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He felt thoroughly dispirited and weak in resolve as well as in his body He had had to take too much in the past twenty-four hours and now this last stroke by the enemy seemed almost too final This time there could be no miracles No one knehere he was and no one wouldThe wreck of his car would be found before very long, but it would take hours to trace the ownership to hiht, past the thinback with his eyes closed His first reaction was one of scorn Da her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was so But then he felt sorry for her Her naked legs looked so childlike and defenseless

'Vesper,' he said softly

There was no answer from the bundle in the corner and Bond suddenly had a chill feeling, but then she stirred slightly

At the saht him a hard backhanded blow over the heart

'Silence'

Bond doubled over with the pain and to shield hiet a rabbit punch on the back of the neck which h his teeth

The thin e of the hand There was so rather deadly about his accuracy and lack of effort He was now again lying back, his eyes closed He was a et a chance of killing him

Suddenly the boot of the car was thrown open and there was a clanking crash Bond guessed that they had been waiting for the third man to retrieve the carpet of spiked chain-mail He assumed it must be an adaptation of the nail-studded devices used by the Resistance against Gerain he reflected on the efficiency of these people and the ingenuity of the equipment they used Had M underestimated their resourcefulness? He stifled a desire to place the blame on London It was he who should have known; he who should have been warned by sns and taken infinitelydown cha his counter-stroke He cursed himself and cursed the hubris which had ht

All this ti Directly the boot was shut, the third nized, climbed in beside him and Le Chiffre reversed furiously back on to the ate and was soon doing seventy on down the coast

By noas dawn - about five o'clock, Bond guessed - and he reflected that ato Le Chiffre's villa He had not thought that they would take Vesper there Now that he realized that Vesper had only been a sprat to catch a mackerel the whole picture became clear

It was an extremely unpleasant picture For the first time since his capture, fear came to Bond and crawled up his spine

Ten minutes later the Citro‰n lurched to the left, ran on a hundred yards up a srass and then between a pair of dilapidated stucco pillars into an unkeh wall They drew up in front of a peeling white door Above a rusty bell-push in the door-frame, small zinc letters on a wooden base spelled out 'Les Noctambules' and, underneath, 'Sonnez SVP'

Froe, the villa was typical of the French seaside style He could i hastily swept out for the su woent in Royale Every five years one coat of ould be slapped over the rooms and the outside ork, and for a feeeks the villa would present a set to work, and the iain its abandoned look

But, Bond reflected, it would adht in assu what that was to be They had passed no other house since his capture and from his reconnaissance of the day before he knew there was only an occasional fared out of the car with a sharp crack in the ribs from the thin man's elbow, he knew that Le Chiffre could have theain his skin crawled

Le Chiffre opened the door with a key and disappeared inside Vesper, looking incredibly indecent in the early light of day, was pushed in after him with a torrent of lewd French from the man whom Bond knew to hi the thin e him

The key of the front door turned in the lock

Le Chiffre was standing in the doorway of a rooer at Bond in a silent, spidery sue towards the back of the house Bond suddenly decided

With a wild backward kick which connected with the thin ht a whistle of pain froe after her With only his feet as weapons, there was no plan in his unirl No other plan was possible He just wanted to tell her not to give in

As the Corsican turned at the coht shoe was launched in a flying kick at the otherthe Corsican slae and, as Bond's foot whistled past his hip, he very quickly, but soht Bond's shoe at the top of its arch and twisted it sharply

Coround In the air his whole body turned and with the momentum of his rush behind it crashed sideways and down on to the floor

For a moment he lay there, all the breath knocked out of hiainst the wall by his collar He had a gun in his hand He looked Bond inquisitively in the eyes Then unhurriedly he bent down and swiped the barrel viciously across Bond's shins Bond grunted and caved at the knees

'If there is a next time, it will be across your teeth,' said the thin man in bad French

A door slammed Vesper and the Corsican had disappeared Bond turned his head to the right Le Chiffre had er and crooked it again Then for the first ti our tilish with no accent His voice was low and soft and unhurried He showed no e the next patient fro-roo feebly with a nurse

Bond again felt puny and impotent Nobody but an expert in ju-jitsu could have handled him with the Corsican's economy and lack of fuss The cold precision hich the thin man had paid him back in his own coin had been equally unhurried, even artistic

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