he explained. ‘In strictly masculine company,’ he added. ‘And thanks very much for the benzedrine. It really was badly needed. Hope I didn’t interfere with your evening?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, thinking of the dinner and the library book she had abandoned when Bond telephoned. She looked down at her shorthand pad. ‘The Chief of Staff telephoned half an hour ago. He said that M. would be wanting you today. He couldn’t say when. I told him that you’ve got Unarmed Combat at three and he said to cancel it. That’s all, except the dockets left over from yesterday.’
‘Thank heavens,’ said Bond. ‘I couldn’t have stood being thrown about by that dam’ Commando chap today. Any news of 008?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They say he’s all right. He’s been moved to the military hospital at Wahnerheide. Apparently it’s only shock.’
Bond knew what ‘shock’ might mean in his profession. ‘Good,’ he said without conviction. He smiled at her and went into his office and closed the door.
He walked decisively round his desk to the chair, sat down, and pulled the top file towards him. Monday was gone. This was Tuesday. A new day. Closing his mind to his headache and to thoughts about the night, he lit a cigarette and opened the brown folder with the Top Secret red star on it. It was a memorandum from the Office of the Chief Preventive Officer of the United States Customs Branch and it was headed
He focused his eyes. ‘The Inspectoscope’, he read, ‘is an instrument using fluoroscopic principles for the detection of contraband. It is manufactured by the Sicular Inspectoscope Company of San Francisco and is widely used in American prisons for the secret detection of metal objects concealed in the clothing or on the person of criminals and prison visitors. It is also used in the detection of I.D.B. (Illicit Diamond Buying) and diamond smuggling in the diamond fields of Africa and Brazil. The instrument costs seven thousand dollars, is approximately eight feet long by seven feet high and weighs nearly three tons. It requires two trained operators. Experiments have been made with this instrument in the customs hall of the International Airport at Idlewild with the following results … ’
Bond skipped two pages containing details of a number of petty smuggling cases and studied the ‘Summary of Conclusions’ from which he deduced, with some irritation, that he would have to think of some place other than his armpit for carrying his .25 Beretta the next time he travelled abroad. He made a mental note to discuss the problem with the Technical Devices Section.
He ticked and initialled the distribution slip and automatically reached for the next folder entitled
‘Philopon’, his mind was trying to wander and he dragged it sharply back to the typewritten pages, ‘Philopon is the chief factor in the increase in crime in Japan. According to the Welfare Ministry there are now 1,500,000 addicts in the country, of whom one million are under the age of 20, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police attribute 70 per cent of juvenile crime to the influences of the drug.
