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E Q UIP P I N G JAM E S BO N D
This page intentionally left blank
Equipping James Bond
Guns, Gadgets, and
Technological Enthusiasm

André Millard

JOHNS HOPKI NS UNI VERSI TY PRESS B A LT IMO R E

© 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2018
Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Mary­land 21218​-­4363
www​.­press​.­jhu​.­edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Names: Millard, A. J., author.

Title: Equipping James Bond : guns, gadgets, and technological enthusiasm /
André Millard.
Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004446| ISBN 9781421426648 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781421426655 (electronic) | ISBN 1421426641 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 142142665X (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Espionage—­Technological innovations. | Bond, James
(Fictitious character)
Classification: LCC UB270 .M545 2018 | DDC 327.12028/4—­dc23
LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2018004446

A cata­log rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information,
please contact Special Sales at 410-­516-­6936 or specialsales@press​.­jhu​.­edu.

Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials,

including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 p
­ ercent
post-­consumer waste, whenever pos­si­ble.
 C O NT E N T S

List of Abbreviations vii

Introduction 1
001 The Technological Enthusiasts 5
002 The Secret Intelligence Ser­vice 16
003 The ­Great War and the Threat of Modernity 27
004 Imagining the F
­ uture: Technology on Film 39
005 Spy Films 50
006 Ian Fleming, Intelligence Officer 63
007 Equipment 74
008 Irregular Warriors 86
009 The Trea­sure Hunt 95
010 Nuclear Anx­i­eties 108
011 Gadgets 118
012 Guns 131
013 The Special Relationship and the Cold War 142
014 The Technological Revolution 153
015 Into the ­Future 165
016 Keeping Up with the Times 177

Notes 191
Index 207
This page intentionally left blank
 A B B R E V I AT I O N S

CR Casino Royale (New York: MJF Books, 1953)

DAF Diamonds Are Forever (1956), in More Gilt-­Edged Bonds (New York:
Macmillan, 1965)
DN Doctor No (New York: Macmillan, 1958)
FRL From Rus­sia with Love (New York: Macmillan, 1957)
FVK From a View to a Kill (1960), in Bonded Fleming (New York: Viking,
1965)
FYE For Your Eyes Only (1960), in Bonded Fleming (New York: Viking, 1965)
GF Goldfinger (New York: Macmillan, 1959)
HR “The Hildebrand Rarity” (1960), in Bonded Fleming (New York: Viking,
1965)
LLD Live and Let Die (1954), in More Gilt-­Edged Bonds (New York:
Macmillan, 1965)
MGG The Man with the Golden Gun (New York: New American Library, 1965)
MR Moonraker (1955), in More Gilt-­Edged Bonds (New York: Macmillan,
1965)
OCT Octopussy (New York: New American Library, 1966)
OHM On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice (1963), in James Bond Omnibus, vol. 2
(New York: MJF Books, 1992)
RSC “Risico” (1960), in Bonded Fleming (New York: Viking, 1965)
SLM The Spy Who Loved Me (New York: Viking, 1962)
TB Thunderball (1961), in James Bond Omnibus, vol. 2 (New York:
MJF Books, 1992)
YLT You Only Live Twice (1964), in James Bond Omnibus, vol. 2 (New York:
MJF Books, 1992)
This page intentionally left blank
E Q UIP P I N G JAM E S BO N D
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

James Bond surely needs no introduction. It is estimated that half the world’s
population has seen at least one James Bond film. Not since Sherlock Holmes
has ­t here been a fictional figure who has managed to ­free himself so completely
from his creator to enjoy his own privileged position in popu­lar culture. James
Bond was a hero of espionage fiction well before he became a film commodity,
but it is the 26 films (as of this writing) that have created the Bond we know ­today,
as well as the Bond brand. In his study of the Bond films James Chapman says
that they have become something of a ritual, and other commentators have ar-
gued that watching Bond films is comparable to a religion.1
Central to our enjoyment of the films are the gadgets, and it is significant
that the actor who has achieved the longest run in the series is the man who
equips Bond. Q has been called the Merlin to Bond’s Arthur, and Desmond
Llewelyn played him in 15 films from 1963 to 1999. The gadgets are so central to
the Bond character that they can be used, along with what the press calls “the
Bond girls,” as a shorthand for each film in the series. In the opening titles of
On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice (1969), which had the difficult job of introduc-
ing a new actor playing Bond, the gadgets are used to provide a history of the
previous Bond adventures: the watch-­garrote employed in From Rus­sia with
Love (1963), the underwater breathing device from Thunderball (1965), and the
knife ­belt worn by Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962). While Fleming’s nostalgia for
the disappearing past of secret intelligence survived in the character of James
Bond, the nostalgia of the films’ producers, Albert R. Broccoli and Herschel
“Harry” Saltzman, for the halcyon days of “Bondmania” was expressed in the gad-
gets. The most famous of them all, the Aston Martin DB5, was retired as Bond’s
transportation ­after Thunderball, but it returned at the end of the ­century in
two of Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films. When Eon Productions (who owns the film
 2   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

