Goldfinger hit the putt and followed through on the line. It was a beautiful putt that stopped six inches past the pin. Now Goldfinger would be sure that unless Bond sank his difficult twenty-footer, the match was his!
Bond went through a long rigmarole of sizing up his putt. He took his time, letting the suspense gather like a thunder cloud round the long shadows on the livid, fateful green.
‘Flag out, please. I’m going to sink this one.’ Bond charged the words with a deadly certitude, while debating whether to miss the hole to the right or the left or leave it short. He bent to the putt and missed the hole well on the right.
‘Missed it, by God!’ Bond put bitterness and rage into his voice. He walked over to the hole and picked up the two balls, keeping them in full view.
Goldfinger came up. His face was glistening with triumph. ‘Well, thanks for the game. Seems I was just too good for you after all.’
‘You’re a good nine handicap,’ said Bond with just sufficient sourness. He glanced at the balls in his hand to pick out
Goldfinger’s and hand it to him. He gave a start of surprise. ‘Hullo!’ He looked sharply at Goldfinger. ‘You play a Number One Dunlop, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ A sixth sense of disaster wiped the triumph off Goldfinger’s face. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Well,’ said Bond apologetically.’ “Fraid you’ve been playing with the wrong ball. Here’s my Penfold Hearts and this is a Number Seven Dunlop.’ He handed both balls to Gold-finger. Goldfinger tore them off his palm and examined them feverishly.
Slowly the colour flooded over Goldfinger’s face. He stood, his mouth working, looking from the balls to Bond and back to the balls.
Bond said softly, ‘Too bad we were playing to the rules. Afraid that means you lose the hole. And, of course, the match.’ Bond’s eyes observed Goldfinger impassively.
‘But, but…’
This was what Bond had been looking forward to – the cup dashed from the lips. He stood and waited, saying nothing.
Rage suddenly burst Goldfinger’s usually relaxed face like a bomb. ‘It was a Dunlop Seven you found in the rough. It was your caddie that gave me this ball. On the seventeenth green. He gave me the wrong ball on purpose, the damned che-‘
‘Here, steady on,’ said Bond mildly. ‘You’ll get a slander action on your hands if you aren’t careful. Hawker, did you give Mr Goldfinger the wrong ball by mistake or anything?’
‘No, sir.’ Hawker’s face was stolid. He said indifferently, ‘If you want my opinion, sir, the mistake may have been made at the seventeenth when the gentleman found his ball pretty far off the line we’d all marked it on. A Seven looks very much like a One. I’d say that’s what happened, sir. It would have been a miracle for the gentleman’s ball to have ended up as wide as where it was found.’
‘Tommy rot!’ Goldfinger gave a snort of disgust. He turned angrily on Bond. ‘You saw that was a Number One my caddie found.’
Bond shook his head doubtfully. ‘I didn’t really look closely, I’m afraid. However,’ Bond’s voice became brisk, businesslike, ‘it’s really the job of the player to make certain he’s using the right ball, isn’t it? I can’t see that anyone else can be blamed if you tee the wrong ball up and play three shots with it. Anyway,’ he started walking off the green, ‘many thanks for the match. We must have it again one day.’
Goldfinger, lit with glory by the setting sun, but with a long black shadow tied to his heels, followed Bond slowly, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Bond’s back.
CHAPTER TEN
UP AT THE GRANGE
THERE ARE some rich men who use their riches like a club. Bond, luxuriating in his bath, thought that Goldfinger was one of them. He was the kind of man who thought he could flatten the world with his money, bludgeoning aside annoyances and opposition with his heavy wad. He had thought to break Bond’s nerve by playing him for ten thousand dollars -a flea-bite to him but obviously a small fortune to Bond. In most circumstances he might have succeeded. It needs an iron nerve to ‘wait for it’ on your swing, to keep your head down on the short putts, when big money hangs on every shot, over eighteen long holes. The pros, playing for their own bread and butter and for their families’, know the cold breath of the poor-house on the back of their necks as they come to the eighteenth tee all square. That is why they lead careful lives, not smoking or drinking, and why the one that wins is usually the one with the least imagination.