by Ian Fleming
There was a first twanging crash as the flying figure hit the upright pianola and then, with an explosion of metallic discords and breaking wood, the dying instrument toppled over and, with McGonigle spread-eagled across it, thundered to the floor.
Amidst the diminishing crescendo of echoes, Bond stood in the centre of the room, his legs braced with the last effort and the breath rasping in his throat. Slowly he lifted one bruised hand and ran it through his dripping hair.
‘Cut.’
It was a girl’s voice and it came from the direction of the bar.
Bond shook himself and turned slowly round.
Four people had come into the saloon. They were standing in line with their backs to the mahogany-and-brass bar behind which ranks of gleaming bottles rose to the ceiling. Bond had no idea how long they had been there.
A step in front of the other three stood the leading citizen of Spectreville, resplendent, motionless, dominant.
Mr Spang was dressed in full Western costume down to the long silver spurs on his polished black boots. The costume, and the broad leather chaps that covered his legs, were in black, picked out and embellished with silver. The big, quiet hands rested on the ivory butts of two long-barrelled revolvers which protruded from a holster down each thigh, and the broad black belt from which they hung was ribbed with ammunition.
Mr Spang should have looked ridiculous, but he didn’t. His big head was thrust slightly forward and his eyes were cold, fierce slits.
On Mr Spang’s right, with her hands on her hips, was Tiffany Case. In a Western dress of white and gold, she looked like something out of Annie Get Your Gun. She stood and watched Bond. Her eyes were shining. Her full red lips were slightly parted and she was panting as if she had been kissed.
The other half of the quartette was the two men in black hoods from Saratoga. Each of them held a .38 Police Positive trained on Bond’s heaving stomach.
Bond slowly took out a handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He was feeling light-headed and the scene in the brilliantly lit saloon, with its brass fittings and its homely advertisements for long-vanished beers and whiskies, was suddenly macabre.
Mr Spang broke the silence. ‘Bring him over.’ The hard jaws that operated the sharp thin lips separated and cut off each word as cleanly as a meat-slice. ‘And tell someone to call Detroit and tell the boys they’re suffering from delusions of adequacy up there. And tell ’em to send down two more. And tell ’em they got to be better than the last lot. And tell someone else to clean up this mess. ’Kay?’
There was a faint jingle of spurs on the wooden floor as Mr Spang left the room. With a last look at Bond, a look that held some message that was more than the obvious warning, the girl followed him.
The two men came up to Bond and the big one said ‘You heard.’ Bond walked slowly after the girl and the two men lined up behind him.
There was a door behind the bar. Bond pushed through it and found himself in a station waiting-room with benches and old-fashioned notices about trains and warning you not to spit on the floor. ‘Right,’ said one of the men and Bond turned through a sawn-off swing-door and on to a plank station platform.
And then Bond stopped in his tracks and hardly noticed a sharp prod in the ribs from a gun barrel.
It was probably the most beautiful train in the world. The engine was one of the old locomotives of the ‘Highland Light’ class of around 1870 which Bond had heard called the handsomest steam locomotives ever built. Its polished brass handrails and the fluted sand-dome and heavy warning bell above the long gleaming barrel of the boiler glittered under the hissing gaslights of the station. A wisp of steam came from the towering balloon smoke-stack of the old wood-burner. The great sweeping cow-catcher was topped by three massive brass lights – a bulging pilot beam at the base of the smoke-stack and two storm lanterns below. Above the two tall driving wheels, in fine early Victorian gold capitals, was written ‘The Cannonball’, and the name was repeated along the side of the black-and-gold painted tender, piled with birch logs, behind the tall, square driver’s cabin.
Coupled to the tender was a maroon coloured state Pullman. Its arched windows above the narrow mahogany panels were picked out in cream. An oval plaque amidships said ‘The Sierra Belle’. Above the windows and below the slightly jutting barrel roof ‘Tonopah and Tidewater R.R.’ was written in cream capitals on dark blue.
‘Guess you never seen nuthen like that, Limey,’ said one of the guards proudly. ‘Now git goin’. ’ His voice was muffled by the black silk hood.