rights and made all except two of the Bond films) deci­ded to break with the past
in the form of a new Bond—­a more sensitive, modern man—­the com­pany wisely
kept a link to Bond tradition in the form of the vintage DB5, which delighted
viewers again in the 2006 remake of Casino Royale.
Ian Fleming insisted that his Bond stories ­were fantasies, yet he was one of
the first novelists to include technical details about the equipment of espionage,
which gave his stories some authenticity. Like the rest of his war­time peers, Fleming
called this special equipment “toys,” “gadgets,” or “gimmicks,” and he main-
tained that it was ­these rather than the sex and vio­lence of the plots that his
readers remembered. The gimmicks of the novels became the gadgets of the
films, and they have become as impor­tant as the w ­ omen and the martinis to the
Bond brand.
So a James Bond without his ­little technological helpers would be unthink-
able. In fact, such is the audiences’ fascination with the gadgets that numerous
books and articles have listed them and explained their use. T ­ here have also been
several exhibitions of ­t hese artifacts, and both the Imperial War Museum and
the Science Museum in London have used them to reflect on the development
of technology in the twentieth c­ entury. This book takes the long view of the tech-
nological development of modern spyware and finds its roots in the Second
Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth c­ entury. Frightening advances in
military technology pushed the British government into creating Bond’s secret
ser­v ice, and from then onward the focus of espionage was closely related to the
advance of military technology. James Bond was a product of World War II, and
his equipment reflects that technological era and the tension between pure science
and the ingenuity of amateur inventors.
Bond’s equipment was drawn from the quartermasters of the Special Opera-
tions Executive (SOE) and other war­time commando and espionage organ­
izations, as was his worldview and modus operandi. Yet between the publication
of the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1953 and the (second) film of the same
name in 2006, the world and its technology changed drastically. As a modern
and modernizing hero, James Bond has to keep up with the times, and the film
franchise is committed to incorporating the latest technology into his gadgets
and also into the armories of the villains he confronts. In this way the Bond
films have become a showcase for stylish, modern technologies, taking the place
of science fiction novels and World’s Fairs of the twentieth c­ entury in anticipat-
ing the machines of the f­ uture.
Bond’s global audience has often had difficulty negotiating between the real
and the fantasy in his world. A ­ fter the release of Goldfinger (1964) United Artists
 Introduction  3

received letters complaining that an En­g lish film crew should not have been
­a llowed into the inner sanctum of Fort Knox—­which was, in fact, a creation of
Eon’s set designers. Although we in the audience realize that the plots are
absurd and that the ending is predetermined, we tend to give the gadgets the
benefit of the doubt b ­ ecause we have come to recognize Bond as a purveyor of
advanced technology. The equipment of secret agents is an example of how
art—in the form of motion pictures—­has influenced life, and this book uncovers
the prehistory of the Bond franchise by following the evolution of the spy or
secret-­agent film. The silent-­picture fantasies of directors like Fritz Lang had a
real impact on con­temporary science and technology, and the equally fantastic
equipment of James Bond has also influenced t­ hose involved in the business of
espionage. The hidden knife blade in the evil Rosa Klebb’s shoe in From Rus­sia
with Love, a gadget that attracted the attention of many in the intelligence com-
munity, did not have a World War II pedigree, nor was it a confidence shared
with Ian Fleming by one of his friends in the British secret ser­v ice; instead, it
was the work of art director Syd Cain, who added a spike to the right shoe and
built in a spring mechanism to make it pop out. Eon Productions has proudly
claimed to have turned science fiction into science fact in the Bond franchise,
so it seems premature to dismiss Bond’s gadgets as fantasies when some of the
wildly futuristic technology displayed in previous films, such as the ubiquitous
smart phone, are now part of everyday life.
James Bond and his creator w ­ ere both technological enthusiasts who em-
braced the new and who found beauty in machines, and Eon Productions has
enthusiastically made the Bond films advertisements for photogenic new tech-
nology. At the same time, the villains and threats that Bond has to face have ar-
ticulated con­temporary fears about the downside of technological change. Born
at the beginning of the Cold War, 007 now fights cyberterrorists and media mo-
guls bent on world domination. The success of the Bond character is a result of
maintaining a tradition and its rituals while burnishing e­ very adventure with a
layer of topicality and modernity. James Bond has survived by keeping up with
the times, and each book and film is a product of its historical moment. Bond’s
wide appeal and the longevity of the brand make his equipment useful as a mir-
ror of broader historical themes, especially public perceptions of the promise and
threat of new machines. This book treats his gadgets as artifacts that, taken to-
gether, have acted as a barometer of hopes and fears concerning technology for
more than half a c­ entury.
Perhaps the key to Bond’s enduring appeal is that he maintains the ingenu-
ity and resilience of an individual who f­ aces a world brought to the brink of chaos
 4   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

by dangerous new technology. Bond w ­ ill continue to take on t­ hese threats single-­
handedly and save the world ­until the final reel ends the cunning plans of the
high-­tech villains and sends the audience home comforted by this example of a
lone hero triumphing over the machine.
 Victorian ministers . . . ​let War pass out of the
hands of experts and properly-­trained
persons . . . ​a nd reduced it to the disgusting
­matter of Men, Money and Machinery.
W. S. Churchill, A Roving Commission

001
The Technological Enthusiasts

Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming ­were perfect representatives of two gen-
erations of Englishmen—­the Victorians and the Edwardians—­who saw their
world transformed. Churchill (born in 1874) and Fleming (born in 1908) lived
through the Second Industrial Revolution, which brought a host of wonderful
new inventions that changed life in ways large and small. The First Industrial
Revolution (roughly 1760–1840) produced new power sources, new materials,
and new products. The second came with the fruits of applied science and
promised even greater social and economic transformations than the first. The
phi­los­o­pher Alfred North Whitehead argued that “the greatest invention of the
nineteenth ­century was the invention of invention,”1 and in­de­pen­dent inventors
like Thomas Edison and the research and development (R&D) laboratories of
corporations like General Electric and DuPont produced a stream of innova-
tions that persuaded the technological elite that they had the power to create a
new world of productivity and affluence. Powered by electricity, integrated by
mass communications, and colored by synthetic dyes, this technological revo-
lution marked a high point in ­human endeavor, “an epoch of invention and pro­
gress unique in the history of the world,” as one con­temporary put it. Thomas
Hughes called the ­century that began in 1870 “the era of technological enthusi-
asm,” in which machine makers and system builders produced “goods for the
good life,” and technology transformed the material world. ­People had dreamed
of utopias for centuries, but Howard Segal has described how new technology
became linked with pro­gress in the late nineteenth ­century. Technological en-
thusiasts believed that they had the cure for all of humanity’s ills. For t­ hose who
lived through it, the Second Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of a
new modern age. The thinker and humanist Lewis Mumford saw it as the pen-
ultimate phase in technological development—­the neotechnic era—in which
 6   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

