While he waited for it, he thought of those other times, when, in the middle of an empty day, the red telephone had suddenly broken the silence and taken him out of one world and set him down in another. He shrugged his shoulders-Monday! He might have expected trouble.
The lift came. “Ninth,” said Bond, and stepped in.
CHAPTER II
THE COLUMBITE KING
THE NINTH was the top floor of the building. Most of it was occupied by Communications, the hand-picked inter-services team of operators whose only interest was the world of microwaves, sunspots, and the ‘heaviside layer’. Above them, on the flat roof, were the three squat masts of one of the most powerful transmitters in England, explained on the bold bronze list of occupants in the entrance hall of the building by the words ‘Radio Tests Ltd.’ The other tenants were declared to be ‘Universal Export Co.’, ‘Delaney Bros. (1940) Ltd.’, ‘The Omnium Corporation’, and ‘Enquiries (Miss E. Twining, OBE)’.
Miss Twining was a real person. Forty years earlier she had been a Loelia Ponsonby. Now, in retirement, she sat in a small office on the ground floor and spent her days tearing up circulars, paying the rates and taxes of her ghostly tenants, and politely brushing off salesmen and people who wanted to export something-or have their radios mended.
It was always very quiet on the ninth floor. As Bond turned to the left outside the lift and walked along the softly carpeted corridor to the green baize door that led to the offices of M. and his personal staff, the only sound he heard was a thin high-pitched whine that was so faint that you almost had to listen for it.
Without knocking he pushed through the green door and walked into the last room but one along the passage.
Miss Moneypenny, M.’s private secretary, looked up from her typewriter and smiled at him. They liked each other and she knew that Bond admired her looks. She was wearing the same model shirt as his own secretary, but with blue stripes. “New uniform, Penny?” said Bond. She laughed. “Loelia and I share the same little woman,” she said. “We tossed and I got blue.”
A snort came through the open door of the adjoining room. The Chief of Staff, a man of about Bond’s age, came out, a sardonic grin on his pale, overworked face.
“Break it up,” he said, “M.’s waiting. Lunch afterwards?”
“Fine,” said Bond. He turned to the door beside Miss Moneypenny, walked through and shut it after him. Above it, a green light went on. Miss Moneypenny raised her eyebrows at the Chief of Staff. He shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s business, Penny,” he said. “Just sent for him out of the blue.” He went back into his own room and got on with the day’s work.
When Bond came through the door, M. was sitting at his broad desk, lighting a pipe. He made a vague gesture with the lighted match towards the chair on the other side of the desk and Bond walked over and sat down. M. glanced at him sharply through the smoke and then threw the box of matches on to the empty expanse of red leather in front of him.
“Have a good leave?” he asked abruptly. “Yes, thank you, sir,” said Bond.
“Still sunburned, I see.” M. looked his disapproval. He didn’t really begrudge Bond a holiday which had been partly convalescence. The hint of criticism came from the Puritan and the Jesuit who live in all leaders of men.
“Yes, sir,” said Bond noncommittally. “It’s very hot near the equator.”
“Quite,” said M. “Well-deserved rest.” He screwed up his eyes without humour. “Hope the colour won’t last too long. Always suspicious of sunburned men in England. Either they’ve not got a job of work to do or they put it on with a sun-lamp.” He dismissed the subject with a short sideways jerk of his pipe.
He put the pipe back in his mouth and pulled at it absent-mindedly. It had gone out. He reached for the matches and wasted some time getting it going again.
“Looks as if we’ll get that gold after all,” he said finally. “There’s been some talk of the Hague Court, but Ashenheim’s a fine lawyer.”* (* This refers to Bond’s previous assignment, described in Live and Let Die, by the same author.)