eye. Grunting. Talking. Going away. Coming back. Doing more - what? Pulling, helping up from chair. Something with jacket. Something with shirt-sleeve. Little pain. Gone. Back in chair again.
'Well, doctor?'
'He's been given a massive dose of some drug or other, I couldn't say which at this stage. Could be hyoscine. I've given him something that should help him come round.'
'Drug addict, is he, then?'
'Possibly. I doubt it. We'll have to wait and see. How did you get hold of him?'
'A motorist brought him in getting on for half an hour ago. Said he found him wandering about in the road near one of the entrances to the Great Park. Of course, we thought he was tight at first.'
'There's a similarity. The quiet kind of drunk. I can't think of any better way of making a man docile. You know, sergeant, there's something nasty about this, whatever it is. Who is our friend?'
'Name of Bond, James Bond. Business address in London, Regent's Park somewhere. I gave 'em a ring on the off-chance and they said to hold him and not let anyone but a doctor see him and they'd send a man down right away. The Inspector should be here soon, too. Went off just about two minutes before this chap arrived. Pile-up on the M4. It's getting to be quite a night.'
'Indeed... Ah, I think we may get something now... Mr Bond? Mr Bond, you're quite safe and in a very few minutes you'll be completely yourself again. I'm Doctor Allison and these officers are Sergeant Hassett and Constable Wragg. They are only here for your protection. You're in a police station but you've done nothing wrong. All you need do is rest a little.'
James Bond looked up slowly. There was nothing left of the grey tangle that had obscured his vision and hearing. He saw a very English face with an inquisitive pointed nose and dependable dark eyes, eyes that at the moment were puzzled and concerned. In the background were two solid-looking men in dark-blue uniform, a battered desk with a telephone, filing cabinets, wall maps and charts, a poster announcing a Police Ball: recognizable, everyday, real.
Bond swallowed and cleared his throat. It was very important that he should get exactly right what he knew he had to say, the more so since he was not as yet quite sure what all of it meant or why he had to say it.
'Put your feet up for a bit, Mr Bond. Bring that chair over, Wragg, will you? Could you organize a cup of tea?'
Now take it slowly, word by word. 'I want,' said Bond in a thick voice, 'I want a car. And four men. Armed. To come with me. As quickly as possible.'
'Mind wandering, poor chap,' said the sergeant.
The doctor frowned. 'I doubt it. You'd get confusion all right, but not actual fantasy.' He leant down and put his hands firmly on Bond's shoulders. 'You must tell us more, Mr Bond. We're all listening. We're trying to understand.'
'Admiral Sir Miles Messervy,' said Bond distinctly, and saw the sergeant react. Bond's mind was clearing fast now. 'There's been some trouble along at his place. I'm afraid he's been kidnapped.'
'Go on, please, sir,' said the sergeant, who had picked up the telephone before Bond had finished speaking.
'There were four men. They'd given him a shot of the same stuff as me. I don't quite know how I got away.'
'You wouldn't,' said Dr Allison, offering Bond a cigarette and a light.
Bond drew the life-giving smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled luxuriously. He began quickly and coolly to consider, analyse, predict. The immediate conclusion he arrived at appalled him. He jumped to his feet. At the same moment the sergeant put down the telephone.
'Number unobtainable,' he said grimly.
'Naturally,' said Bond. 'Give me that thing.' When the police operator answered he said, unconsciously clenching his fist, 'London Airport. Priority. I'll hang on.'
The sergeant looked at him once and left the room at a run.
While Bond was rattling off descriptions of M and the four enemy agents to his friend Spence, the Security Officer at the airport, the Inspector arrived, followed a minute later by Bill Tanner. Bond finished talking, hung up, drew in his breath to start explaining the position to Tanner, but just then the sergeant returned. His round, good- natured face was pale. He addressed himself to Bond.
'I got a patrol car up to the house, sir,' he said, swallowing. 'They've just come through. I'm afraid it's too late for your armed men now. But we shall need you, Doctor. Not that you'll be able to do very much, either.'
Chapter 3
Aftermath
THE BODY of the thin-faced man lay on its back in the hall at Quarterdeck. There was not much left of the face. Parts of it and what had been situated behind it could be seen here and there on walls and floor. The Luger bullet was half an inch deep in one of the panels.
Ex-Chief Petty Officer Hammond had been shot twice, once in the chest and again, to take no chances, in the back of the neck. It was assumed that he had been disposed of immediately on answering the front door, and that the use of a small-calibre weapon in his case had been dictated by the necessity of not leaving any traces in the hall that would have alerted Bond on his arrival. The corpse had been dumped in a heap in the kitchen, where the third body was also found.
Mrs Hammond at least could have known nothing of what happened to her. The killer, using the same light gun, had got her with a single well-aimed shot through the back of the head as she stood at the stove or the sink. She was lying close to where her husband had been dropped, so close that the back of his outflung hand rested against her shoulder. It was as if he had tried to reassure her that he had not left her, that he was near by, as he had been for twenty years. Since Hammond had been demobilized just after the war and had come with his wife to serve M, the two of them had not spent a night apart.
Bond thought of this as he stood beside Tanner and the Inspector and looked down on what was left of the Hammonds. He found himself beset by the irrelevant wish that he had listened more appreciatively to Hammond's