the fruits of applied science had the potential to bring peace and prosperity.2
For historians of technology ­t here ­were new industries to study and new ma-
chines to admire. ­Reese Jenkins wrote about the emerging field of photography
and how George Eastman brought it to the masses with his Brownie camera.
This wonderful toy transformed our visual environment and made a permanent
rec­ord of countless memories. Jenkins concludes: “One of the steadfast values
of the last 200 years in Amer­i­ca is that technical change is good.”3
Churchill was born into a world with no cars or telephones. Flying through
the skies in heavier-­t han-­air machines or traveling underwater in submarines
­were dreams of science fiction. The Royal Navy, which was to play an impor­tant
part in both Churchill’s and Fleming’s c­ areers, was still sailing around the world
in wooden ships in 1901, when HMS Discovery took Captain Scott’s historic ex-
pedition to the Antarctic. By the time of Fleming’s birth, humankind had taken
to the skies, courtesy of the pioneering efforts of the Wright ­brothers and Von
Zeppelin. The internal combustion engine and electric motor had revolution-
ized the application of power and the w ­ hole idea of mobility. In Ian Fleming’s
world telephones, electric lighting, and cameras ­were commonplace—­essential
parts of modern life, along with phonographs, typewriters, and motion pictures.
Looking back on the “vanished age” of his youth, Churchill wrote: “The char-
acter of society, the foundation of politics, the methods of war . . . ​t he scale of
values, are all changed, and changed to an extent I would not have believed pos­
si­ble in so short a space.” 4
Although born thirty-­five years apart, Churchill and Fleming led lives that
­were similar in many ways. Fleming admired Churchill and liked to think that
both men had been considered black sheep at some stage in their c­ areers. Ian
Fleming might have been a child of the twentieth ­century, but he was still wed-
ded to his country’s nineteenth-­century past and Churchill’s Victorian value sys-
tem. As Umberto Eco has pointed out, Fleming’s “militaristic and nationalistic
ideology, his racist colonialism, and his Victorian isolationism are all heredi-
tary traits.”5 Born, like Churchill, into a good ­family (but perhaps not quite
as g­ rand), Ian Fleming was brought up in the same upper-­class environment
of privilege. Both men attended private schools and the Royal Military College at
Sandhurst, and both indulged in some adventurous journalism as preparation
for a life of writing. Churchill joined the Fourth Hussars and served as a young
cavalry subaltern on the Indian frontier in the last years of Victoria’s reign—­
surely the quin­tes­sen­tial imperial experience: the officers’ mess, the parades of
gorgeously attired ­horse­men, and the games of polo, which Churchill and his
comrades considered the “serious purpose of life.” 6
 The Technological Enthusiasts   7

Both Churchill and Fleming ­were technological enthusiasts—­gentlemen tin-

kerers who not only marveled at the complexity and beauty of new machines
but ­were convinced that they had the power to change history. Although trained
exclusively in the classics, they exhibited a practical, mechanical bent, using their
eyes and their hands to understand the technology that was changing their
­professional lives, as well as their daily routines. In Churchill’s early years a
scientist was more likely to be an aristocrat or a well-­established clergyman, an
amateur investigator of the natu­ral world, and the term scientist was not in gen-
eral use. In Victorian ­England technological enthusiasm was generally con-
fined to the classes who had the time to ponder the implications of the steady
stream of scientific information or could afford the gadgets of the Second In-
dustrial Revolution, but the introduction of the pneumatic tire changed all that.
The modern safety bicycle ushered in a new era of mobility for all classes
and enticed a generation of young working-­class men into a world of mechani-
cal tinkering: repairing existing machines and designing new ones; developing
the craft skills of turning, welding, and smoothing metal; and putting down their
ideas in blueprints and drawings. They turned bedrooms into laboratories, built
workshops in garden sheds, and founded small businesses in their homes. The
hero of Wells’s The War in the Air is Bert Smallways: “a vulgar ­little creature,
the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth ­century
produced by the millions in e­ very country of the world . . . ​t he sort of man who
had made E ­ ngland and Amer­i­ca what they ­were.” Bert works in a bicycle-­repair
shop, and his life changes when he acquires a motorcycle: “So Bert grew up, filled
with ideals of speed and enterprise, and became . . . ​a kind of bicycle engineer
of the lets-’ave-­a-­look-­at-it and enamel chipping variety.” 7 The Bert Small­
wayses of the world took the know-­how of repairing bicycles into motorized trans-
port, embracing the internal combustion engine to build motorbikes, boats, and
cars. Some of them, like the Farman and Wright ­Brothers, applied their mechan-
ical skills to powered flight, while ­others became advocates for the new me-
chanical age. Alfred Harmsworth was captivated by bicycling and leveraged his
enthusiasm to become editor of the Bicycling News. He built a publishing em-
pire of weekly magazines, popu­lar newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily
Mirror, as well as the venerable Times and Observer. As Baron Northcliffe he ex-
ercised considerable po­liti­cal influence and was one of the leading voices of
technological enthusiasm in the United Kingdom.
A bicycle awakened Frederick W. Winterbotham’s interest in technology, for
this was the apex of mechanical travel at the turn of the ­century, but the bicycle
was soon overtaken by more power­f ul machines, and Winterbotham graduated
 8   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

