The nightclub was small and dark, lit only by candles in gilded candelabra whose warm light was repeated in wall mirrors set in more gold pictureframes. The walls were covered in dark red satin and the chairs and banquettes in matching red plush. In the far corner, a trio, consisting of a piano, an electric guitar and drums, was playing 'La Vie en Rose' with muted sweetness. Seduction dripped on the quietly throbbing air. It seemed to Bond that every couple must be touching with passion under the tables.
They were given a corner table near the door. Bond ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and scrambled eggs and bacon.
They sat for a time listening to the music and then Bond turned to Vesper: 'It's wonderful sitting here with you and knowing the job's finished. It's a lovely end to the day — the prizegiving.'
He expected her to smile. She said: 'Yes, isn't it,' in a rather brittle voice. She seemed to be listening carefully to the music. One elbow rested on the table and her hand supported her chin, but on the back of her hand and not on the palm, and Bond noticed that her knuckles showed white as if her fist was tightly clenched.
Between the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand she held one of Bond's cigarettes, as an artist holds a crayon, and though she smoked with composure, she tapped the cigarette occasionally into an ashtry when the cigarette had no ash.
Bond noticed these small things because he felt intensely aware of her and because he wanted to draw her into his own feeling of warmth and relaxed sensuality. But he accepted her reserve. He thought it came from a desire to protect herself from him, or else it was her reaction to his coolness to her earlier in the evening, his deliberate coolness, which he knew had been taken as a rebuff.
He was patient. He drank champagne and talked a little about the happenings of the day and about the personalities of Mathis and Leiter and about the possible consequences for Le Chiffre. He was discreet and he only talked about the aspects of the case on which she must have been briefed by London.
She answered perfunctorily. She said that, of course, they had picked out the two gunmen, but had thought nothing of it when the man with the stick had gone to stand behind Bond's chair. They could not believe that anything would be attempted in the Casino itself. Directly Bond and Leiter had left to walk over to the hotel, she had telephoned Paris and told M's representative of the result of the game. She had had to speak guardedly and the agent had rung off without comment. She had been told to do this whatever the result. M had asked for the information to be passed on to him personally at any time of the day or night.
This was all she said. She sipped at her champagne and rarely glanced at Bond. She didn't smile. Bond felt frustrated. He drank a lot of champagne and ordered another bottle. The scrambled eggs came and they ate in silence.
At four o'clock Bond was about to call for the bill when the maître d'hôtel appeared at their table and inquired for Miss Lynd. He handed her a note which she took and read hastily.
'Oh, it's only Mathis,' she said. 'He says would I come to the entrance hall. He's got a message for you. Perhaps he's not in evening clothes or something. I won't be a minute. Then perhaps we could go home.'
She gave him a strained smile. 'I'm afraid I don't feel very good company this evening. It's been rather a nerve-racking day. I'm so sorry.'
Bond made a perfunctory reply and rose, pushing back the table. 'I'll get the bill,' he said, and watched her take the few steps to the entrance.
He sat down and lit a cigarette. He felt flat. He suddenly realized that he was tired. The stuffiness of the room hit him as it had hit him in the Casino in the early hours of the previous day. He called for the bill and took a last mouthful of champagne. It tasted bitter, as the first glass too many always does. He would have liked to have seen Mathis's cheerful face and heard his news, perhaps even a word of congratulation.
Suddenly the note to Vesper seemed odd to him. It was not the way Mathis would do things. He would have asked them both to join him at the bar of the Casino or he would have joined them in the nightclub, whatever his clothes. They would have laughed together and Mathis would have been excited. He had much to tell Bond, more than Bond had to tell him. The arrest of the Bulgarian, who had probably talked some more; the chase after the man with the stick; Le Chiffre's movements when he left the Casino.
Bond shook himself. He hastily paid the bill, not waiting for the change. He pushed back his table and walked quickly through the entrance without acknowledging the goodnights of the maître d'hôtel and the doorman.
He hurried through the gamingroom and looked carefully up and down the long entrance hall. He cursed and quickened his step. There were only one or two officials and two or three men and women in evening clothes getting their things at the vestiaire.
No Vesper. No Mathis.
He was almost running. He got to the entrance and looked along the steps to left and right down and amongst the few remaining cars.
The commissionaire came towards him.
'A taxi, monsieur?'
Bond waved him aside and started down the steps, his eyes staring into the shadows, the night air cold on his sweating temples.
He was halfway down when he heard a faint cry, then the slam of a door way to the right. With a harsh growl and stutter from the exhaust a beetlebrowed Citroën shot out of the shadows into the light of the moon, its front wheel drive dryskidding through the loose pebbles of the forecourt.
Its tail rocked on its soft springs as if a violent struggle was taking place on the back seat.
With a snarl it raced out to the wide entrance gate in a spray of gravel. A small black object shot out of an open rear window and thudded into a flowerbed. There was a scream of tortured rubber as the tyres caught the boulevard in a harsh lefthanded turn, the deafening echo of a Citroën's exhaust in second gear, a crash into top, then a swiftly diminishing crackle as the car hared off between the shops on the main street towards the coast road.
Bond knew he would find Vesper's evening bag among the flowers.
He ran back with it across the gravel to the brightlylit steps and scrabbled through its contents while the commissionaire hovered round him.
The crumpled note was there amongst the usual feminine baggage.
Can you come out to the entrance hall for a moment? I have news for your companion.
RENÉ MATHIS
CHAPTER 15 - BLACK HARE AND GREY HOUND
It was the crudest possible forgery.
Bond leapt for the Bentley, blessing the impulse which had made him drive it over after dinner. With the choke full out, the engine answered at once to the starter and the roar drowned the faltering words of the commissionaire who jumped aside as the rear wheels whipped gravel at his piped trouserlegs.
As the car rocked to the left outside the gate, Bond ruefully longed for the frontwheel drive and low chassis of the Citroen. Then he went fast through the gears and settled himself for the pursuit, briefly savoring the echo of the huge exhaust as it came back at him from either side of the short main street through the town.
Soon he was out on the coast road, a broad highway through the sanddunes which he knew from his morning's drive had an excellent surface and was well cat'seyed on the bends. He pushed the revs up and up, hurrying the car to eighty then to ninety, his huge Marchal headlights boring a safe white tunnel, nearly half a mile long, between the walls of the night.
He knew the Citroën must have come this way. He had heard the exhaust penetrate beyond the town, and a little dust still hung on the bends. He hoped soon to see the distant shaft of its headlights. The night was still and clear. Only out at sea there must be a light summer mist for at intervals he could hear the foghorns lowing like iron cattle down the coast.