Enrico Colombo spoke swiftly and urgently to the girl. She nodded and glanced across the room at Bond. He and Kristatos were getting up from the table. She said to Colombo in a low, angry voice: “You are a disgusting man. Everybody said so and warned me against you. They were right. Just because you give me dinner in your lousy restaurant you think you have the right to insult me with your filthy propositions” – the girl’s voice had got louder. Now she had snatched up her handbag and had got to her feet. She stood beside the table directly in the line of Bond’s approach on his way to the exit.
Enrico Colombo’s face was black with rage. Now he, too, was on his feet. “You goddam Austrian beech –”
“Don’t dare insult my country, you Italian toad.” She reached for a half-full glass of wine and hurled it accurately in the man’s face. When he came at her it was easy for her to back the few steps into Bond who was standing with Kristatos politely waiting to get by. Enrico Colombo stood panting, wiping the wine off his face with a napkin. He said furiously to the girl: “Don’t ever show your face inside my restaurant again.” He made the gesture of spitting on the floor between them, turned and strode off through the door marked UFFICIO.
The maŒtre d’h“tel had hurried up. Everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating. Bond took the girl by the elbow. “May I help you find a taxi?”
She jerked herself free. She said, still angry: “All men are pigs.” She remembered her manners. She said stiffly: “You are very kind.” She moved haughtily towards the door with the men in her wake.
There was a buzz in the restaurant and a renewed clatter of knives and forks. Everyone was delighted with the scene. The maŒtre d’h“tel, looking solemn, held open the door. He said to Bond: “I apologize, Monsieur. And you are very kind to be of assistance.” A cruising taxi slowed. He beckoned it to the pavement and held open the door.
The girl got in. Bond firmly followed and closed the door. He said to Kristatos through the window: “I’ll telephone you in the morning. All right?” Without waiting for the man’s reply he sat back in the seat. The girl had drawn herself away into the farthest corner. Bond said: “Where shall I tell him?”
“Hotel Ambassadori.”
They drove a short way in silence. Bond said: “Would you like to go somewhere first for a drink?”
“No thank you.” She hesitated. “You are very kind but tonight I am tired.”
“Perhaps another night.”
“Perhaps, but I go to Venice tomorrow.”
“I shall also be there. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
The girl smiled. She said: “I thought Englishmen were supposed to be shy. You are English, aren’t you? What is your name? What do you do?”
“Yes, I’m English – My name’s Bond – James Bond. I write books – adventure stories. I’m writing one now about drug smuggling. It’s set in Rome and Venice. The trouble is that I don’t know enough about the trade. I am going round picking up stories about it. Do you know any?”
“So that is why you were having dinner with that Kristatos. I know of him. He has a bad reputation. No. I don’t know any stories. I only know what everybody knows.”
Bond said enthusiastically: “But that’s exactly what I want. When I said ‘stories’ I didn’t mean fiction. I meant the sort of high-level gossip that’s probably pretty near the truth. That sort of thing’s worth diamonds to a writer.”
She laughed. “You mean that . . . diamonds?”
Bond said: “Well, I don’t earn all that as a writer, but I’ve already sold an option on this story for a film, and if I can make it authentic enough I dare say they’ll actually buy the film.” He reached out and put his hand over hers in her lap. She did not take her hand away. “Yes, diamonds. A diamond clip from Van Cleef. Is it a deal?”
Now she took her hand away. They were arriving at the Ambassadori. She picked up her bag from the seat beside her. She turned on the seat so that she faced him. The commissionaire opened the door and the light from the street turned her eyes into stars. She examined his face with a certain seriousness. She said: “All men are pigs, but some are lesser pigs than others. All right. I will meet you. But not for dinner. What I may tell you is not for public places. I bathe every afternoon at the Lido. But not at the fashionable plage. I bathe at the Bagni Alberoni, where the English poet Byron used to ride his horse. It is at the tip of the peninsula. The Vaporetto will take you there. You will find me there the day after tomorrow – at three in the afternoon. I shall be getting my last sunburn before the winter. Among the sand-dunes. You will see a pale yellow umbrella. Underneath it will be me.” She smiled. “Knock on the umbrella and ask for Fraulein Lisl Baum.”