“Well, now.” Mr. Wain drew a printed form toward him and thoughtfully ticked off items on a list. “Strict dieting for one week to eliminate the toxins in the blood stream. Massage to tone you up, irrigation, hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathic treatment, and a short course of traction to get rid of the lesions. That should put you right. And complete rest, of course. Just take it easy, Mr. Bond. You’re a civil servant, I understand. Do you good to get away from all that worrying paper work for a while.” Mr. Wain got up and handed the printed form to Bond. “Treatment rooms in half an hour, Mr. Bond. No harm in starting right away.”
“Thank you.” Bond took the form and glanced at it. “What’s traction, by the way?”
“A mechanical device for stretching the spine. Very beneficial.” Mr. Wain smiled indulgently. “Don’t be worried by what some of the other patients tell you about it. They call it `The Rack.’ You know what wags some people are.”
“Yes.”
Bond walked out and along the white-painted corridor. People were sitting about, reading or talking in soft tones in the public rooms. They were all elderly, middle-class people, mostly women, many of whom wore unattractive quilted dressing gowns. The warm, close air and the frumpish women gave Bond claustrophobia. He walked through the hall to the main door and let himself out into the wonderful fresh air.
Bond walked thoughtfully down the trim narrow drive and smelled the musty smell of the laurels and the laburnums. Could he stand it? Was there any way out of this hell-hole short of resigning from the Service? Deep in thought, he almost collided with a girl in white who came hurrying round a sharp bend in the thickly hedged drive. At the same instant as she swerved out of his path and flashed him an amused smile, a mauve Bentley, taking the corner too fast, was on top of her. At one moment she was almost under its wheels, at the next, Bond, with one swift step, had gathered her up by the waist and, executing a passable Veronica, with a sharp swivel of his hips had picked her body literally off the hood of the car. He put the girl down as the Bentley dry-skidded to a stop in the gravel. His right hand held the memory of one beautiful breast. The girl said, “Oh!” and looked up into his eyes with an expression of flurried astonishment. Then she took in what had happened and said breathlessly, “Oh, thank you.” She turned toward the car.
A man had climbed unhurriedly down from the driving seat. He said calmly, “I am so sorry. Are you all right?” Recognition dawned on his face. He said silkily, “Why, if it isn’t my friend Patricia. How are you, Pat? All ready for me?”
The man was extremely handsome—a dark-bronzed woman-killer with a neat mustache above the sort of callous mouth women kiss in their dreams. He had regular features that suggested Spanish or South American blood and bold, hard brown eyes that turned up oddly, or, as a woman would put it, intriguingly, at the corners. He was an athletic-looking six foot, dressed in the sort of casually well-cut beige herring-bone tweed that suggests Anderson and Sheppard. He wore a white silk shirt and a dark red polka-dot tie, and the soft dark brown V-necked sweater looked like vicuna. Bond summed him up as a good-looking bastard who got all the women he wanted and probably lived on them—and lived well.
The girl had recovered her poise. She said severely, “You really ought to be more careful, Count Lippe. You know there are always patients and staff walking down this drive. If it hadn’t been for this gentleman”—she smiled at Bond—“you’d have run me over. After all, there is a big sign asking drivers to take care.”
“I am so sorry, my dear. I was hurrying. I am late for my appointment with the good Mr. Wain. I am as usual in need of decarbonization—this time after two weeks in Paris.” He turned to Bond. He said with a hint of condescension, “Thank you, my dear sir. You have quick reactions. And now, if you will forgive me—” He raised a hand, got back into the Bentley, and purred off up the drive.