In the background there thudded always the hidden metronome of the Casino, ticking up its little treasure of one-per-cents with each spin of a wheel and each turn of a card – a pulsing fat-cat with a zero for a heart.
Bond awoke in his own room at dawn and for a time he lay and stroked his memories.
Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation.
AS, TWO weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Hotel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind.
Where am I?’ he asked and was surprised that his voice sounded firm and clear.
All concierges are venal. It is not their fault. They are trained to regard all hotel guests except maharajahs as potential cheats and thieves. They have as much concern for your comfort or well-being as crocodiles.
Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility.
What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of a person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one.
Bond grinned with pleasure. What most warmed him was that M. himself should have rung up Mathis. This was quite unheard of. The very existence of M., let alone his identity, was never admitted. He could imagine the flutter this must have caused in the ultra-security-minded organization in London.
Head of S., thought Bond. They’re certainly giving me the red carpet treatment.
He went off down the corridor, feeling, for the first time in his life, totally inadequate.
I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that’s the way to live.
By the end of the week, Bond was sunburned and hard. He had cut his cigarettes down to ten a day and had not had a single drink. He could swim two miles without tiring, his hand was completely healed and all the scales of big city life had fallen from him.
Somebody said that to become very rich you have to be helped by a combination of remarkable circumstances and an unbroken run of luck.
There had been something very disquieting about the dinner-table downstairs. It had been laid for only three people.
Perhaps, after all, the right man was better than the right machine.
It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end.
The licence to kill for the Secret Service, the double-0 prefix, was a great honour. It had been earned hardly. It brought James Bond the only assignments he enjoyed – the dangerous ones.
The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with the strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something. He searched his mind. Yes, she was Botticelli’s Venus, seen from behind.
Bond surveyed his weapons. They were only his hands and his feet, his Gillette razor and his wristwatch, a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding bracelet. Used properly, these could be turned into most effective knuckledusters.
He looked up. She was standing a few feet away from him. He noticed that she was wearing a black beret at a rakish angle and that she looked exciting and mysterious like someone you see driving by abroad, alone in an open car, someone unattainable and more desirable than anyone you have ever known. Someone who is on her way to make love to somebody else. Someone who is not for you.