to a motorbike and then to a Studebaker automobile. Like many of his peers

he was also fascinated with wireless communication. By 1901 Guglielmo Marconi
was sending radio messages across the Atlantic, and boys like Winterbotham
­were building their own radio receivers and listening in to a new world in the
ether. In Canada William Stephenson built his own Morse transmitter and
tapped out messages to vessels on the ­Great Lakes. Stephenson was also drawn
to aviation, making kites and model airplanes. His f­ ather had died in the Boer
War serving with the Manitoba Transvaal Contingent, and during the next two
world wars William served the British Empire, too. He became a good friend of
Ian Fleming, who once said that while Bond was a fictional, romanticized spy,
Stephenson was the real t­ hing.
Many Edwardian technological enthusiasts ­were self-­taught, and ­others ben-
efited from the modernization of education, which created technical colleges
where young men could take classes in electrical engineering or industrial chem-
istry. Geoffrey de Havilland (born 1882) received his engineering training at the
Crystal Palace School, where he received a valuable patent for an improved
­motorcycle engine. He got a job at the Wolseley Com­pany—­one of the first auto-
mobile manufacturers. Frederick Handley-­Page (born 1885) used his education
at Crystal Palace to become chief designer at an electrical engineering firm,
but ­a fter joining the Royal Aeronautical Society, he turned his attention to
“aeroplanes.”
Intoxicated by speed on land, w ­ ater, and eventually in the air, t­ hese mechan-
ically inclined young men w ­ ere drawn to the won­ders of the internal combustion
engine. Like Toad of Toad Hall in Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows,
their moment of epiphany came when they encountered a motorcar. Winter­
botham remembered the impact of t­ hese machines in E ­ ngland at the turn of the
­century: “It gave us the greatest excitement, when we saw the cloud of dust in the
distance, to rush to the gates of our l­ ittle h
­ ouse and watch the motorcars go by.”
Geoffrey de Havilland found this “new and exciting” technology irresistible and
­after his first ­ride in a motorcar stated, “I knew that my ­future life lay in the
world of mechanical travel.”8 One of the pioneers of automobiling in the United
Kingdom was Mansfield Cumming. Born in 1857, Cumming was brought up in a
­family of engineers, for both his ­father and b ­ rother ­were military engineers. He
was an early member of the Automobile Club of ­Great Britain, and his passion
for automobiles led him into the sport of motor racing. In 1903 he drove his 50
hp Wolseley car in the Paris-­Madrid road race along with daredevil motorists
like John Moore-­Brabazon and Charles Rolls. The latter was one of the first in
the country to own a motorcar and the first to open a car dealership. His meeting
 The Technological Enthusiasts   9

with the engineer Henry Royce in 1904 started a partnership that would define
luxury automobiles in the twentieth c­ entury.
Winston Churchill was an early supporter of motoring, buying a Mors motor­
car (produced by the French automotive pioneers Louis and Emile Mors) in
1900. He joined the Royal Automobile Club and soon bought a much larger Mer-
cedes. As his income grew with his reputation as an author, he purchased sev-
eral more expensive and faster cars, including a red Napier “Landaulette” for
£580, a Rolls-­Royce Cabriolet for £2,250, and a Wolseley sports car. Ian Fleming
also sank his book advances and royalties into automobiles. He got his first taste
of motor racing when he took part in the Alpine motor ­trials in 1932 as a reporter
for the R­ euters news agency. T­ hese t­ rials ran on 1,500 miles of challenging roads
across Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France. When he returned to ­England,
he bought a modest Standard Tourer, which he eventually crashed at a train
crossing. He loved speed and recalled the thrill of reaching 100 mph in a three-­
liter Bugatti on a road near Henley. Fleming’s cars got grander and faster as his
fame as an author grew. ­After r­ unning a red Graham Page, he bought a 2.5 liter
black Riley when Casino Royale came out in 1953. ­After securing the deal to sell
the film rights to Casino Royale, he bought a Ford Thunderbird: “The engine, a
huge, adapted low revving Mercury V-8 of five liter capacity, never gives the im-
pression of stress or strain. . . . ​You can do a hundred [mph] without danger of
­going off the edge of this small island.” As the Bond films brought him more
money, he upgraded to a four-­door T-­Bird with a seven-­liter engine and then a
supercharged Studebaker Avanti—­“a bomb of a motor”—­designed by Raymond
Loewy, who also produced the Studillac (a Studebaker with a Cadillac engine),
whose speed and power James Bond praised in Diamonds Are Forever. Bond also
dabbled in the world of racing and owned some power­f ul cars, and Fleming
makes it clear that driving fast is a vital skill for 007: “­These are Secret Ser­v ice
thrillers in which the hero and other characters make frequent use of fast cars
and live in what might be described as ‘the fast car life.’ ”9
His friend William Stephenson said that Fleming “was always fascinated by
gadgets,” and as a young man he was convinced of the power­ful influence of tech-
nology on history.10 During his preparation to take the Foreign Ser­v ice exams
in the 1920s, Fleming read up on subjects not normally taught at En­glish schools:
social history, anthropology, and the history of science and technology. When
he had made a l­ ittle money through banking deals in the early 1930s, he enlarged
his book-­buying hobby into a plan to build a library of technical and intellec-
tual developments since 1800, “the milestones of h ­ uman pro­gress,” as he put it.
He instructed his book buyer Percy Muir to look for “books that have started
 10   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

