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Worm and Bait." They got sharks. Big ones. Do business with foreign zoos and
suchlike. White, Tiger, even Hammerheads. They'll be glad to help you. Costs a
lot to feed 'em. You're welcome. Any time you're passing. '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 him. The Everglades 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 made various purchases. Then he had the biggest
steak, rare, with French fried, he had ever seen. It was a small grill 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 more sanguine.
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 made a wide detour that brought him within a
block of The Robber's wharf from the south. He ran the car down to the sea and
got out.
It was a bright moonlit night and the buildings and warehouses threw great
blocks of indigo shadow. The whole section seemed deserted and there was no
sound except the quiet lapping of the small waves against the seawall and
water gurgling under the empty wharves.
The top of the low sea-wall was about three feet wide. It was in shadow for
the hundred yards or more that separated him from the long black outline of
the Ourobouros warehouse.
Bond climbed on to it and walked carefully and silently along between the
buildings and the sea. As he got nearer a steady, high-pitched whine became
louder, and by the time he dropped down on the wide cement parking space at
the back of the building it was a muted scream. Bond had expected something of
the sort. The noise came from the air-pumps and heating systems which he knew
would be necessary to keep the fish healthy through the chill of the night
hours. He had also relied on the fact that most of the
roof would certainly be of glass to admit sunlight during the day. Also that
there would be good ventilation.
He was not disappointed. The whole of the south wall of the warehouse, from
just above the level of his head, was of plate glass, and through it he could
see the moon-light shining down through half an acre of glass roofing. High up
above him, and well out of reach, broad windows were open to the night air.
There was, as he and Leiter had expected, a small door low down, but it was
locked and bolted and leaded wires near the hinges suggested some form of
burglar-alarm.
Bond was not interested in the door. Following his hunch, he had come equipped
for an entry through glass. He cast about for something that would raise him
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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 bottom edges of the tyre to hold it steady and
hoisted himself up. The steady scream of the pumps gave him protection and he
at once set to work with a small glass-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 moonlit vistas of the huge
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 him, broad racks covered with regiments of sea-shells jutted out
from the walls. Most of the tanks were dark but in some a tiny strip of
electric light glimmered spectrally and glinted on little fountains of bubbles
rising from the weeds and sand. There was a light metal runway suspended from
the roof over each row of tanks and Bond guessed that any individual tank
could be lifted out and brought to the exit for shipment or to extract sick
fish for quarantine. It was a window into a queer world and into a queer
business. It was odd to think of all the worms and eels and fish stirring
quietly in the night, the thousands of gills sighing and the multitude of
antennae waving and pointing and transmitting their tiny radar signals to the
dozing nerve-centres.
After a quarter of an hour's meticulous work there was a slight cracking noise
and the pane came away attached to the putty knob in his hand.
He climbed down and put the pane carefully on the ground away from the tyre.
Then he stuffed his shoes inside his shirt. With only one good hand they might
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 moon, but the sky was empty save for its canopy of brightly 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 made.
He turned and grasped the metal frame above his head and putting all his
weight on his arms he jack-knifed his legs through 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 a moment
he was down on the floor listening with all his senses for any noise behind
the whine of the machinery.
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