Bond walked slowly across and stepped up on to the brass-railed observation platform with the shining brakeman’s wheel in the centre. For the first time in his life he saw the point of being a millionaire and suddenly, and also for the first time, he thought that there might be more to this man Spang than he had reckoned with.
The interior of the Pullman glittered with Victorian luxury. The light from small crystal chandeliers in the roof shone back from polished mahogany walls and winked off silver fittings and cut-glass vases and lamp-stands. The carpets and swagged curtains were wine-red and the domed ceiling, broken at intervals by oval-framed paintings of garlanded cherubs and wreathed flowers against a background of sky and clouds, was cream, as were the slats of the drawn venetian blinds.
First came a small dining-room with the remains of a supper for two – a basket of fruit and an open bottle of champagne in a silver bucket – and then a narrow corridor from which three doors led, Bond assumed, to the bedrooms and lavatory. Bond was still thinking about this arrangement as, with the guards at his heels, he pushed open the door into the state room.
At the far end of the state room, with his back to a small open fireplace flanked by bookshelves gleaming richly with gold tooled leather bindings, stood Mr Spang. In a red leather armchair near a small writing-desk half way down the car Tiffany Case sat bolt upright. Bond didn’t care for the way she was holding her cigarette. It was nervous and artificial. It looked frightened.
Bond took a few steps down the car to a comfortable chair. He turned it round to face them both and sat down and crossed one knee over the other. He took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette and swallowed a deep lungful of smoke and let the smoke come out between his teeth with a long relaxed hiss.
Mr Spang had an unlighted cigar jutting from the exact centre of his mouth. He took it out. ‘Stay here, Wint. Kidd, get along and do what I said.’ The strong teeth bit the words off like inches of celery. ‘Now you,’ his eyes glittered angrily at Bond, ‘who are you and what’s going on?’
‘I shall need a drink if we’re going to talk,’ said Bond.
Mr Spang eyed him coldly. ‘Get him a drink, Wint.’
Bond half turned his head. ‘Bourbon and branch-water,’ he said. ‘Half and half.’
There was an angry grunt and Bond heard the woodwork creak as the heavy man walked back down the Pullman.
Bond didn’t much like Mr Spang’s question. He went back over his story. It still looked all right. He sat and smoked and looked at Mr Spang, weighing him up.
The drink came and the guard thrust it into his hand so that some of it slopped on to the carpet. ‘Thank you, Wint,’ said Bond. He took a deep swallow. It was strong and good. He took another. Then he put the glass down on the floor beside him.
He looked up again into the tense, hard face. ‘I just don’t like being leant on,’ he said easily. ‘I did my job and got paid. If I chose to gamble with the money, that was my affair. I could have lost. And then a lot of your men started breathing down my neck and I got impatient. If you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you just call me on the telephone? Putting that tail on was unfriendly. And when they got rude and started shooting I thought it was time to do some leaning of my own.’
The black-and-white face against the coloured books didn’t yield. ‘You don’t get the message, feller,’ Mr Spang said softly. ‘Mebbe I better bring you up to date. Gotta coded signal yesterday from London.’ His hand
went to the breast pocket of his black Western shirt and he slowly pulled out a piece of paper, holding Bond’s eyes with his.
Bond knew the piece of paper was bad news, really bad news, just as surely as you do when you read the word ‘deeply’ at the beginning of a telegram.
‘This is from a good friend in London,’ said Mr Spang. He slowly released Bond’s eyes and looked down at the piece of paper. ‘It says “Reliably informed Peter Franks held by police on unspecified charge. Endeavour at all costs hold substitute carrier ascertain if operations endangered eliminate him and report”. ’
There was silence in the car. Mr Spang’s eyes rose from the paper and glittered redly down on Bond. ‘Well, Mister Whosis, this looks like a good year for something horrible to happen to you.’
Bond knew he was for it and part of his mind slowly digested the knowledge, wondering how it was going to be done. But at the same time another part told him that he had discovered what he wanted to know, what he had come to America to find out. The two Spangs did represent the beginning and the end of the diamond pipeline. At this moment, he had completed the job he had set out to do. He knew the answers. Now, somehow, he must get the answers back to M.
