Beyond a door marked ‘Gentlemen’s Treatment’ he was taken in hand by an indiarubbery masseur in trousers and singlet. Bond undressed and with a towel round his waist followed the man down a long room divided into compartments by plastic curtains. In the first compartment, side by side, two elderly men lay, the perspiration pouring down their strawberry faces, in electric blanket-baths. In the next were two massage tables. On one, the pale, dimpled body of a youngish but very fat man wobbled obscenely beneath the pummelling of his masseur. Bond, his mind recoiling from it all, took off his towel and lay down on his face and surrendered himself to the toughest deep massage he had ever experienced.
Vaguely, against the jangling of his nerves and the aching of muscles and tendons, he heard the fat man heave himself off his table and, moments later, another patient take his place. He heard the man’s masseur say, ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to have the wrist-watch off, sir.’
The urbane, silky voice that Bond at once recognized said with authority, ‘Nonsense, my dear fellow. I come here every year and I’ve always been allowed to keep it on before. I’d rather keep it on, if you don’t mind.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ The masseur’s voice was politely firm. ‘You must have had someone else doing the treatment. It interferes with the flow of blood when I come to treat the arm and hand. If you don’t mind, sir.’
There was a moment’s silence. Bond could almost feel Count Lippe controlling his temper. The words, when they came, were spat out with what seemed to Bond ludicrous violence. ‘Take it off then.’ The ‘Damn you’ didn’t have to be uttered. It hung in the air at the end of the sentence.
‘Thank you, sir.’ There was a brief pause and then the massage began.
The small incident seemed odd to Bond. Obviously one had to take off one’s wrist-watch for a massage. Why had the man wanted to keep it on? It seemed very childish.
‘Turn over, please sir.’
Bond obeyed. Now his face was free to move. He glanced casually to his right. Count Lippe’s face was turned away from him. His left arm hung down towards the floor. Where the sunburn ended, there was a bracelet of almost white flesh at the wrist. In the middle of the circle where the watch had been there was a sign tattooed in red on the skin. It looked like a small zigzag crossed by two vertical strokes. So Count Lippe had not wanted this sign to be seen! It would be amusing to ring up Records and see if they had a line on what sort of people wore this little secret recognition sign under their wrist-watches.
3 | THE RACK
At the end of the hour’s treatment Bond felt as if his body had been eviscerated and then run through a wringer. He put on his clothes and, cursing M., climbed weakly back up the stairs into what, by comparison with the world of nakedness and indignities in the basement, were civilized surroundings. At the entrance to the main lounge were two telephone booths. The switchboard put him through to the only Headquarters number he was allowed to call on an outside line. He knew that all such outside calls were monitored. As he asked for Records, he recognized the hollowness on the line that meant the line was bugged. He gave his number to Head of Records and put his question, adding that the subject was an Oriental probably of Portuguese extraction. After ten minutes Head of Records came back to him.
‘It’s a Tong sign.’ His voice sounded interested. ‘The Red Lightning Tong. Unusual to find anyone but a full-blooded Chinaman being a member. It’s not the usual semi-religious organization. This is entirely criminal. Station H had dealings with it once. They’re represented in Hong Kong, but their headquarters are across the bay in Macao. Station H paid big money to get a courier service running into Pekin. Worked like a dream, so they gave the line a trial with some heavy stuff. It bounced, badly. Lost a couple of H’s top men. It was a double-cross. Turned out that Redland had some sort of a deal with these people. Hell of a mess. Since then they’ve cropped up from time to time in drugs, gold smuggling to India, and top-bracket White Slavery. They’re big people. We’d be interested if you’ve got any kind of a line.’
Bond said, ‘Thanks, Records. No, I’ve got nothing definite. First time I’ve heard of these Red Lightning people. Let you know if anything develops. So long.’
