It was eight o’clock as Bond followed M. through the tall doors, across the well of the staircase from the card room, that opened into the beautiful white and gold Regency dining-room of Blades.
M. chose not to hear a call from Basildon who was presiding over the big centre table where there were still two places vacant. Instead, he walked firmly across the room to the end one of a row of six smaller tables, waved Bond into the comfortable armed chair that faced outwards into the room, and himself took the one on Bond’s left so that his back was to the company.
The head steward was already behind Bond’s chair. He placed a broad menu card beside his plate and handed another to M. ‘Blades’ was written in fine gold script across the top. Below there was a forest of print.
“Don’t bother to read through all that,” said M., “unless you’ve got no ideas. One of the first rules of the club, and one of the best, was that any member may speak for any dish, cheap or dear, but he must pay for it. The same’s true today, only the odds are one doesn’t have to pay for it. Just order what you feel like.” He looked up at the steward. “Any of that Beluga caviar left, Porterfield?”
“Yes, sir. There was a new delivery last week.”
“Well,” said M. “Caviar for me. Devilled kidney and a slice of your excellent bacon. Peas and new potatoes. Strawberries in kirsch. What about you, James?”
“I’ve got a mania for really good smoked salmon,” said Bond. Then he pointed down the menu. “Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you, as it’s May. Asparagus with Béarnaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple.” He sat back and pushed the menu away.
“Thank heaven for a man who makes up his mind,” said M. He looked up at the steward. “Have you got all that, Porterfield?”
“Yes, sir.” The steward smiled. “You wouldn’t care for a marrow bone after the strawberries, sir? We got half a dozen in today from the country, and I’d specially kept one in case you came in.”
“Of course. You know I can’t resist them. Bad for me but it can’t be helped. God knows what I’m celebrating this evening. But it doesn’t often happen. Ask Grimley to come over, would you.”
“He’s here now, sir,” said the steward, making way for the wine-waiter.
“Ah, Grimley, some vodka, please.” He turned to Bond. “Not the stuff you had in your cocktail. This is real pre-war Wolfschmidt from Riga. Like some with your smoked salmon?”
“Very much,” said Bond.
“Then what?” asked M. “Champagne? Personally I’m going to have a half-bottle of claret. The Mouton Rothschild ‘34, please, Grimley. But don’t pay any attention to me, James. I’m an old man. Champagne’s no good for me. We’ve got some good champagnes, haven’t we, Grimley? None of that stuff you’re always telling me about, I’m afraid, James. Don’t often see it in England. Taittinger, wasn’t it?”
Bond smiled at M.’s memory. “Yes,” he said, “but it’s only a fad of mine. As a matter of fact, for various reasons I believe I would like to drink champagne this evening. Perhaps I could leave it to Grimley.”
The wine-waiter was pleased. “If I may suggest it, sir, the Dom Perignon ‘46. I understand that France only sells it for dollars, sir, so you don’t often see it in London. I believe it was a gift from the Regency Club in New York, sir. I have some on ice at the moment. It’s the Chairman’s favourite and he’s told me to have it ready every evening in case he needs it.”
Bond smiled his agreement.
“So be it, Grimley,” said M. “The Dom Perignon. Bring it straight away, would you?”
A waitress appeared and put racks of fresh toast on the table and a silver dish of Jersey butter. As she bent over the table her black skirt brushed Bond’s arm and he looked up into two pert, sparkling eyes under a soft fringe of hair. The eyes held his for a fraction of a second and then she whisked away. Bond’s eyes followed the white bow at her waist and the starched collar and cuffs of her uniform as she went down the long room. His eyes narrowed. He recalled a pre-war establishment in Paris where the girls were dressed with the same exciting severity. Until they turned round and showed their backs.
He smiled to himself. The Marthe Richards law had changed all that.
M. turned from studying their neighbours behind him. “Why were you so cryptic about drinking champagne?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, sir,” Bond explained, “I’ve got to get a bit tight tonight. I’ll have to seem very drunk when the time comes. It’s not an easy thing to act unless you do it with a good deal of conviction. I hope you won’t get worried if I seem to get frayed at the edges later on.”
M. shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve got a head like a rock, James,” he said. “Drink as much as you like if it’s going to help. Ah, here’s the vodka.”
When M. poured him three fingers from the frosted carafe Bond took a pinch of black pepper and dropped it on the surface of the vodka. The pepper slowly settled to the bottom of the glass leaving a few grains on the surface which Bond dabbed up with the tip of a finger. Then he tossed the cold liquor well to the back of his throat and put his glass, with the dregs of the pepper at the bottom, back on the table.
