Read Online Bond 07 - Goldfinger by Ian Fleming - Free Book Online Page A

behaving like a bloody schoolboy.’
    Bond said soberly, ‘Well, sir, it’s like this ...’ Bond told the story, leaving nothing out.
    M.’s face cleared. He listened with all his attention, leaning forward across the desk. When Bond had finished, M. sat back in his chair. He said ‘Well, well ... well’ on a diminishing scale. He put his hands behind his head and gazed for minutes at the ceiling.
    Bond could feel the laughter coming on again. How would the C.I.D. word the resounding snub he would get in the course of the day? He was brought sharply back to earth by M.’s next words. ‘By the way, what happened to that ten thousand dollars?’
    ‘Gave it to the girl, sir.’
    ‘Really! Why not to the White Cross?’
    The White Cross Fund was for the families of Secret Service men and women who were killed on duty.
    ‘Sorry, sir.’ Bond was not prepared to argue that one.
    ‘Humpf.’ M. had never approved of Bond’s womanizing. It was anathema to his Victorian soul. He decided to let it pass. He said, ‘Well, that’s all for now, 007. You’ll be hearing all about it this afternoon. Funny about Goldfinger. Odd chap. Seen him once or twice at Blades. He plays bridge there when he’s in England. He’s the chap the Bank of England’s after.’ M. paused. He looked mildly across the table at Bond. ‘As from this moment, so are you.’

6 ....... TALK OF GOLD
     
    B OND WALKED up the steps and through the fine bronze portals and into the spacious, softly echoing entrance hall of the Bank of England and looked around him. Under his feet glittered the brilliant golden patterns of the Boris Anrep mosaics; beyond, through twenty-foot-high arched windows, green grass and geraniums blazed in the central courtyard. To right and left were spacious vistas of polished Hopton Wood stone. Over all hung the neutral smell of air-conditioned air and the heavy, grave atmosphere of immense riches.
    One of the athletic-looking, pink frock-coated commissionaires came up to him. ‘Yes, sir?’
    ‘Colonel Smithers?’
    ‘Commander Bond, sir? This way please.’ The commissionaire moved off to the right between the pillars. The bronze doors of a discreetly hidden lift stood open. The lift rose a few feet to the first floor. Now there was a long panelled corridor ending in a tall Adam window. The floor was close-carpeted in beige Wilton. The commissionaire knocked at the last of several finely carved oak doors that were just so much taller and more elegant than ordinary doors. A grey-haired woman was sitting at a desk. She looked as if she had once taken a double first. The walls of the room were lined with grey metal filing cabinets. The woman had been writing on a quarto pad of yellow memorandum paper. She smiled with a hint of conspiracy, picked up a telephone and dialled a number. ‘Commander Bond is here.’ She put the telephone back and stood up. ‘Will you come this way?’ She crossed the room to a door covered with green baize and held it open for Bond to go through.
    Colonel Smithers had risen from his desk. He said gravely, ‘Nice of you to have come. Won’t you sit down?’ Bond took the chair. ‘Smoke?’ Colonel Smithers pushed forward a silver box of Senior Service and himself sat down and began to fill a pipe. Bond took a cigarette and lit it.
    Colonel Smithers looked exactly like someone who would be called Colonel Smithers. He had obviously been a colonel, probably on the staff, and he had the smooth, polished, basically serious mien that fitted his name. But for his horn-rimmed glasses, he might have been an efficient, not very well-fed courtier in a royal household.
    Bond felt boredom gathering in the corners of the room. He said encouragingly, ‘It seems that you are to tell me all about gold.’
    ‘So I understand. I had a note from the Governor. I gather I need keep nothing from you. Of course you understand’ – Colonel Smithers looked over Bond’s right shoulder – ‘that most of what I shall