something.”11 His collection started with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and
Niels Bohr’s Quantum Theory and then extended to books about motorcars, min-
ers’ lamps, zippers, and tuberculosis. Muir bought Fleming Madame Curie’s
doctoral thesis, about the properties of radium, and Sigmund Freud’s book on
the interpretation of dreams. Fleming poured money into his library and by 1939
could claim that the “Fleming Collection” was “one of the foremost collections
of scientific and po­l iti­c al thought in the world.”12 Collecting rare books was
a hobby, but he also recognized that information about science was useful in
his ­career goals in finance or journalism. He believed that technology made t­ hings
happen, a sentiment shared by t­ hose of his generation who saw innovation as
the driving force of social, economic, and po­liti­cal change. Fleming’s conversion
to technological determinism reflected the increasing usage of the term technol-
ogy, which made it, in Eric Schatzberg’s words, “a central keyword of late mo-
dernity,” which was based on its association with applied science and the forces
of modernity but encompassed both utopian expectations and dystopian fears.13
Schatzberg has described two distinct visions of technology: the instrumen-
tal view and the cultural view. The former sees it in terms of the autonomous
power of the machine to affect history; the latter stresses the role of h ­ uman val-
ues and agency in directing change. In Technics and Civilization Lewis Mum-
ford rejected technology as the instrument for “material conquest, wealth, and
power” and hoped that “the machine . . . ​­will fall back into its proper place: our
servant, not our tyrant.”14 Fleming’s admiration for fast cars, guns, and gadgets
put him firmly in the former definition of technology, and his fiction made ­these
boys’ toys into fetish objects that had the power to shape the narrative. Flem-
ing’s belief in the efficacy of the machine and his understanding of technology
as the driving force of both modern history and his plots did not ignore the role
of ­human agency, but instead of enlightened government regulation, responsi-
ble scientists, and socially conscious engineers, he saw redemption in the form
of one well-­equipped secret agent.
In 1908, the year of Fleming’s birth, the first flight was undertaken in the
United Kingdom by the American showman Samuel F. Cody in a craft modeled
on the Wright Flyer but powered by a 50 hp Antoinette engine. At this time air-
planes w­ ere a marvelous curiosity. Winterbotham recalled: “It must, I know, be
surely difficult in ­t hese days of universal air travel to realize what flying meant
to a young man of nineteen some seventy years ago. It was [as] if a new dimen-
sion had suddenly been added to life.”15 Over in France Wilbur Wright’s dem-
onstrations of the Flyer at Le Mans created a sensation. He wrote home to his
­brother: “the newspapers continue exceedingly friendly and the public interest
 The Technological Enthusiasts   11

and enthusiasm continues to increase.”16 Subsequent flights over Eu­rope drew

crowds of thousands, including Lord Northcliffe and King Edward VII, and in-
spired a generation of technological enthusiasts to take to the air. One of them
was Geoffrey de Havilland, who merely read about Wright’s demonstration but
“though I might never have seen an aircraft in the air, this was the machine to
which I was prepared to give my life.”17 He designed his own airplane and sold
it to the government balloon factory at Farnborough, which ­later became the
Royal Aircraft Factory. Handley Page lost his job at Johnson and Philips electri-
cal engineers b ­ ecause he spent too much time in aviation experiments, and he
left to form his own concern to build airplanes. John Moore-­Brabazon (born
1884) bought a French Voisin-­Farman airplane and took it up in 1909. For this
feat he was awarded the first pi­lot’s license issued in Britain, and he was soon
followed by other gentleman aviators such as Thomas Sopwith. An ardent motor
racer and motorcyclist, Sopwith purchased a craft built by Howard Wright,
taught himself to fly, and achieved a record-­breaking flight of 107 miles in 1910.
He then opened a flying school at Brooklands and began to build his own
­aircraft. Moore-­Brabazon joined with other enthusiasts like Mansfield Cum-
ming and Charles Rolls, who w ­ ere both founding members of the Royal Aero
Club. Cumming gained his pi­lot’s license in 1913 in a Farman biplane at the ripe
old age of 54, and Rolls bought a Wright Flyer made ­under license in ­England
and flew the first east-­bound crossing of the En­glish Channel with it.
Flying appealed to Churchill, the technological enthusiast: “From the outset
I was deeply interested in the air and vividly conscious of the changes it must
bring to e­ very form of war.” As early as 1909 he was pressing government offi-
cials to approach the Wright b ­ rothers to jointly develop the military application
of their invention, and he was a vocal proponent of creating a “Corps of Airmen
to make aviation for war purposes.” He took his first flight around 1911 and was
captivated by “excitement and curiosity. . . . ​I continued for sheer joy and plea­
sure. I went up in e­ very kind of machine and at e­ very air station u­ nder the Ad-
miralty.”18 ­After being appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill
embarked on a program of modernization, which included the significant shift
from coal to oil-­fired ships and the establishment of the Royal Naval Air Ser­
vice (RNAS). Churchill was a frequent visitor to the RNAS depot at Eastchurch
and flew in a variety of seaplanes and airships. He also took advantage of the
training programs he set up to learn how to fly u ­ nder the instruction of Captain
Ivon Courtney, RNAS, and Captain Alan Scott at the Central Flying School.
Churchill’s flying lessons w ­ ere curtailed b­ ecause of the obvious dangers of fly-
ing (Captain Scott reported that Churchill was slightly injured in an accident)
 12   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

