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smudge of yellow moustache was pale and some blood had oozed down over the
forehead from a cut in the top of the skull. The eyes were closed and the
breathing was laboured.
Bond knelt down on one knee and went carefully through every pocket of Krebs's
neat grey pinstripe suit, laying the disappointingly meagre contents on the
carpet beside the body. There was no pocketbook and no papers. The only
objects of interest were a bunch of skeleton keys, a spring knife with a
well-sharpened stiletto blade, and an obscene little truss-shaped black
leather cosh. Bond pocketed these and then went to his bedside table and
fetched the untouched bottle of Vichy water.
It took five minutes to revive Krebs and get him into a sitting position with
his back to the dressing-table and another five for him to be capable of
speaking. Gradually the colour came back to his face and the craftiness to his
eyes.
"I answer no questions except to Sir Hugo," he said as Bond started the
interrogation. "You have no right to question me. I
was doing my duty." His voice was surly and assured.
Bond took the empty Vichy bottle by the neck. "Think again," he said. "Or I'll
beat the daylight out of you until this breaks and then use the neck for some
plastic surgery. Who told you to go over my room?"
"
Leck mich am Arsch
." Krebs spat the obscene insult at him.
Bond bent down and cracked him sharply across the shins.
Krebs's body cringed, but, as Bond raised his arm again, he suddenly shot up
from the floor and dived under the descending bottle. The blow caught him hard
on the shoulder, but it didn't check his momentum and he was out of the door
and halfway down the corridor before Bond started in pursuit.
Bond stopped outside the door and watched the flying figure swerve down the
stairs and out of sight. Then, as he heard the scurrying squeak of the
rubber-soled shoes as they fled down the stairs and across the hall, he
laughed abruptly to himself and went back into his room and locked the door.
Short of beating the man's brains out it hadn't looked as if he would get much
out of Krebs. He had given him something to think about. Crafty little brute.
His injuries couldn't have been so bad after all. Well, it would be up to Drax
to punish him. Unless, of course, Krebs had been carrying out Drax's orders.
Bond cleaned up the mess in his room and sat down on his bed and gazed at the
opposite wall with unseeing eyes. It had not been only instinct that had made
him tell Drax he was going to the firing point instead of to the house. It had
seriously crossed his mind that the snooping of Krebs was on Drax's orders,
and that Drax ran his own security system. And yet how did that tally with the
deaths of Tallon and Bartsch? Or had the double killing been a coincidence
unrelated to the marks on the chart and the fingerprints of Krebs?
As if summoned by his thoughts, there came a knock on the door and the butler
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
came in. He was followed by a police sergeant road patrol uniform who
saluted and handed Bond a telegram. Bond took it over to the window. It was
signed in
Baxter, which meant Vallance, and it read :
FIRSTLY CALL WAS FROM HOUSE SECONDLY FOG REQUIRED OPERATION OF FOGHORN SO SHIP
HEARD
COMMA OBSERVED NOTHING THIRDLY YOUR COMPASS RECKONING TOO NEAR SHORE THUS OUT
OF
SIGHT OF SAINT MARGARETS OR DEAL COASTGUARD ENDS.
"Thank you," said Bond. "No answer."
When the door was closed Bond put his lighter to the telegram and dropped it
in the fireplace, scuffing the charred remains into powder with the sole of
his shoe.
Nothing much there except that Tallon's call to the Ministry might indeed have
been heard by someone in the house, which might have resulted in the search of
his room, which might have resulted in his death. But what about Bartsch? If
all this was part of something much bigger how could it be linked up with an
attempt to sabotage the rocket? Wasn't it much simpler to conclude that Krebs
was a natural snooper, or more likely that he was operating for Drax, who
seemed to be meticulously security-conscious and who might want to be sure of
the loyalty of his secretary, of Tallon, and certainly, after their encounter
at Blades, of Bond? Wasn't it just acting like the chief (and Bond had known
many of them who would fit the picture) of some super-secret project during
the war who had reinforced official security with his own private spy system?
If that theory was correct there only remained the double killing. Now that
Bond had caught the magic and the tension of the
Moonraker the facts of the hysterical shooting seemed more reasonable.
As for the mark on the chart, that might have been made any day in the past
year; the night-glasses were just night-glasses and the moustaches on the men
were just a lot of moustaches.
Bond sat on in the silent room, shifting the pieces in the jigsaw so that two
entirely different pictures alternated in his mind.
In one the sun shone and all was clear and innocent as the day. The other was
a dark confusion of guilty motives, obscure suspicions, and nightmare queries.
When the gong sounded for lunch he still did not know which picture to choose.
To shelve a decision he cleared his mind of everything but the prospect of his
afternoon alone with Gala Brand.
CHAPTER XVI
A GOLDEN DAY
IT WAS a wonderful afternoon of blue and green and gold. When they left the
concrete apron through the guard-gate near the empty firing-point, now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]