‘I told you you heard the car,’ said Bond. He pressed home his advantage. ‘And by the way,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t scratch your head with the blunt end of the pencil when you’re taking dictation. None of the best private secretaries do.’
Bond glanced significantly at a point against the jamb of the communicating door. He shrugged his shoulders.
Gala’s defences dropped. Damn the man, she thought. She gave him a reluctant smile. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘Come on. I can’t spend all the morning playing guessing games. He wants both of us and he doesn’t like being kept waiting.’ She rose and walked over to the communicating door and opened it. Bond followed her through and shut the door behind him.
Drax was standing looking at the illuminated wall map. He turned as they came in. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said with a sharp glance at Bond. ‘Thought you might have left us. Guards reported you out at seven-thirty this morning.’
‘I had to make a telephone call,’ said Bond. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb anyone.’
‘There’s a telephone in my study,’ Drax said curtly. ‘Tallon found it good enough.’
‘Ah, poor Tallon,’ said Bond non-committally. There was a hectoring note in Drax’s voice that he particularly disliked and that made him instinctively want to deflate the man. On this occasion he was successful.
Drax shot him a hard glance which he covered up with a short barking laugh and a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Do as you please,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your job to do. So long as you don’t upset the routines down here. You must remember,’ he added more reasonably, ‘all my men are nervous as kittens just now and I can’t have them upset by mysterious goings-on. I hope you’re not wanting to ask them a lot of questions today. I’d rather they didn’t have anything more to worry about. They haven’t recovered from Monday yet. Miss Brand here can tell you all about them, and I believe all their files are in Tallon’s room. Have you had a look at them yet?’
‘No key to the filing cabinet,’ said Bond truthfully.
‘Sorry, my fault,’ said Drax. He went to the desk and opened a drawer from which he took a small bunch of keys and handed them to Bond. ‘Should have given you these last night. The Inspector chap on the case asked me to hand them over to you. Sorry.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Bond. He paused. ‘By the way, how long have you had Krebs?’ He asked the question on an impulse. There was a moment’s quiet in the room.
‘Krebs?’ repeated Drax thoughtfully. He walked over to his desk and sat down. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a packet of his cork-tipped cigarettes. His blunt fingers scrabbled with its cellophane wrapping. He extracted a cigarette and stuffed it into his mouth under the fringe of his reddish moustache and lit it.
Bond was surprised. ‘I didn’t realize one could smoke down here,’ he said, taking out his own case.
Drax’s cigarette, a tiny white faggot in the middle of the big red face, waggled up and down as he answered without taking it out of his mouth. ‘Quite all right in here,’ he said. ‘These rooms are air-tight. Doors lined with rubber. Separate ventilation. Have to keep the workshops and generators separate from the shaft and anyway,’ his lips grinned round the cigarette, ‘I have to be able to smoke.’
Drax took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. He seemed to make up his mind. ‘You were asking about Krebs,’ he said. ‘Well,’ he looked meaningly up at Bond, ‘just between ourselves I don’t entirely trust the fellow.’ He held up an admonitory hand. ‘Nothing definite, of course, or I’d have had him put away, but I’ve found him snooping about the house and once I caught him in my study going through my private papers. He had a perfectly good explanation and I let him off with a warning. But quite honestly I have my suspicions of the man. Of course, he can’t do any harm. He’s part of the household staff and none of them are allowed in here but,’ he looked candidly into Bond’s eyes, ‘I would have said you ought to concentrate on him. Bright of you to have bowled him out so quickly,’ he added with respect. ‘What put you on to him?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Bond. ‘He’s got a shifty look. But what you say’s interesting and I’ll certainly keep an eye on him.’
He turned to Gala Brand who had remained silent ever since they had entered the room.
‘And what do you think of Krebs, Miss Brand?’ he asked politely.
The girl spoke to Drax. ‘I don’t know much about these things, Sir Hugo,’ she said with a modesty and a touch of impulsiveness which Bond admired. ‘But I don’t trust the man at all. I hadn’t meant to tell you, but he’s been poking around my room, opening letters and so forth. I know he has.’
Drax was shocked. ‘Has he indeed?’ he said. He bashed his cigarette out in the ashtray and killed the glowing fragments one by one. ‘So much for Krebs,’ he said, without looking up.
15 | ROUGH JUSTICE