and the entreaties of his wife and colleagues. He never obtained his certificate,
yet his interest in aviation continued.
By 1908 both automobiling and aviation ­were well established, and several
entrepreneurs had founded companies to make t­ hese won­ders available to the
adventurous. In 1908 Henry Ford introduced his Model T, and Messrs. Rolls and
Royce built their factory in Derby to manufacture their “40/50 hp” model, which,
as the Silver Ghost, was called “the best car in the world” by Autocar magazine.
In the same year, Orville Wright completed flights of more than an hour and
took the first passenger aloft. In 1908 it was pos­si­ble to purchase an aircraft from
the Wright ­brothers, from the Voisin aviation com­pany, and from Maurice and
Henry Farman. The Wright b ­ rothers had entered into a contract with the US
Board of Ordnance and Fortification to supply “an operative machine capable
of carry­i ng two persons” and ­were marketing their improved Flyers all over
­Eu­rope. At a demonstration at Le Mans, France, the Flyer caught the attention
of a man who called himself Sidney Reilly. Reilly made an agreement with the
Wright ­brothers to be their sales agent in the Rus­sian Empire. While Wilbur
Wright traveled across Eu­rope publicizing heavier-­t han-­air craft, Count Ferdi-
nand von Zeppelin was touring the skies in a rigid airship filled with gas bags.
In 1908 his fourth experimental craft managed to stay aloft for 24 hours, and he
claimed that airships would be the f­ uture of commercial and military aviation.
Newspaper tycoons and technical socie­ties w ­ ere offering prizes for record-­
breaking flights. Scientific American presented a silver statuette for the first
American flight of one kilo­meter, and in 1908 Lord Northcliffe offered a prize of
ten thousand pounds to the first man to fly across the En­g lish Channel. Louis
Bleriot flew across the Channel the next year, winning the prize and earning his
place in history.
Not every­one in G
­ reat Britain welcomed Bleriot’s flight with enthusiasm. The
Daily Express announced that “Britain was no longer an island,” and other news-
papers castigated British science and industry for failing to keep up with the
French. H. G. Wells wrote a letter to the newspapers in which he blamed the
­British education system for lagging ­behind in this significant new technology,
which might seriously threaten the security of the kingdom. While the accom-
plishments of two industrial revolutions convinced many educated men of the
unlimited potential of ­human ingenuity, ­t here ­were ­t hose, like H. G. Wells, who
saw the dangers of letting the genie out of the b ­ ottle. He called the Second In-
dustrial Revolution “The Scientific Age” b ­ ecause in his view science “altered the
scale of h
­ uman affairs” and eroded the old national bound­aries and social con-
ventions, uprooting men from the soil and exposing them to a “torrent they never
 The Technological Enthusiasts   13

clearly understood.” This was the same “technological torrent” that historian
Perry Miller evoked as he described how Americans flung themselves into it,
“shouting with glee . . . ​as they went headlong down the chute that ­here was their
destiny.” John Ellis has emphasized “the absolute faith that men in the nineteenth
­century had in the beneficial effects of scientific, technological and industrial
pro­gress,” when even the inventors of machine guns claimed that ­t hese deadly
weapons “are intended to strike terror into the hearts of e­ very e­ nemy . . . ​which
­will create an enthusiasm and a sense of security in e­ very nation on this globe.”19
The technological enthusiasts accepted that their wonderful machines ­were
also dangerous. One of the adventurous young men Cumming employed re-
ported that he had “given me some hairy rides,” and in 1914 Cumming collided
with a wall at about 70 mph (an amazingly high speed for the time), killing his
son and costing him part of his leg. Aviation was even more dangerous. The first
casualty was Captain Thomas Selfridge, a passenger in a Wright Flyer that
crashed at Fort Myer in 1908. Charles Rolls died in an air crash in 1910, another
first for an En­glishman, and o ­ thers walked away from bad accidents. Geoffrey
de Havilland survived one that destroyed his biplane. By 1910, 26 daring young
men had died in air crashes. As the leading aviation enthusiast in the United
Kingdom, Moore-­Brabazon accepted the dangers of flying: “I think we w ­ ere all
a ­little mad, we w
­ ere all suffering from dreams of such a wonderful f­ uture.”20
The concerns about the dangers of new machines ­were first focused on mil-
itary technology. The first aircraft to go aloft in the United Kingdom was flown
by an American showman but had been co-­designed by a Royal Engineer and
designated “British Army Aeroplane Number 1.” The disruptive potential of new
military technology had become evident in the late nineteenth ­century when
mass armies equipped with breech-­loading r­ ifles, rapid-­fire artillery, and ma-
chine guns inflicted unpre­ce­dented destruction on the ­enemy. The new artillery
pieces could fire much farther, so the need arose for long-­distance observation,
which was met by balloons connected to the ground by electric telegraphs. In
the Franco Prus­sian War of 1870–71 the German army used its train network
and advanced weaponry to route the French with a speed that surprised other
global powers. The standard design of the handgun—­a revolver with a cylinder
holding five or six bullets pop­u­lar­ized by Samuel Colt—­was replaced by an
­automatic pistol that employed the recoil or gas blowback to eject the spent
cartridge and insert a new one—­t he same idea ­behind the machine guns in­ven­
ted by John Browning and Hiram Maxim. Browning’s design for an auto-
matic pistol was taken up by Fabrique Nationale of Belgium, and it was one
of their guns, an FN 1900, that was used by Gavrilo Princip to assassinate
 14   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June of 1914—­t he first shot of World

