“Pretty cagey,” commented Bond. “It’s the committee that holds the baby if there’s any trouble. And listen to this. This is where the trouble comes in.” He read on : “The Company draws special attention to the provisions of the United Kingdom Finance Regulations as affecting the negotiability of sterling cheques and the limitation on the importation of sterling banknotes into the United Kingdom.”
Bond put down the card. “And so forth,” he said. He smiled at Tiffany Case. “So I buy you the number that’s just being auctioned and you win two thousand pounds. That’ll be a pile of dollars and pound notes and cheques. The only way of spending all that sterling, even suppose that those cheques are all good, which is doubtful, would be by smuggling it through under your suspender belt. And there we’d be, back in the same old racket, but now with me on the side of the devil.”
The girl was not impressed. “There used to be a guy in the gangs called Abadaba,” she said. “He was a crooked egg-head who knew all the answers. Worked out the track odds, fixed the percentage on the numbers racket, did all the brain work. They called him “The Wizard of Odds’. Got rubbed out quite by mistake in the Dutch Schultz killing,” she added parenthetically. “I guess you’re just another Abadaba the way you talk yourself out of having to spend some money on a girl. Oh, well,” she shrugged her shoulders resignedly, “will you stake your girl to another Stinger?”
Bond beckoned to the steward. When he had gone she leant over so that her hair brushed his ear and said softly. “I don’t really want it. You have it. I want to stay sober as Sunday tonight.” She sat up straight. “And now what’s going on around here?” she said impatiently. “I want to see some action.”
“Here it comes,” said Bond. The auctioneer raised his voice and there was a hush in the room. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said impressively. “We come to the 64,ooo-dollar question. Who is going to bid me £100 for the choice of High or Low Field? We all know what that means-the option to choose the High Field, which I seem to feel may be the popular choice this evening (laughter) in view of the wonderful weather outside. So who will open the bidding with £100 for the choice of High or Low Field?”
“Thank you, Sir! And no. 120 and 130. Thank you, madam.”
“Hundred and fifty,” said a man’s voice not far from their table.
“A hundred and sixty.” This time it was a woman.
Monotonously the man’s voice called the 170.
“Eighty,” said someone.
“Two hundred pounds.”
Something made Bond turn round and look at the man who had spoken.
It was a biggish man. His face had the glistening, pasty appearance of a spat-out bullseye. Small, cold dark eyes were looking towards the auctioneer’s platform through motionless bifocals. All the man’s neck seemed to be at the back of his head.
Sweat matted the curly black algae of his hair and now he took off his glasses and picked up a napkin and wiped the sweat off with a circular motion that started with the left side of the face and swirled round to the back of his head where his right hand took over and completed the circuit as far as the dripping nose. “Two hundred and ten,” said someone. The big man’s chin wobbled and he opened his tight-buttoned mouth and said, “Two hundred and twenty” in a level American voice.
What was there about this man that struck a chord in Bond’s memory? He watched the big face, running his mind’s eye over the filing system of his brain, pulling out drawer after drawer, hunting for the clue. The face? The voice? England? America?
Bond gave up and turned his attention to the other man at the table. Again, the same urgent sense of recognition. The curiously delicate young features under the slicked-back white hair. The soft brown eyes under the long lashes. The general effect of prettiness, spoiled by the fleshy nose over the wide thin mouth, now open in a square empty smile like the grin of a letter-box.