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Bond thought for a while, then he picked up the telephone and spoke briefly to a man at the Eastern Garden Aquariu a live shark to keep in an ornaht near you now, Mr Bryce,' said the helpful voice ' "Ourobouros Wor ones Do business with foreign zoos and suchlike White, Tiger, even Halad to help you Costs a lot to feed 'e 'Bye'

Bond took out his gun and cleaned it, waiting for the night

CHAPTER XV

MIDNIGHT AMONG THE WORMS

ABOUND six Bond packed his bag and paid the check Mrs Stuyvesant was glad to see the last of hilades hadn't experienced such alarums since the last hurricane

Leiter's car was back on the Boulevard and he drove it over to the town He visited a hardware store and est steak, rare, with French fried, he had ever seen It was a srill called Pete's, dark and friendly He drank a quarter of a pint of Old Grandad with the steak and had two cups of very strong coffee With all this under his belt he began to feel uine

He spun out the meal and the drinks until nine o'clock Then he studied a map of the city and took the car and ht him within a block of The Robber's wharf froot out

It was a bright reat blocks of indigo shadow The whole section see of the s under the empty wharves

The top of the low sea-as about three feet wide It was in shadow for the hundred yards orblack outline of the Ourobouros warehouse

Bond cli between the buildings and the sea As he got nearer a steady, high-pitched whine became louder, and by the ti space at the back of the building it was aof the sort The noise ca systems which he kneould be necessary to keep the fish healthy through the chill of the night hours He had also relied on the fact that ht during the day Also that there would be good ventilation

He was not disappointed The whole of the south wall of the warehouse, frolass, and through it he could see theHigh up above hiht air There was, as he and Leiter had expected, a small door lon, but it was locked and bolted and leaded wires near the hinges suggested solar-alar his hunch, he had colass He cast about for so that would raise him an extra two feet In a land where litter and junk are so much a part of the landscape he soon found what he wanted It was a discarded heavy gauge tyre He rolled it to the wall of the warehouse away from the door and took off his shoes

He put bricks against the bottoes of the tyre to hold it steady and hoisted hiave hilass-cutter which he had bought, together with a hunk of putty, on his way to dinner When he had cut down the two vertical sides of one of the yard-square panes, he pressed the putty against the centre of the glass and worked it to a protruding knob He then went to work on the lateral edges of the pane

While he worked he gazed through into the e repository The endless rows of tanks stood on wooden trestles with narrow passages between Down the centre of the building there was a wider passage Under the trestles Bond could see long tanks and trays let into the floor Just below hiiments of sea-shells jutted out from the walls Most of the tanks were dark but in solinted on little fountains of bubbles rising froht metal runway suspended frouessed that any individual tank could be lifted out and brought to the exit for shipment or to extract sick fish for quarantine It was ainto a queer world and into a queer business It was odd to think of all the worht, the thousands of gills sighing and thetheir tiny radar signals to the dozing nerve-centres

After a quarter of an hour'snoise and the pane came away attached to the putty knob in his hand

He cliround away from the tyre Then he stuffed his shoes inside his shirt With only one good hand they ht be vital weapons He listened There was no sound but the unfaltering whine of the pumps He looked up to see if by chance there were any clouds about to cross the htly burning stars He got back on top of the tyre and with an easy heave half of his body was through the wide hole he had rasped the ht on his arh and down so that they were hanging a few inches above the racks full of shells He lowered himself until he could feel the backs of the shells with his stockinged toes, then he softly separated them with his toes until he had exposed a width of board Then he let his whole weight subside softly on to the tray It held, and in awith all his senses for any noise behind the whine of the machinery

But there was none He took his steel-tipped shoes out of his shirt and left them on the cleared board, then he ht in his hand

He was in the aquariuht flashes of coloured light fro jewellery would le at him before he moved on

There were all kinds - Swordtails, Guppies, Platys, Terras, Neons, Cichlids, Labyrinth and Paradise fish, and every variety of exotic Goldfish Underneath, sunk in the floor, and most of them covered with chicken wire, there were tray upon tray swar orms and baits: white worms, micro worround tanks, forests of tiny eyes looked up at his torch