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decisively? Perhaps, if he had had his gun& ? No. Bond knew that even his split-
second draw wouldn't have beaten the Korean - wouldn't do so now. There was a total
deadliness about this man. Whether Bond had been armed or unarmed, it would have
been a man fighting a tank.
They reached the courtyard. As they did so, the back door of the house opened. Two
more Koreans, who might have been the servants from Reculver, ran out towards them
through the warm splash of electric light. They carried ugly-looking polished sticks.
'Stop!' Both men wore the savage, empty grin that men from Station J, who had been in
Japanese prison camps, had described to Bond. 'We search. No trouble or& ' The man
who had spoken, cut the air with a whistling lash of his stick. 'Hands up!'
Bond put his hands slowly up. He said to the girl, 'Don't react& whatever they do.'
Odd job came forward and stood, menacingly, watching the search. The search was
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expert. Bond coldly watched the hands on the girl, the grinning faces.
'Okay. Come!'
They were herded through the open door and along a stone-flagged passage to the
narrow entrance hall at the front of the house. The house smelled as Bond had
imagined it would musty and fragrant and summery. There were white-panelled doors.
Oddjob knocked on one of them.
'Yes?'
Oddjob opened the door. They were prodded through.
Goldfinger sat at a big desk. It was neatly encumbered with important-looking papers.
The desk was flanked by grey metal filing cabinets. Beside the desk, within reach of
Gold-finger's hand, stood a short-wave wireless set on a low table. There was an
operator's keyboard and a machine that ticked busily and looked like a barograph.
Bond guessed that this had something to do with the detector that had intercepted
them.
Goldfinger wore his purple velvet smoking-jacket over an open-necked white silk shirt.
The open neck showed a tuft of orange chest-hair. He sat very erect in a high-backed
chair. He hardly glanced at the girl. The big china-blue eyes were fixed on Bond. They
showed no surprise. They held no expression except a piercing hardness.
Bond blustered, 'Look here, Goldfinger. What the hell's all this about? You put the
police on to me over that ten thousand dollars and I got on your tracks with my girl
friend here, Miss Soames. I've come to find out what the hell you mean by it. We
climbed the fence - I know it's trespassing, but I wanted to catch you before you moved
on somewhere else. Then this ape of yours came along and damned near killed one of
us with his bow and arrow. Two more of your bloody Koreans held us up and searched
us. What the hell's going on? If you can't give me a civil answer and full apologies I'll
put the police on you.'
Goldfinger's flat, hard stare didn't flicker. He might not have heard Bond's angry-
gentleman's outburst. The finely chiselled lips parted. He said, 'Mr Bond, they have a
saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's
enemy action." Miami, Sandwich and now Geneva. I propose to wring the truth out of
you.' Gold-finger's eyes slid slowly past Bond's head. 'Oddjob. The Pressure Room.'
PART THREE: ENEMY ACTION
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE PRESSURE ROOM
BOND'S REACTION was automatic. There was no reason behind it. He took one
quick step forward and hurled himself across the desk at Goldfinger. His body,
launched in a shallow dive, hit the top of the desk and ploughed through the litter of
papers. There was a heavy thud as the top of his head crashed into Goldfinger's
breastbone. The momentum of the blow rocked Goldfinger in his chair. Bond kicked
back at the edge of the desk, got a purchase and rammed forward again. As the chair
toppled backwards and the two bodies went down in the splintering woodwork, Bond's
fingers got to the throat and his thumbs went into its base and downwards with every
ounce of his force.
Then the whole house fell on Bond, a baulk of timber hit him at the base of the neck
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and he rolled sluggishly off Goldfinger on to the floor and lay still.
The vortex of light through which Bond was whirling slowly flattened into a disc, a
yellow moon, and then into a burning Cyclops eye. Something was written round the
fiery eyeball. It was a message, an important message for him. He must read it.
Carefully, one by one, Bond spelled out the tiny letters. The message said: SOCIÉTÉ
ANONYME MAZDA. What was its significance? A hard bolt of water hit Bond in the
face. The water stung his eyes and filled his mouth. He retched desperately and tried to
move. He couldn't. His eyes cleared, and his brain. There was a throbbing pain at the
back of his neck. He was staring up into a big enamelled light bowl with one powerful
bulb. He was on some sort of a table and his wrists and ankles were bound to its
edges. He felt with his fingers. He felt polished metal.
A voice, Goldfinger's voice, flat, uninterested, said, 'Now we can begin.'
Bond turned his head towards the voice. His eyes were dazzled by the light. He
squeezed them hard and opened them. Goldfinger was sitting in a canvas chair. He
had taken off his jacket and was in his shirt sleeves. There were red marks round the
base of his throat. On a folding table beside him were various tools and metal
instruments and a control panel. On the other side of the table Tilly Masterton sat in
another chair. She was strapped to it by her wrists and ankles. She sat bolt upright as if
she was in school. She looked incredibly beautiful, but shocked, remote. Her eyes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]