He went back and into their room, locking the doors behind him. He softly turned on his reading light. Solitaire was still asleep. The rest of the paper, a single sheet, lay on the carpet against the passage door. He picked it up and sat on the edge of his bed.
It was a sheet of cheap ruled notepaper. It was covered with irregular lines of writing in rough capitals, in red ink. Bond handled it gingerly, without much hope that it would yield any prints. These people weren’t like that.
Bond lay down on his bed and thought.
Then he folded the paper and put it in his pocket-book.
He lay on his back and looked at nothing, waiting for day-break.
12 | THE EVERGLADES
It was around five o’clock in the morning when they slipped off the train at Jacksonville.
It was still dark and the naked platforms of the great Florida junction were sparsely lit. The entrance to the subway was only a few yards from Car 245 and there was no sign of life on the sleeping train as they dived down the steps. Bond had told the attendant to keep the door of their compartment locked after they had gone and the blinds drawn and he thought there was quite a chance they would not be missed until the train reached St Petersburg.
They came out of the subway into the booking-hall. Bond verified that the next express for St Petersburg would be the Silver Meteor, the sister train of the Phantom, due at about nine o’clock, and he booked two Pullman seats on it. Then he took Solitaire’s arm and they walked out of the station into the warm dark street.
There were two or three all-night diners to choose from and they pushed through the door that announced ‘Good Eats’ in the brightest neon. It was the usual sleazy food-machine – two tired waitresses behind a zinc counter loaded with cigarettes and candy and paper-backs and comics. There was a big coffee percolator and a row of butane gas-rings. A door marked ‘Restroom’ concealed its dreadful secrets next to a door marked ‘Private’ which was probably the back entrance. A group of overalled men at one of the dozen stained crueted tables looked up briefly as they came in and then resumed their low conversation. Relief crews for the Diesels, Bond guessed.
There were four narrow booths on the right of the entrance and Bond and Solitaire slipped into one of them. They looked dully at the stained menu card.
After a time, one of the waitresses sauntered over and stood leaning against the partition, running her eyes over Solitaire’s clothes.
‘Orange juice, coffee, scrambled eggs, twice,’ said Bond briefly.
‘’Kay,’ said the girl. Her shoes lethargically scuffed the floor as she sauntered away.
‘The scrambled eggs’ll be cooked with milk,’ said Bond. ‘But one can’t eat boiled eggs in America. They look so disgusting without their shells, mixed up in a tea-cup the way they do them here. God knows where they learned the trick. From Germany, I suppose. And bad American coffee’s the worst in the world, worse even than in England. I suppose they can’t do much harm to the orange juice. After all we are in Florida now.’ He suddenly felt depressed by the thought of their four-hour wait in this unwashed, dog-eared atmosphere.
‘Everybody’s making easy money in America these days,’ said Solitaire. ‘That’s always bad for the customer. All they want is to strip a quick dollar off you and toss you out. Wait till you get down to the coast. At this time of the year, Florida’s the biggest sucker-trap on earth. On the East Coast they fleece the millionaires. Where we’re going they just take it off the little man. Serves him right, of course. He goes there to die. He can’t take it with him.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Bond, ‘what sort of a place are we going to?’
