He thought his jaw would break with the weight of the thing and the nerves of his front teeth screamed at him, but he swayed his chair carefully upright away from the desk and then strained his bent neck forward until the tip of blue fire from the torch was biting into the flex that bound Gala’s right wrist to the arm of her chair.
He tried desperately to keep the flame steady but the breath rasped through the girl’s teeth as the handle shifted between his jaws and the flame of the torch brushed her forearm.
But then it was over. Melted by the fierce heat, the copper strands parted one by one and suddenly Gala’s right arm was free and she was reaching to take the torch out of Bond’s mouth.
Bond’s head fell back on to his shoulders and he twisted his neck luxuriously to get the blood moving in the aching muscles.
Almost before he knew it, Gala was bending over his arms and legs and he too was free.
As he sat still for a moment, his eyes closed, waiting for the life to come back into his body, he suddenly, delightedly felt Gala’s soft lips on his mouth.
He opened his eyes. She was standing in front of him, her eyes shining. “That’s for what you did,” she said seriously.
“You’re a wonderful girl,” he said simply.
But then, knowing what he was going to have to do, knowing that while she might conceivably survive, he had only another few minutes to live, he closed his eyes so that she should not see the hopelessness in them.
Gala saw the expression on his face and she turned away. She thought it was only exhaustion and the culminative effect of what his body had suffered, and she suddenly remembered the peroxide in the washroom next to her office.
She went through the communicating door. How extraordinary it was to see her familiar things again. It must be someone else who had sat at that desk and typed letters and powdered her nose. She shrugged her shoulders and went into the little washroom. God what a sight and God how tired she felt! But first she took a wet towel and some peroxide and went back and spent ten minutes attending to the battlefield which was Bond’s face.
He sat silent, a hand resting on her waist, and watched her gratefully. Then when she had gone back into her room and he heard her shut the door of the washroom behind her he got up, turned off the still hissing blowtorch, and walked into Drax’s shower, stripped and stood for five minutes under the icy water. ‘Preparing the corpse!’ he reflected ruefully as he surveyed his battered face in the mirror.
He put on his clothes and went back to Drax’s desk which he searched methodically. It yielded only one prize, tha ‘office bottle’, a half-full bottle of Haig and Haig. He fetched two glasses and some water and called to Gala.
He heard the door of the washroom open. “What is it?”
“Whisky.”
“You drink. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Bond looked at the bottle and poured himself three-quarters of a toothglass and drank it straight down in two gulps. Then he gingerly lit a blessed cigarette and sat on the edge of the desk and felt the liquor burn down through his stomach into his legs.
He picked up the bottle again and looked at it. Plenty for Gala and a whole full glass for himself before he walked out through the door. Better than nothing. It wouldn’t be too bad with that inside him so long as he walked quickly out and shut the doors behind him. No looking back.
Gala came in, a transformed Gala, looking as beautiful as the night he had first seen her, except for the lines of exhaustion under the eyes that the powder could not quite conceal and the angry welts at her wrists and ankles.
Bond gave her a drink and took another one himself and their eyes smiled at each other over the rims of their glasses.
Then Bond stood up.
“Listen, Gala,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “We’ve got to face it and get it over so I’ll make it short and then we’ll have another drink.” He heard her catch her breath, but he went on. “In ten minutes or so I’m going to shut you into Drax’s bathroom and put you under the shower and turn it full on.”