Bond moved impatiently inside his clothes. He got to his feet and walked straight across the gravel and up the wooden steps and the frame doors banged to behind him.
He found himself in a dingy reception room. The sulphur fumes were stronger. There was a reception desk behind an iron grill. Framed testimonials hung on the walls, some of them with red paper seals below the signature, and there was a glass-fronted showcase full of packages in transparent wrapping. Above it a notice said, in badly handwritten capitals, Take Home an Acme-Pak. Treat Yourself in Privacy.’ There was a list of prices pasted on to a card advertising a cheap deodorant. The slogan still showed. It said: ‘Let your Armpits be your Charm-pits.’
A faded woman with a screw of orange hair above a face like a sad cream-puff raised her head slowly and looked at him through the bars, keeping one ringer on her place in True Love Stones.
“Can I help you?” It was the voice reserved for strangers, for people who didn’t know the ropes.
Bond looked through the bars with the cautious abhorrence she had expected. “I’d like a bath.”
“Mud or Sulphur?” She reached for the tickets with her free hand.
“Mud.”
“Would you care for a book of tickets? They’re cheaper.”
“Just one, please.”
“Dollar-fifty.” She pushed through a mauve ticket and kept a finger on it until Bond had put his money down.
“Which way do I go?”
“Right,” she said. “Follow the passage. Better leave your valuables.” She slipped a large white envelope under the grill. “Write your name on it.” She watched sideways as Bond put his watch and the contents of his pockets into the envelope and scribbled his name on it.
The twenty hundred-dollar bills were inside Bond’s shirt. He wondered about them. He pushed the envelope back. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
There was a low wicket at the back of the room and two white-painted wooden hands whose drooping index fingers pointed right and left. On one hand was written MUD and on the other SULPHUR. Bond went through the wicket and turned to the right along a dank corridor with a cement floor which sloped downwards. He followed it and pushed through a swing door at the end and found himself in a long high room with a skylight in the roof and cabins along the walls.
It was hot and steamy and sulphurous in the room. Two youngish, soft-looking men, naked except for grey towels round their waists, were playing gin rummy at a deal table near the entrance. On the table were two ashtrays full of cigarette butts, and a kitchen plate piled with keys. The men looked up as Bond entered and one of them picked up a key from the plate and held it out. Bond walked over and took it.
“Twelve,” said the man. “Got ya ticket?”
Bond handed it over and the man made a gesture towards the cabins behind him. He jerked his head towards a door at the end of the room. “Baths through there.” The two men went back to their game.
There was nothing in the frowzy cabin but a folded towel from which constant washing had removed all the nap. Bond undressed and tied the towel round his waist. He folded the bulky packet of notes and stuffed them into the breast pocket of his coat under his handkerchief. He hoped it would be the last place that a petty thief would look in a quick search. He hung up his gun in the shoulder holster on a prominent hook and walked out and locked the door behind him.
Bond had no idea what he would see through the door at the end of the room. His first reaction was that he had walked into a morgue. Before he could collect his impressions, a fat bald Negro with a down-turned straggling moustache came over and looked him up and down. “What’s wrong with you, Mister?” he asked indifferently.
“Nothing,” said Bond shortly. “Just want to try a mud bath.”
“Okay,” said the Negro. “Any heart trouble?”
“No.”
“Okay. Over here.” Bond followed the Negro across the slippery concrete floor to a wooden bench alongside a pair of dilapidated shower cubicles in one of which a naked body hung with mud was being hosed down by a man with a cauliflower ear,