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bed. He had taken a mild sleeping pill to try and clear his mind of the
bizarre events of the evening and prepare himself for the morning and the
office. Before he slept he reflected, as he had often reflected in other
moments of triumph at the card table, that the gain to the winner is, in some
odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.
When he closed the door behind him Loelia Ponsonby looked curiously at the
dark shadows under his eyes. He noticed the glance, as she had intended.
He grinned. "Partly work and partly play," he explained. "In strictly
masculine company," he added. "And thanks very much for the benzedrine. It
really was badly needed. Hope I didn't interfere with your evening?"
"Of course not," she said, thinking of the dinner and the library book she had
abandoned when Bond telephoned. She looked down at her shorthand pad. "The
Chief of Staff telephoned half an hour ago. He said that M. would be wanting
you today. He couldn't say when. I told him that you've got Unarmed Combat at
three and he said to cancel it. That's all, except the dockets left over from
yesterday."
"Thank heavens," said Bond. "I couldn't have stood being thrown about by that
dam' Commando chap today. Any news of
008?"
"Yes," she said. "They say he's all right. He's been moved to the military
hospital at Wahnerheide. Apparently it's only shock."
Bond knew what 'shock' might mean in his profession. "Good," he said without
conviction. He smiled at her and went into his office and closed the door.
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He walked decisively round his desk to the chair, sat down, and pulled the top
file towards him. Monday was gone. This was
Tuesday. A new day. Closing his mind to his headache and to thoughts about the
night, he lit a cigarette and opened the brown folder with the Top Secret red
star on it. It was a memorandum from the Office of the Chief Preventive
Officer of the United
States Customs Branch and it was headed
The Inspectoscope
.
He focused his eyes.
'The Inspectoscope,' he read, 'is an instrument using fluoroscopic principles
for the detection of contraband. It is manufactured by the Sicular
Inspectoscope Company of San Francisco and is widely used in American prisons
for the secret detection of metal objects concealed in the clothing or on the
person of criminals and prison visitors. It is also used in the detection of
IDE (Illicit Diamond Buying) and diamond smuggling in the diamond fields of
Africa and Brazil. The instrument costs seven thousand dollars, is
approximately eight feet long by seven feet high and weighs nearly three tons.
It requires two trained operators. Experiments have been made with this
instrument in the customs hall of the International Airport at Idlewild with
the following results& '
Bond skipped two pages containing details of a number of petty smuggling cases
and studied the 'Summary of Conclusions'
from which he deduced, with some irritation, that he would have to think of
some place other than his armpit for carrying his
.25 Beretta the next time he travelled abroad. He made a mental note to
discuss the problem with the Technical Devices
Section.
He ticked and initialled the distribution slip and automatically reached for
the next folder entitled
Philopon. A Japanese
20
murder-drug
.
'Philopon', his mind was trying to wander and he dragged it sharply back to
the typewritten pages.
'Philopon is the chief factor in the increase in crime in Japan. According to
the Welfare Ministry there are now 1,500,000
addicts in the country, of whom one million are under the age of 20, and the
Tokyo Metropolitan Police attribute 70 per cent of juvenile crime to the
influences of the drug.
'Addiction, as in the case of marijuana in the United States, begins with one
"shot". The effect is "stimulating" and the drug is habit-forming. It is also
cheap about ten yen (sixpence) a shot and the addict rapidly increases his
shots to the neighbourhood of one hundred a day. In these quantities the
addiction becomes expensive and the victim automatically turns to crime to pay
for the drug. That the crime often includes physical assault and murder is due
to a peculiar property of the drug. It induces an acute persecution complex in
the addict who becomes prey to the illusion that people want to kill him and
that he is always being followed with harmful intent. He will turn with his
feet and fists, or with a razor, on a stranger in the streets who he thinks
has scrutinized him offensively. Less advanced addicts tend to avoid an old
friend who has reached the one hundred shots a day dosage, and this of course
merely increases his feeling of persecution.
'In this way murder becomes an act of self-defence, virtuous and justified,
and it will readily be seen what a dangerous weapon it can become in the
handling and direction of organized crime by a "master-mind".
Thilopon has been traced as the motive power behind the notorious Bar Mecca
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murder case and as a result of that unpleasant affair the police rounded up
more than 5000
purveyors of the drug in a matter of weeks.
'As usual Korean nationals are being blamed& "
Suddenly Bond rebelled. What the hell was he doing reading all this stuff?
When would he conceivably require to know about a Japanese murder-drug called
Philopon?
Inattentively he skimmed through the remaining pages, ticked himself off the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]