M. gave him a glance of rather ironical inquiry.
“It’s a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow,” apologized Bond. “There’s often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff — at least there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bath-tub liquor, it’s an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom. I got to like the taste and now it’s a habit. But I shouldn’t have insulted the club Wolfschmidt,” he added with a grin.
M. grunted. “So long as you don’t put pepper in Basildon’s favourite champagne,” he said drily.
A harsh bray of laughter came from a table at the far end of the room. M. looked over his shoulder and then turned back to his caviar.
“What do you think of this man Drax?” he said through a mouthful of buttered toast.
Bond helped himself to another slice of smoked salmon from the silver dish beside him. It had the delicate glutinous texture only achieved by Highland curers — very different from the dessicated products of Scandinavia. He rolled a wafer-thin slice of brown bread-and-butter into a cylinder and contemplated it thoughtfully.
“One can’t like his manner much. At first I was rather surprised that you tolerate him here.” He glanced at M., who shrugged his shoulders. “But that’s none of my business and anyway clubs would be very dull without a sprinkling of eccentrics. And in any case he’s a national hero and a millionaire and obviously an adequate card-player. Even when he isn’t helping himself to the odds,” he added. “But I can see he’s the sort of man I always imagined. Full-blooded, ruthless, shrewd. Plenty of guts. I’m not surprised he’s managed to get where he is. What I don’t understand is why he should be quite happy to throw it all away. This cheating of his. It’s really beyond belief. What’s he trying to prove with it? That he can beat everyone at everything? He seems to put so much passion into his cards — as if it wasn’t a game at all, but some sort of trial of strength. You’ve only got to look at his fingernails. Bitten to the quick. And he sweats too much. There’s a lot of tension there somewhere. It comes out in those ghastly jokes of his. They’re harsh. There’s no light touch about them. He seemed to want to squash Basildon like a fly. Hope I shall be able to keep my temper. That manner of his is pretty riling. He even treats his partner as if he was muck. He hasn’t quite got under my skin, but I shan’t at all mind sticking a very sharp pin in him tonight.” He smiled at M. “If it comes off, that is.”
“I know what you mean,” said M. “But you may be being a bit hard on the man. After all, it’s a big step from the Liverpool docks, or wherever he came from, to where he is now. And he’s one of those people who was born with naturally hairy heels. Nothing to do with snobbery. I expect his mates in Liverpool found him just as loud-mouthed as Blades does. As for his cheating, there’s probably a crooked streak in him somewhere. I dare say he took plenty of short cuts on his way up. Somebody said that to become very rich you have to be helped by a combination of remarkable circumstances and an unbroken run of luck. It certainly isn’t only the qualities of people that make them rich. At least that’s my experience. At the beginning, getting together the first ten thousand, or the first hundred thousand, things have got to go damn right. And in that commodity business after the war, with all the regulations and restrictions, I expect it was often a case of being able to drop a thousand pounds in the right pocket. Officials. The ones who understand nothing but addition, division — and silence. The useful ones.”
M. paused while the next course came. With it arrived the champagne in a silver ice-bucket, and the small wicker-basket containing M.’s half-bottle of claret.
The wine-steward waited until they had delivered a favourable judgment on the wines and then moved away. As he did so a page came up to their table. “Commander Bond?” he asked.
Bond took the envelope that was handed to him and slit it open. He took out a thin paper packet and carefully opened it under the level of the table. It contained a white powder. He took a silver fruit knife off the table and dipped the tip of the blade into the packet so that about half its contents were transferred to the knife. He reached for his glass of champagne and tipped the powder into it.
“Now what?” said M. with a trace of impatience.
There was no hint of apology in Bond’s face. It wasn’t M. who was going to have to do the work that evening. Bond knew what he was doing. Whenever he had a job of work to do he would take infinite pains beforehand and leave as little as possible to chance. Then if something went wrong it was the unforeseeable. For that he accepted no responsibility.
“Benzedrine,” he said. “I rang up my secretary before dinner and asked her to wangle some out of the surgery at Headquarters. It’s what I shall need if I’m going to keep my wits about me tonight. It’s apt to make one a bit over-confident, but that’ll be a help too.” He stirred the champagne with a scrap of toast so that the white powder whirled among the bubbles. Then he drank the mixture down with one long swallow. “It doesn’t taste,” said Bond, “and the champagne is quite excellent.”
M. smiled at him indulgently. “It’s your funeral,” he said.— “Now we’d better get on with our dinner. How were the cutlets?”
“Superb,” said Bond. “I could cut them with a fork. The best English cooking is the best in the world — particularly at this time of the year. By the way, what stakes will we be playing for this evening? I don’t mind very much. We ought to end up the winners. But I’d like to know how much it will cost Drax.”
