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The commissionaire came towards him

'A taxi, monsieur?'

Bond waved hi into the shadows, the night air cold on his sweating temples

He was half-way dohen he heard a faint cry, then the slarowl and stutter from the exhaust a beetle-browed Citro‰n shot out of the shadows into the light of the h 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 rearand thudded into a flower-bed There was a screaht the boulevard in a harsh left-handed turn, the deafening echo of a Citro‰n's exhaust in second gear, a crash into top, then a swiftly di crackle as the car hared off between the shops on the main street towards the coast road

Bond kneould find Vesper's evening bag aravel to the brightly-lit steps and scrabbled through its contents while the commissionaire hovered round hist the usual fee

Can you come out to the entrance hall for a moment? I have news for your companion

REN? 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 hiine answered at once to the starter and the roar drowned the faltering words of the coravel at his piped trouser-legs

As the car rocked to the left outside the gate, Bond ruefully longed for the front-wheel drive and low chassis of the Citroen Then he went fast through the gears and settled hie exhaust as it came back at hih the town

Soon he was out on the coast road, a broad highway through the sand-dunes which he knew fro's drive had an excellent surface and ell cat's-eyed 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 ht

He knew the Citro‰n 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 ht su like iron cattle down the coast

As he drove, whipping the car faster and faster through the night, with the other half of hissent her on the job

This was just what he had been afraid of These blithering woht they could do a man's work Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and ossip and leave men's work to the men And now for this to happen to him, just when the job had come off so beautifully For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon The silly bitch

Bond boiled at the thought of the fix he was in

Of course The idea was a straight swop The girl against his cheque for fortyShe was in the Service and knehat she was up against He wouldn't even ask M This job was irl, but he wasn't going to fall for this childish trick No dice He would try and catch the Citro‰n and shoot it out with theot shot in the process, that was too bad too He would have done his stuff - tried to rescue her before they got her off to soet back to his hotel and go to sleep and say nohe would ask Mathis what had happened to her and show him the note If Le Chiffre put the touch on Bond for theand tell no one The girl would just have to take it If the co with the story of what he had seen, Bond would bluff it out by saying he had had a drunken roith the girl

Bond's reat car down the coast road, auto out for carts or cyclists on their way into Royale On straight stretches the A spurs into the Bentley's twenty-five horses and the engine sent a high-pitched screaht Then the revolutions mounted until he was past 110 and on to the 120 aining fast Loaded as she was the Citro‰n could hardly better eighty even on this road On an ihts, and dowsed the twin Marchals Sure enough, without the blinding curtain of his own lights, he could see the glow of another car a mile or tn the coasts

He felt under the dashboard and fro-barrelled Colt Army Special 45, and laid it on the seat beside him With this, if he was lucky with the surface of the road, he could hope to get their tyres or their petrol tank at anything up to a hundred yards

Then he switched on the big lights again and screamed off in pursuit He felt calm and at ease The probleer His face in the blue light frorim but serene

Ahead in the Citro‰n there were threefluid body hunched forward, his hands light and delicate on the wheel Beside him sat the squat man who had carried the stick in the Casino In his left hand he grasped a thick lever which protruded beside hiht have been a lever to adjust the driving seat

In the back seat was the tall thin gun, apparently uninterested in the wild speed of the car His right hand lay caressingly on Vesper's left thigh which stretched out naked beside his, which were naked to the hips, Vesper was only a parcel Her long black velvet skirt had been lifted over her arms and head and tied above her head with a piece of rope Where her face was, a sap had been torn in the velvet so that she could breathe She was not bound in any other way and she lay quiet, her bodyof the car