Bond reached down for his drink. The ice rattled hollowly as he took the last deep swallow and put the glass down. He looked candidly up at Mr Spang. ‘I took the job from Peter Franks. He didn’t like the look of it and I needed the money.’
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ said Mr Spang flatly. ‘You’re a cop or a private eye of some sort and I’m going to find out who you are, and who you work for, and what you know – what you were doing in the Acme Baths alongside that crooked jock; why you carry a gun and where you learnt to handle it; how come you’re tied in with Pinkertons in the shape of that phoney cab-driver. Things like that. You look like an eye and you behave like one and,’ he turned with sudden anger on Tiffany Case, ‘how you fell for him, you silly bitch, I just can’t figure.’
‘The hell you can’t,’ flared Tiffany Case. ‘I get handed the guy by A B C and he acts okay. You think maybe I should have told A B C to try again. Not me, brother. I know my place in this outfit. And don’t think you can push me around. And for all you know this guy may be telling the truth.’ Her angry eyes swept over Bond and he caught the glint of fear, fear for him, behind them.
‘Well, we’re going to find out,’ said Mr Spang, ‘and go on finding out until the guy croaks, and if he thinks he can take it, he’s got another think coming.’ He looked over Bond’s head at the guard. ‘Wint, get Kidd and come back with the boots.’
The boots?
Bond sat silent, gathering his strength and his courage. It would be a waste of time to argue with Mr Spang or to try to escape, fifty miles out in the desert. He had got out of worse jams. So long as they didn’t intend to kill him yet. So long as he gave nothing away. There was Ernie Cureo and there was Felix Leiter. There might just possibly be Tiffany Case. He looked across at her. Her head was bent. She was looking carefully at her fingernails.
Bond heard the two guards come up behind him.
‘Take him out on the platform,’ said Mr Spang. Bond saw the corner of his tongue come out and slightly touch the thin lips. ‘Brooklyn stomping. Eighty percenter. ’Kay?’
‘Okay, Boss.’ It was the voice belonging to Wint. It sounded greedy.
The two hooded men came up and sat down side by side on a dark red chaise longue that ran down the car opposite Bond. They put football boots down on the thick carpet beside them and started to unlace their shoes.
20 ....... FLAMES COMING OUT OF THE TOP
THE BLACK frogman’s suit fitted tightly. It hurt everywhere. Why the hell hadn’t Strangways made certain the Admiralty got his measurements right? And it was very dark under the sea and the currents were strong, pulling him against the coral. He would have to swim hard against them. But now something had got him by the arm. What the hell ...?
‘James. For Chrissake. James.’ She took her mouth away from his ear. This time she pinched the naked bloodstained arm as hard as she could and at last Bond’s eyes opened between their puffed lids and he looked up at her from the wooden floor and gave a shuddering sigh.
She tugged at him, terrified that he would slip away from her again. He seemed to understand and he rolled over and struggled on to hands and knees, his head hanging down towards the ground like a wounded animal.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Wait.’ The thick whisper coming through the cracked lips sounded strange to him. Perhaps she hadn’t understood. ‘Wait,’ he said again, and his mind started exploring his body to see what was left of it. He could feel his feet and his hands. He could move his head from side to side. He could see the bars of moonlight on the floor. He had been able to hear her. It ought to be all right, but he just didn’t want to move. His will-power had gone. He just wanted to sleep. Or even to die. Anything to lessen the pain that was in him and all over him, stabbing, hammering, grinding him – and to kill the memory of the four boots thudding into him, and the grunts coming from the two hooded figures.
Directly he thought of the two men and of Mr Spang, the will to live came into Bond in a flood and he said ‘Okay.’ And then again ‘Okay’ so that she would be sure to understand.
‘We’re in the waiting room,’ whispered the girl. ‘We must get to the end of the station. Left, outside the door. Do you hear me, James?’ She reached out and brushed the damp, sticky hair away from his forehead.
‘Have to crawl,’ said Bond. ‘Follow you.’