“Drax likes to play for what he calls ‘One and One’,” said M., helping himself from the strawberries that had just been put on the table. “Modest sounding stake, if you don’t know what it stands for. In fact it’s one tenner a hundred and one hundred pounds on the rubber.”
“Oh,” said Bond respectfully. “I see.”
“But he’s perfectly happy to play for Two and Two or even Three and Three. Mounts up at those figures. The average rubber of bridge at Blades is about ten points. That’s £200 at One and One. And the bridge here makes for big rubbers. There are no conventions so there’s plenty of gambling and bluffing. Sometimes it’s more like poker. They’re a mixed lot of players. Some of them are the best in England, but others are terribly wild. Don’t seem to mind how much they lose. General Bealey, just behind us.” M. made a gesture with his head, “doesn’t know the reds from the blacks. Nearly always a few hundred down at the end of the week. Doesn’t seem to care. Bad heart. No dependants. Stacks of money from jute. But Duff Sutherland, the scruffy-looking chap next to the chairman, is an absolute killer. Makes a regular ten thousand a year out of the club. Nice chap. Wonderful card manners. Used to play chess for England.”
M. was interrupted by the arrival of his marrow bone. It was placed upright in a spotless lace napkin on the silver plate. An ornate silver marrow-scoop was laid beside it.
After the asparagus, Bond had little appetite for the thin slivers of pineapple. He tipped the last of the ice-cold champagne into his glass. He felt wonderful. The effects of the benzedrine and champagne had more than offset the splendour of the food. For the first time he took his mind away from the dinner and his conversation with M. and glanced round the room.
It was a sparkling scene. There were perhaps fifty men in the room, the majority in dinner jackets, all at ease with themselves and their surroundings, all stimulated by the peerless food and drink, all animated by a common interest — the prospect of high gambling, the grand slam, the ace pot, the key-throw in a 64 game at backgammon. There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy.
At the far end, above the cold table, laden with lobsters, pies, joints and delicacies in aspic, Romney’s unfinished full-length portrait of Mrs Fitzherbert gazed provocatively across at Fragonard’s Jeu de Cartes, the broad conversation-piece which half-filled the opposite wall above the Adam fireplace. Along the lateral walls, in the centre of each gilt-edged panel, was one of the rare engravings of the Hell-Fire Club in which each figure is shown making a minute gesture of scatological or magical significance. Above, marrying the walls into the ceiling, ran a frieze in plaster relief of carved urns and swags interrupted at intervals by the capitals of the fluted pilasters which framed the windows and the tall double doors, the latter delicately carved with a design showing the Tudor Rose interwoven with a ribbon effect.
The central chandelier, a cascade of crystal ropes terminating in a broad basket of strung quartz, sparkled warmly above the white damask tablecloths and George IV silver. Below, in the centre of each table, branched candlesticks distributed the golden light of three candles, each surmounted by a red silk shade, so that the faces of the diners shone with a convivial warmth which glossed over the occasional chill of an eye or cruel twist of a mouth.
Even as Bond drank in the warm elegance of the scene, some of the groups began to break up. There was a drift towards the door accompanied by an exchange of challenges, side-bets, and exhortations to hurry up and get down to business. Sir Hugo Drax, his hairy red face shining with cheerful anticipation, came towards them with Meyer in his wake.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said jovially as he reached their table. “Are the lambs ready for the slaughter and the geese for the plucking?” He grinned and in wolfish pantomime drew a finger across his throat. “We’ll go ahead and lay out the axe and the basket. Made your wills?”
“Be with you in a moment,” said M. edgily. “You go along and stack the cards.”
Drax laughed. “We shan’t need any artificial aids,” he said. “Don’t be long.” He turned and made for the door. Meyer enveloped them in an uncertain smile and followed him.
M. grunted. “We’ll have coffee and brandy in the card room,” he said to Bond. “Can’t smoke here. Now then. Any final plans?”
“I’ll have to fatten him up for the kill, so please don’t worry if I seem to be getting high,” said Bond. “We’ll just have to play our normal game till the time comes. When it’s his deal, we’ll have to be careful. Of course, he can’t alter the cards and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t deal us good hands, but he’s bound to bring off some pretty remarkable coups. Do you mind if I sit on his left?”
“No,” said M. “Anything else?”
Bond reflected for a moment. “Only one thing, sir,” he said. “When the time comes, I shall take a white handkerchief out of my coat pocket. That will mean that you are about to be dealt a Yarborough. Would you please leave the bidding of that hand to me?”