Free James Bond and Moonraker by Christopher Wood Page A

railhead.’
    Bond frowned. ‘Where was the laboratory?’
    ‘If you’re thinking of going and looking at it, you can forget it,’ said Trudi. ‘It was burned out just after the move.’
    Bond’s smile was grim. ‘Accidents do happen around here.’
    Trudi folded her arms beneath her bosom and leant back against the pillow. ‘It’s most unusual. Normally, nothing very much happens around here.’
    Bond raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
    ‘Absolutely. That’s why your visit to my room was such an event.’
    Bond looked down at the lambent curve of the soft, sensual mouth. It was difficult not to be aroused by the beauty of this girl. There was a need in her eyes too.
    ‘What about that list of your mother’s?’
    Trudi’s arms uncrossed and reached out to slide round his neck. Her lips parted to receive anything that he might wish to give. ‘What mother?’ she breathed.

7
BEHIND THE CLOCK
    An hour later Bond was moving silently along the route he had followed with Drax’s butler. He had left Trudi asleep with a seraphic smile plucking at the corner of her mouth and a sheet pulled tight about her naked body. In that pose she had looked like a small child tucked up snug in its cot. It gave a false impression of what she had been like in her waking moments.
    Bond paused at the foot of the stairway and listened. He could hear a clock ticking, but nothing else. The hall was lit by moonlight and the busts in the niches peered out like spies. Bond crossed to the door of Drax’s study. No light shone from beneath it. No sound came from within. Bond closed his fingers around the handle and pushed down. There was a soft click and the door opened. Bond paused for a moment and listened again. If by some chance the Dobermann pinschers were still in residence he wanted to give them time to announce their presence. Satisfied that there was no one there, Bond slipped into the room and closed the door behind him. The task before him was daunting. He had no idea what he was looking for and there was enough furniture there to stock an auction room. He crossed to a Louis Quinze escritoire and found it locked. This was not surprising. Neither, after what he had discovered in his room, were the two thin wires running down its back and along the top of the skirting board. The piece was either booby-trapped or attached to an alarm which would go off if anybody tampered with it.
    Bond was pondering the alternatives when the door opened quickly behind him. He had hardly sunk to the floor when Trudi came in wearing a long white silk robe and a worried expression. ‘James?’
    Bond rose to his feet and Trudi shrank back. Bond quickly placed a finger to his lips. ‘You whetted my appetite.’ She looked puzzled. ‘For information. Is there a safe in here?’
    Trudi’s eyes widened. ‘You must be nuts!’
    ‘Possibly.’ Bond glanced round the room. A handsome gilt wall clock was flanked by two lights. Their position seemed incongruous in terms of the total layout of the room. The clock was not a work of art that cried out for illumination. Bond approached the clock and listened. It was not working.
    Trudi watched him like someone who has hidden the object in a game of hunt the thimble. Her face was drawn with anxiety. ‘James -’
    ‘Would you say I was getting warm?’
    ‘James! You’ve got to leave.’
    Bond reached up and opened the glass front of the face. The face swung with it to reveal that it was no more than a façade. Behind lay the round door of a small safe with a combination dial in the middle of it.
    ‘So far, so promising,’ said Bond. ‘I don’t imagine you know the combination?’
    Trudi shook her head slowly. She was almost hypnotized by fear. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I did.’
    Bond looked at the graceful figure silhouetted against the moonlight and felt a quick pang of sexual hunger. What was it that made a frightened woman so desirable? Psychologists would probably be able to furnish an unflattering