The girl looked like a beautiful unkempt dryad in ragged shirt and trousers. The shirt and trousers were olive green, crumpled and splashed with mud and stains and torn in places, and she had bound her pale blonde hair with golden-rod to conceal its brightness for her crawl through the meadow. The beauty of her face was wild and rather animal, with a wide sensuous mouth, high cheekbones and silvery grey, disdainful eyes. There was the blood of scratches on her forearms and down one cheek, and a bruise had puffed and slightly blackened the same cheekbone. The metal feathers of a quiver full of arrows showed above her left shoulder. Apart from the bow, she carried nothing but a hunting knife at her belt and, at her other hip, a small brown canvas bag that presumably carried her food. She looked like a beautiful, dangerous customer who knew wild country and forests and was not afraid of them. She would walk alone through life and have little use for civilisation.
Bond thought she was wonderful. He smiled at her. He said softly, reassuringly: “I suppose you’re Robina Hood. My name’s James Bond.” He reached for his flask and unscrewed the top and held it out. “Sit down and have a drink of this – firewater and coffee. And I’ve got some biltong. Or do you live on dew and berries?”
She came a little closer and sat down a yard from him. She sat like a Red Indian, her knees splayed wide and her ankles tucked up high under her thighs. She reached for the flask and drank deeply with her head thrown back. She handed it back without comment. She did not smile. She said “Thanks” grudgingly, and took her arrow and thrust it over her back to join the others in the quiver. She said, watching him closely: “I suppose you’re a poacher. The deer-hunting season doesn’t open for another three weeks. But you won’t find any deer down here. They only come so low at night. You ought to be higher up during the day, much higher. If you like, I’ll tell you where there are some. Quite a big herd. It’s a bit late in the day, but you could still get to them. They’re up-wind from here and you seem to know about stalking. You don’t make much noise.”
“Is that what you’re doing here – hunting? Let’s see your licence.”
Her shirt had buttoned-down breast pockets. Without protest she took out from one of them the white paper and handed it over.
The licence had been issued in Bennington, Vermont. It had been issued in the name of Judy Havelock. There was a list of types of permit. ‘Non-resident hunting’ and ‘Non-resident bow and arrow’ had been ticked. The cost had been $18.50, payable to the Fish and Game Service, Montpelier, Vermont. Judy Havelock had given her age as twenty-five and her place of birth as Jamaica.
Bond thought: ‘God Almighty!’ He handed the paper back. So that was the score! He said with sympathy and respect: “You’re quite a girl, Judy. It’s a long walk from Jamaica. And you were going to take him on with your bow and arrow. You know what they say in China: ‘Before you set out on revenge, dig two graves.’ Have you done that, or did you expect to get away with it?”
The girl was staring at him. “Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you know about it?”
Bond reflected. There was only one way out of this mess and that was to join forces with the girl. What a hell of a business! He said resignedly: “I’ve told you my name. I’ve been sent out from London by, er, Scotland Yard. I know all about your troubles and I’ve come out here to pay off some of the score and see you’re not bothered by these people. In London we think that the man in that house might start putting pressure on you, about your property, and there’s no other way of stopping him.”
The girl said bitterly: “I had a favourite pony, a Palomino. Three weeks ago they poisoned it. Then they shot my Alsatian. I’d raised it from a puppy. Then came a letter. It said, ‘Death has many hands. One of these hands is now raised over you.’ I was to put a notice in the paper, in the personal column, on a particular day. I was just to say, ‘I will obey. Judy.’ I went to the police. All they did was to offer me protection. It was people in Cuba, they thought. There was nothing else they could do about it. So I went to Cuba and stayed in the best hotel and gambled big in the casinos.” She gave a little smile. “I wasn’t dressed like this. I wore my best dresses and the family jewels. And people made up to me. I was nice to them. I had to be. And all the while I asked questions. I pretended I was out for thrills – that I wanted to see the underworld and some real gangsters, and so on. And in the end I found out about this man.” She gestured down towards the house. “He had left Cuba. Batista had found out about him or something. And he had a lot of enemies. I was told plenty about him and in the end I met a man, a sort of high-up policeman, who told me the rest after I had,” she hesitated and avoided Bond’s eyes, “after I had made up to him.” She paused. She went on: “I left and went to America. I had read somewhere about Pinkerton’s, the detective people. I went to them and paid to have them find this man’s address.” She turned her hands palm upwards on her lap. Now her eyes were defiant. “That’s all.”