The girl got to her feet and pushed open the door. Bond gritted his teeth and crawled out on to the moonlit platform and when he saw the dark patch on the ground, rage and revenge gave him strength and he got clumsily to his feet, shaking his head to keep the red-black waves from drowning him and, with Tiffany Case’s arm round him, he limped along the wooden boards to where they sloped down towards the ground beside the gleaming rails.
And there, in the single-line siding, was a railroad handcar.
Bond stopped and gazed at it. ‘Petrol?’ he said vaguely.
Tiffany Case gestured towards a row of cans against the station wall. ‘Just filled her up,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s what they use for inspecting the line. And I can work it. And I shifted the points. Hurry. Get aboard,’ she giggled breathlessly. ‘Next stop Rhyolite.’
‘My God, you’re a girl,’ whispered Bond. ‘But there’ll be a hell of a noise when we start that thing. Wait. Got an idea. Got some matches?’ Half his pain had fallen away from him. The breath came fast through his teeth as he turned away from her and focused on the silent, tinder-dry buildings.
She was wearing slacks and a shirt. She dug into the pocket of the slacks and handed him her lighter. ‘What’s the idea?’ she said. ‘We oughta be moving.’
But Bond lurched over to the row of petrol tins and started opening them and hurling the contents over the wooden walls and platform. When he had emptied half a dozen cans he went back to her. ‘Get her going.’ He bent agonizingly down and picked up a crumpled newspaper from beside the rails. There was the angry whine of the self-starter and then the little two-stroke engine caught and started hammering busily.
Bond flicked the lighter. The piece of paper flared and he flung it away from him amongst the petrol cans. The whoosh of flame almost caught him as he threw himself backwards on to the little platform of the car. But then the girl let in the clutch and the handcar started down the line.
There was a rattle and a sickening lurch at the points and then they were out on the main line and the speedometer was trembling at thirty and the girl’s hair was flowing back like a golden banner towards him.
Bond turned and looked back at the great bloom of flame they had left behind them. He could almost hear the dry boards crackling and the shouts of the sleepers as they dashed from their rooms. If only it would get Wint and Kidd and catch the paint on the Pullman and fire the wood in the tender of The Cannonball and finish off the gangster�
��s box of toys!
But he and the girl had their own problems. What time was it? Bond gulped down the cool night air and tried to get his mind to work again. The moon was low. Four o’clock? Bond hunched his way painfully up the platform to the two bucket seats and somehow scrambled over and got down beside the girl.
He put an arm round her shoulders, and she turned and smiled into his eyes. She raised her voice above the noise of the engine and the hammer of the iron wheels on the rails. ‘That was quite an exit. Like something out of an old Buster Keaton film. How d’you feel?’ She surveyed the battered face. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Nothing broken,’ said Bond. ‘Suppose that’s what’s meant by an eighty percenter.’ He grinned painfully. ‘It’s better being kicked than being shot.’
The girl’s face cringed. ‘I just had to sit there and pretend that I didn’t care. Spang stayed and listened and watched me. Then they checked up on the ropes and slung you into the waiting room and everyone went happily to bed. I waited an hour in my room and then I got busy. The worst part was trying to wake you up.’
Bond tightened his arm round her shoulders. ‘I’ll tell you what I think of you when it doesn’t hurt so much. But what about you, Tiffany? You’ll be in a jam if they catch up with us. And who are those two men in the hoods, Wint and Kidd? What are they going to do about all this? I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of those two.’
The girl glanced sideways at the grim curl of the bruised lips. ‘Never seen them without those hoods on,’ she said truthfully. ‘They’re supposed to be from Detroit. Strictly bad news. They do the strong-arm work and special undercover jobs. They’ll all be after us now. But don’t you worry about me.’ She looked up at him again and her eyes were shining and happy. ‘First thing is to get this crate to Rhyolite. Then we’ll have to find a car somewhere and get over the state border into California. I’ve got plenty of money. Then we’ll get you to a doctor and buy you a bath and a shirt and think again. I got your gun. One of the help brought it over when they’d finished picking up the pieces of those two guys you wrassled with in the Pink Garter. I collected it after Spang had gone to bed.’ She unbuttoned her shirt and dug into the waistband of her slacks.