There was a door behind the bar. Bond pushed through it and found himself in a station waiting-room with benches and old-fashioned notices about trains and warning you not to spit on the floor. “Right,” said one of the men and Bond turned through a sawn-off swing-door and on to a plank station platform.
And then Bond stopped in his tracks and hardly noticed a sharp prod in the ribs from a gun barrel.
It was probably the most beautiful train in the world. The engine was one of the old locomotives of the ‘Highland Light’ class of around 1870 which Bond had heard called the handsomest steam locomotives ever built. Its polished brass handrails and the fluted sand-dome and heavy warning bell above the long, gleaming barrel of the boiler glittered under the hissing gaslights of the station. A wisp of steam came from the towering balloon smoke-stack of the old wood-burner. The great sweeping cowcatcher was topped by three massive brass lights-a bulging pilot beam at the base of the smoke-stack and two storm lanterns below. Above the two, tall driving wheels, in fine early Victorian gold capitals, was written The Cannonball, and the name was repeated along the side of the black-and-gold painted tender piled with birch logs, behind the tall, square driver’s cabin.
Coupled to the tender was a maroon coloured state Pullman. Its arched windows above the narrow mahogany panels were picked out in cream. An oval plaque amidships said The Sierra Belle. Above the windows and below the slightly jutting barrel roof Tonopah and Tidewater R.R. was written in cream capitals on dark blue.
“Guess you never seen nuthen like that, Limey,” said one of the guards proudly. “Now git goin’.” His voice was muffled by the black silk hood.
Bond walked slowly across and stepped up on to the brass-railed observation platform with the shining brakeman’s wheel in the centre. For the first time in his life he saw the point of being a millionaire and suddenly, and also for the first time, he thought that there might be more to this man Spang than he had reckoned with.
The interior of the Pullman glittered with Victorian luxury. The light from small crystal chandeliers in the roof shone back from polished mahogany walls and winked off silver fittings and cut-glass vases and lampstands. The carpets and swagged curtains were wine-red and the domed ceiling, broken at intervals by oval-framed paintings of garlanded cherubs and wreathed flowers against a background of sky and clouds, was cream, as were the slats of the drawn Venetian blinds.
First came a small dining-room with the remains o’f a supper for two-a basket of fruit and an open bottle of champagne in a silver bucket-and then a narrow corridor from which three doors led, Bond assumed, to the bedrooms and lavatory. Bond was still thinking about this arrangement as, with the guards at his heels, he pushed open the door into the state room.
At the far end of the state room, with his back to a small open fireplace flanked by bookshelves gleaming richly with gold tooled leather bindings, stood Mr Spang, In a red leather armchair near a small writing-desk half way down the car Tiffany Case sat bolt upright. Bond didn’t care for the way she was holding her cigarette. It was nervous and artificial. It looked frightened.
Bond took a few steps down the car to a comfortable chair. He turned it round to face them both and sat down and crossed one knee over the other. He took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette and swallowed a deep lungful of smoke and let the smoke come out between his teeth with a long, relaxed hiss.
Mr Spang had an unlighted cigar jutting from the exact centre of his mouth. He took it out. “Stay here, Wint. Kidd, get along and do what I said.” The strong teeth bit the words off like inches of celery. “Now you,” his eyes glittered angrily at Bond, “who are you and what’s going on?”
“I shall need a drink if we’re going to talk,” said Bond.
Mr Spang eyed him coldly. “Get him a drink, Wint.”