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Bond knehat to do He had known as soon as he had been led back into the roo in the shadowed angle of the wall But there was a bell-push near the woman She would have to be dealt with first! Had he learned enough of the thrusts and parries of bojutsu fro camp? Bond hurled himself to the left, seized the stave and leaped at the wo upwards

The stave thudded into the side of her head and she sprawled grotesquely forward off her chair and lay still Blofeld's shistled down, inches froed to his full extent, thrusting his stave forward in the groove of his left hand alht Blofeld hard on the breastbone and flung hiainst the wall, but he hurtled back and ca his sword like a scythe Bond aiht ar his weapon as well as his body away fro steel, or his stave would be cut like a th was his only hope of victory Blofeld suddenly lunged, expertly, his right knee bent forward Bond feinted to the left, but he was inches too slow and the tip of the sword flicked his left ribs, drawing blood But before Blofeld could withdraw, Bond had slashed two-handed, sideways, at his legs His stave met bone Blofeld cursed, and ain and Bond could only dodge and feint in the es to keep the ene steel, and now Blofeld, scenting victory, took lightning steps and thrust forward like a snake Bond leaped sideways, saw his chance and gave a ht shoulder and drew a curse froain and again with his weapon and scoring several hits to the body, but one of Blofeld's parries caught the stave and cut off that one vital foot of extra length as if it had been a candle-end Blofeld saw his advantage and began attacking,furious forward jabs that Bond could only parry by hitting at the flat of the sword to deflect it But now the stave was slippery in the sweat of his hands and for the first time he felt the cold breath of defeat at his neck And Blofeld seemed to ses to get under Bond's guard Bond guessed the distance of the wall behind hiainst it Even so he felt the sword-point fan across his stomach But, hurled back by his ied, swept the sword aside with his stave and, dropping his weapon, ot both hands to it For a ainst each other The boss of Blofeld's sword battered into Bond's side Bond hardly felt the crashing blows He pressed with his thumbs, and pressed and pressed and heard the sword clank to the floor and felt Blofeld's fingers and nails tearing at his face, trying to reach his eyes Bond whispered through his gritted teeth, 'Die, Blofeld! Die!' And suddenly the tongue was out and the eyes rolled upwards and the body slipped down to the ground But Bond followed it and knelt, his hands cra, in the terrible grip of blood lust

Bond slowly caon's head on the black silk ki hands froot to his feet He staggered God, how his head hurt! What remained to be done? He tried to cast his mind back He had had a clever idea What was it? Oh yes, of course! He picked up Blofeld's sword and sleep-walked down the stone passage to the torture rooht And there was the wooden box, mud-spattered, down beside the throne on which he had sat, days, years before He went to it and hacked it open with one stroke of the sword Yes, there was the big wheel he had expected! He knelt down and twisted and twisted until it was finally closed What would happen now? The end of the world? Bond ran back up the passage Now he et away frouards! He tore aside a curtain and smashed theopen with his sword Outside there was a balustraded terrace that seemed to run round this storey of the castle Bond looked around for so to cover his nakedness There was only Blofeld's sumptuous kimono Coldly, Bond tore it off the corpse, put it on and tied the sash The interior of the kimono was cold, like a snake's skin He looked down at Ir heavily with a drunken snore Bond went to theand clilass splinters

But he had been wrong! The balustrade was a brief one, closed at both ends He stumbled from end to end of it, but there was no exit He looked over the side A sheer hundred-foot drop to the gravel A soft fluted whistle above hiht his ear He looked up Only a breath of wind in the s of that bloody balloon! But then a lunatic idea calas Fairbanks fil a flying leap at the chandelier The heliuh to hold taut fifty feet of fran! Why shouldn't it be powerful enough to bear the weight of a man?

Bond ran to the corner of the balustrade to which theline was attached He tested it It was taut as a wire! Froreat cla on to the straining rope, he cli, cut a foothold for hi rope with his right hand, chopped doards below him with Blofeld's sword and threw hiht breeze and he felt hi, stea! The heliuht! Then blue-and-yellow fire fluttered frory wasp zipped past hi to ache with the strain of holding on So hit him on the side of the head, the sae of pain And that finished him He knew it had! For now the whole black silhouette of the castle swayed in theupwards and sideways and then slowly dissolve like an icecream cone in sunshine The top storey crumbled first, then the next, and the next, and then, after a e fire shot up from hell towards thecrack of thunder, hit Bond and made his balloon sway violently

What was it all about? Bond didn't know or care The pain in his head was his whole universe Punctured by a bullet, the balloon was fast losing height Below, the softly swelling sea offered a bed Bond let go with hands and feet and plu feathers of some childhood dream of softness and escape from pain

21

OBIT:

M WRITES :

As your readers will have learned from earlier issues, a senior officer of the Ministry of Defence, Co, believed killed, while on an official rieves me to have to report that hopes of his survival must now be abandoned It therefore falls to ive so services to his country

James Bond was born of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond of Glencoe, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, fron representative of the Vickers armaments firm, his early education, from which he inherited a first-class command of French and Gere, both his parents were killed in a clies above Chauardianship of an aunt, since deceased, Miss Charmian Bond, and went to live with her at the quaintly-named hamlet of Pett Bottoe hard by the attractive Duck Inn, his aunt, who must have been a most erudite and accolish public school, and, at the age of twelve or thereabouts, he passed satisfactorily into Eton, for which College he had been entered at birth by his father It must be aduished and, after only two halves, as a result, it pains ed trouble with one of the boys' ed to obtain his transfer to Fettes, his father's old school Here the atmosphere was somewhat Calvinistic, and both acadeh inclined to be solitary by nature, he established so the traditionally famous athletic circles at the school By the tiht for the school as a light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at a British public school By noas 1941 and, by claie of nineteen and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of as subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence To serve the confidential nature of his duties, he was accorded the rank of lieutenant in the Special Branch of the RNVR, and it is a ave to his superiors that he ended the ith the rank of Commander It was about this time that the writer became associated with certain aspects of the Ministry's work, and it ith ratification that I accepted Co for the Ministry in which, at the time of his lamented disappearance, he had risen to the rank of Principal Officer in the Civil Service

The nature of Commander Bond's duties with the Ministry, which were, incidentally, recognized by the appointment of CMG in 1954, ues at the Ministry will allow that he perforh occasionally, through an impetuous strain in his nature, with a streak of the foolhardy that brought hiher authority But he possessed what alhest eency, and he somehow contrived to escape more or less unscathed from the many adventurous paths dohich his duties led hin Press, accorded soainst his will, soure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around hiue of Jaree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet-I eainst the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant

It only re his friends that Commander Bond's last h it now appears that, alas, he will not return frohest quarters in the land to confirm that the eration to pronounce unequivocally that, through the recent valorous efforts of this one hty reassurance