War I.
For technological determinists t­here was no better justification for their
­beliefs than the battlefield. Churchill fought in the B ­ attle of Omdurman in the
Sudan in 1898, and his heroic account of the ­battle was widely read. Yet his de-
scription, centered on the charge of the 21st Lancers in which he took part,
omitted the role played by six Maxim machine guns. Another observer noted
the effect they had on the advancing Dervish forces: “It was not a ­battle but an
execution.” With fewer than 50 casualties, the British claimed to have killed about
10,000 tribesmen. In his autobiography Maxim proudly reproduced this conclu-
sion by Sir Edward Arnold: “In most of our wars it has been the dash, the skill,
and the bravery of our officers and men that have won the day, but in this case
the b­ attle was won by a quiet scientific gentleman living in Kent.”21
In 1906 the Royal Navy introduced a new battleship called the Dreadnought,
an all heavy-­gun ship powered by steam turbines and equipped with the largest
guns yet put to sea. It was aptly named, for it was so much faster and more power­
ful than any other ship afloat that it made all existing battleships obsolete over-
night. It started an arms race of the industrial powers to build bigger, faster, and
more power­ful ships—­t he Super Dreadnoughts—­“each larger and heavier and
more deadly than its pre­de­ces­sors. Each in its turn was hailed as the last birth
of time,” wrote H. G. Wells, who decried the outrageous cost of t­ hese massive
ships. The companies building ­t hese vessels connived with a pliant press and
politicians to make the Dreadnought a symbol of a nation’s technological prow-
ess and military power. Images of ­t hese vessels ­were put on postcards, cigarette
packages, crockery, toys, and prints to be framed and exhibited in living rooms.
For technological enthusiasts the ­g reat ships ­were “tremendous engines of
war” (Churchill); for its detractors they ­were “strange monsters” (Wells). Fred
­Winterbotham was mesmerized by a review of the fleet: led by “the g­ reat battle-
ships like Dreadnought with their vast 16 inch guns . . . ​the spectacle on that hot
summer’s day was one of the most memorable of my young life.”22
Yet no won­der weapon was safe from the challenge of new machines, which
threatened an even greater disruption of the balance of military power. The first
submarines had been introduced during the American Civil War, but pioneer
boats like the CSS Hunley ­were more dangerous to their crews than to surface
ships. John Phillip Holland was a schoolteacher and amateur inventor who ap-
proached the US Navy in 1875 with plans for a submersible fighting ship. Rejected
by the navy, Holland took his plans to Irish republicans as a counterbalance to
the battleships of the Royal Navy. The Fenians funded Holland’s research and
 The Technological Enthusiasts   15

his first submarine, the 14-­foot-­long Fenian Ram, was launched in 1881. This was
the first modern submarine. The Holland VI was fi­nally accepted by the US Navy
in 1900. It had a dual propulsion system (diesel engines for surface cruising and
electric motors for underwater) and could fire a single torpedo. Holland’s im-
proved boats ­were made u ­ nder license and purchased by many naval powers.
Spectacular innovation in military technology inevitably led to arms races.
­A fter completing the first generation of Dreadnoughts, the German navy’s
­construction department recommended a new series of bigger and more power­
ful ships in 1908. Acquiring the patents for the Parson’s turbine meant that the
Kaiser, Konig, and Bayern classes would match any British warship. Germany’s
navy also took an early interest in von Zeppelin’s rigid airships, and by 1914 it
had a fleet that the Royal Navy correctly considered an offensive weapon aimed
at the United Kingdom. A few years earlier H. G. Wells’s readers had been con-
fronted with a story that anticipated the use of airpower to destroy g­ reat cities
and a world war initiated by an aggressive and imperialistic Germany. The War
in the Air (1908) described an attack by a fleet of German airships on the United
States that first destroys the Americans’ fleet of Dreadnoughts at sea (proving
that sea power is no match for airpower) and then proceeds to bombard New
York. In his description of aerial attacks and a mechanized war that destroys civi-
lization, Wells started on a theme that he continued in The Shape of T ­ hings to
Come and anticipated much of the destruction of World War II.
Churchill and Fleming also recognized that a ­f uture of technological ad-
vancement could overturn existing values and hierarchies. As a student under-
going the training course at the Royal Military College, Cadet Fleming resigned
in 1927 and l­ater said: “I ­didn’t become a soldier ­after passing out from Sand-
hurst b­ ecause they suddenly deci­ded to mechanize the Army and a lot of my
friends and I deci­ded that we did not want to be glorified garage hands—no more
polo, no more pig sticking and all that jazz.” This sentiment was echoed by
Churchill. Looking back from the 1930s, he concluded: “It is a shame that war
should have flung all this aside in its greedy, base, opportunist march and should
turn instead to chemists in spectacles, and chauffeurs pulling the levers of aero-
planes or machine guns. . . . ​War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has
now become cruel and squalid. In fact it has been completely spoiled. It is all
the fault of Democracy and Science.”23
 The feeling of danger from fresh discoveries
affected the patriotic imagination of ­every
­people in the world.
H. G. Wells, The War in the Air

002
The Secret Intelligence Ser­vice

The Secret Intelligence Ser­v ice (SIS) that Ian Fleming made famous was created
the year ­after his birth. In August 1909 naval commander Mansfield Cumming
was asked to visit Rear Admiral A. W. Bethel, the Director of Naval Intelligence
(DNI), a post that had been created in 1887 along with the Director of Military
Intelligence. Although both of the armed ser­vices had intelligence departments,
the navy had by necessity a more global outlook and was facing the disconcert-
ing pace of German naval rearmament. Cumming understood that the “duties
of SS Bureau” w ­ ere to “organise an efficient system by which German pro­gress
in Armaments and Naval construction can be watched.”1 One of the earliest op-
eratives in this new department, Hector Bywater, identified by his designation
H2O, “sent a lot of good stuff” on German shipbuilding and submarines. His
report on big naval guns brought him to London to be interviewed by the ad-
miral in charge of naval gunnery. Aeronautical ­matters ­were another priority,
and H2O frequently reported on the construction of airships in Germany. He
also recalled that the fleet paymaster Charles Rotter “asked me to get him infor-
mation about secret building of Submarines.”2 H2O’s information often failed
to convince a naval staff that harbored doubts about the usefulness of such weap-
ons in the first place and was patriotically unwilling to concede that the Ger-
mans had achieved technological leadership in the submarines, torpedoes, and
dirigibles that w­ ere ­going to transform war at sea.
The technological advances of the Second Industrial Revolution transformed
the objectives of the “­Great Game” of international intrigue described by authors
like Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan. Intelligence gathering had not changed
much during the nineteenth c­ entury, when spies seduced foreign diplomats or
set out in disguise to sketch e­ nemy forts or investigate dockyards. Robert Baden-­
Powell published his exploits as a spy, which read like adventure stories for
 The Secret Intelligence Ser­v ice   17

