Bond 01 - Casino Royale Read Online Free PDF

something splendid about the Negresco baroque of the Casino Royale, a strong whiff of Victorian elegance and luxury, and in 1950 Royale caught the fancy of a syndicate in Paris which disposed of large funds belonging to a group of expatriate Vichyites.
    Brighton had been revived since the war, and Nice. Nostalgia for more spacious, golden times might be a source of revenue.
    The Casino was repainted in its original white and gilt and the rooms decorated in the palest grey with wine-red carpets and curtains. Vast chandeliers were suspended from the ceilings. The gardens were spruced and the fountains played again and the two main hotels, the Splendide and the Hermitage, were prinked and furbished and restaffed.
    Even the small town and the ‘vieux-port’ managed to fix welcoming smiles across their ravaged faces, and the main street became gay with the vitrines of great Paris jewellers and couturiers, tempted down for a butterfly season by rent-free sites and lavish promises.
    Then the Mahomet Ali Syndicate was cajoled into starting a high game in the Casino and the ‘Société des Bains de Mer de Royale’ felt that now at last Le Touquet would have to yield up some of the treasure stolen over the years from its parent ‘plage’.
    Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.
    He shrugged away the momentary feeling of unease and walked round the back of his hotel and down the ramp to the garage. Before his rendezvous at the Hermitage he decided to take his car down the coast-road and have a quick look at Le Chiffre’s villa and then drive back by the inland road until it crossed the ‘route nationale’ to Paris.
    Bond’s car was his only personal hobby. One of the last of the 4½-litre Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers, he had bought it almost new in 1933 and had kept it in careful storage through the war. It was still serviced every year and, in London, a former Bentley mechanic, who worked in a garage near Bond’s Chelsea flat, tended it with jealous care. Bond drove it hard and well and with an almost sensual pleasure. It was a battleship-grey convertible coupé, which really did convert, and it was capable of touring at ninety with thirty miles an hour in reserve.
    Bond eased the car out of the garage and up the ramp and soon the loitering drum-beat of the two-inch exhaust was echoing down the tree-lined boulevard, through the crowded main street of the little town, and off through the sand dunes to the south.
    An hour later, Bond walked into the Hermitage bar and chose a table near one of the broad windows.
    The room was sumptuous with those over-masculine trappings which, together with briar pipes and wire-haired terriers, spell luxury in France. Everything was brass-studded leather and polished mahogany. The curtains and carpets were in royal blue. The waiters wore striped waistcoats and green baize aprons. Bond ordered an Americano and examined the sprinkling of over-dressed customers, mostly from Paris he guessed, who sat talking with focus and vivacity, creating that theatrically clubbable atmosphere of ‘l’heure de l’apéritif’.
    The men were drinking inexhaustible quarter-bottles of champagne, the women dry martinis.
    ‘Moi, j’adore le “Dry”, ’ a bright-faced girl at the next table said to her companion, too neat in his unseasonable tweeds, who gazed at her with moist brown eyes over the top of an expensive shooting-stick from Hermes, ‘fait avec du Gordon’s, bien entendu.’
    ‘D’accord, Daisy. Mais tu sais, un zeste de citron …’
    Bond’s eye was caught by the tall figure of Mathis on the pavement outside, his face turned in animation to a dark-haired girl in grey. His arm was linked in hers, high up above the elbow, and yet there was a lack of intimacy in their appearance, an ironical chill in the girl’s profile,