Bond 02 - Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

Author:Ian Fleming [Fleming, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Espionage
ISBN: 9781612185446
Google: gvtOMQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1612185444
Barnesnoble: 1612185444
Goodreads: 15954466
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 1954-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Bond paid off the cab at The Everglades, a group of neat white and yellow clapboard cottages set on three sides of a square of Bahama grass which ran fifty yards down to a bone white beach and then to the sea. From there, the whole Gulf of Mexico stretched away, as calm as a mirror, until the heat-haze on the horizon married it into the cloudless sky.

After London, after New York, after Jacksonville, it was a sparkling transition.

Bond went through a door marked ‘Office’ with Solitaire demurely at his heels. He rang a bell that said, ‘Manageress: Mrs Stuyvesant’, and a withered shrimp of a woman with blue-rinsed hair appeared and smiled with her pinched lips. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Leiter?’

‘Oh yes, you’re Mr Bryce. Cabana Number One, right down on the beach. Mr Leiter’s been expecting you since lunchtime. And …?’ She heliographed with her pince-nez towards Solitaire.

‘Mrs Bryce,’ said Bond.

‘Ah yes,’ said Mrs Stuyvesant, wishing to disbelieve.

‘Well, if you’d care to sign the register, I’m sure you and Mrs Bryce would like to freshen up after the journey. The full address, please. Thank you.’

She led them out and down the cement path to the end cottage on the left. She knocked and Leiter appeared. Bond had looked forward to a warm welcome, but Leiter seemed staggered to see him. His mouth hung open. His straw-coloured hair, still faintly black at the roots, looked like a haystack.

‘You haven’t met my wife, I think,’ said Bond.

‘No, no, I mean, yes. How do you do?’

The whole situation was beyond him. Forgetting Solitaire, he almost dragged Bond through the door. At the last moment he remembered the girl and seized her with his other hand and pulled her in too, banging the door shut with his heel so that Mrs Stuyvesant’s ‘I hope you have a happy …’ was guillotined before the ‘stay’.

Once inside, Leiter could still not take them in. He stood and gaped from one to the other.

Bond dropped his suitcase on the floor of the little lobby. There were two doors. He pushed open the one on his right and held it for Solitaire. It was a small living-room that ran the width of the cottage and faced across the beach to the sea. It was pleasantly furnished with bamboo beach chairs upholstered in foam rubber covered with a red and green hibiscus chintz. Palm leaf matting covered the floor. The walls were duck’s-egg blue and in the centre of each was a colour print of tropical flowers in a bamboo frame. There was a large drum-shaped table in bamboo with a glass top. It held a bowl of flowers and a white telephone. There were broad windows facing the sea and to the right of them a door leading on to the beach. White plastic jalousies were drawn half up the windows to cut the glare from the sand.

Bond and Solitaire sat down. Bond lit a cigarette and threw the pack and his lighter on to the table.

Suddenly the telephone rang.

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