boys: hoodwinking a Turkish officer to let him examine a fort and then “I jotted
down on my shirt cuff . . . ​t he information required by my superiors at home,”
camouflaging plans of e­ nemy installations as drawings of butterflies, and sec-
tions on “Secret Signals and Warnings” and “How to Enter a Fort.”3 But the new
weapons systems generated by the arms races focused espionage onto military
technology. In Sherlock Holmes’s day the prize was often diplomatic documents,
such as the Naval Treaty, “a document of im­mense value,” as Watson put it in
an adventure that William Baring-­Gould dates to 1889. The Adventure of the
­Second Stain (1886) also dealt with an incriminating document, this one indis-
creetly written by a foreign potentate. Yet the papers that the French army officer
Alfred Dreyfus was accused of stealing and selling to the Germans in 1894 ­were
not about the French army’s order of b ­ attle, nor their plans to invade Germany,
but the development of a new quick-­firing artillery piece. The attention of intelli-
gence organ­izations was being drawn to the laboratories and drawing offices of
the g­ reat armaments manufacturers like Krupp in Germany, Schneider-­Creusot
in France, and Vickers-­Armstrong in the United Kingdom. Sidney Reilly’s well-­
publicized, and often exaggerated, exploits as a “master spy” include his daring
theft of secret plans from the laboratories of ­these concerns. By 1895 Holmes and
Watson w ­ ere involved in The Adventure of the Bruce-­Partington Plans, which
­were the blueprints of a new submarine and the most “jealously guarded of all
government secrets. . . . ​Naval warfare becomes impossible within the radius of a
Bruce-­Partington operation.”4
The arms race with Germany created a new literary form: the paranoid spy
novel that married the obligatory tales of derring-do with the current anxiety
about German expansionism and the secret weapons they might have. This type
of story first appeared in the aftermath of the Franco-­Prussian War, which had
provided evidence not only of Germany’s advanced weaponry but also of its
highly efficient espionage ser­v ice. Upright Britons like Baden-­Powell ­imagined
thousands of German spies at work, and its recent victory was bolstered by “over
20,000 paid informers stationed in France and controlled by one man.”5 In 1871
George Tomkyns Chesney’s The B ­ attle of Dorking described a surprise assault
on ­England by German-­speaking invaders. One reviewer wrote that “it describes
exactly how we feel,” and the book was such a popu­lar success that hundreds of
similar stories followed.6 The book that has the best claim to be the first mod-
ern spy novel also articulated the threat of a German invasion of the United
Kingdom. The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers, was published in 1903.
It describes how Carruthers of the Foreign Office takes a boat trip along the Ems
and Weser estuaries on the German coast and finds evidence of a planned
 18   EQUI PPI NG JAM ES B O N D

German invasion of eastern ­England. It was an entirely modern thriller with

convincing technical detail about sailing and railways, and it impressed many
who read it, including John Buchan, who thought it the best adventure story
of its time. The leading exponent of the paranoid spy novel was William Le
Queux, who had the support of Northcliffe and his newspapers. A series of Le
Queux’s stories that ran in the Daily Mail in 1906 ­were turned into The Invasion
of 1910, which described a successful invasion of ­England. It quickly sold a mil-
lion copies. In 1909 Le Queux published Spies of the Kaiser, which depicted them
in large numbers all over the United Kingdom as they gathered information
about the movements of the ­Grand Fleet and used wireless messages to send it
back to Germany. The intelligence officer and civil servant John Buchan was
serving in the War Propaganda Bureau when he wrote The 39 Steps in 1915. This
is the extraordinary story of an ordinary civilian called Richard Hannay, who
stumbles upon a ring of German spies and their plot to take vital information
about the British ­Grand fleet out of the country. ­After a thrilling chase across
the Scottish Highlands, Hannay thwarts them and saves the fleet.
In the years immediately before the G ­ reat War the British press was full of
alarmist stories about threats of invasion and the presence of hundreds of Ger-
man spies in E ­ ngland. The Daily Mail stoked the fires of anti-­German sentiment,
and the Weekly News even ran competitions to spot spies. The threat of German
spies was taken seriously by the government. In 1911 Home Secretary Winston
Churchill was surprised to learn that two navy arsenals ­were guarded by only a
few constables and asked what would happen if “twenty determined Germans
in two or three motor cars arrived well armed upon the scene one night.” While
serving as home secretary, Churchill was a vocal supporter of enlarging the Brit-
ish intelligence operation and instructed that the mail of suspected German
spies was to be opened. As First Lord of the Admiralty in 1914, Churchill was
part of a group of officers motoring in northern Scotland to reach the g­ reat
­naval base at Scapa Flow and the Dreadnoughts of the G ­ rand Fleet moored
­t here: “the w
­ hole of the War ultimately hinged upon this s­ ilent, sedulously
guarded, and rarely vis­i­ble pivot . . . ​on which the command of the seas” de-
pended. In an account that could easily have been written by Buchan, Churchill
noticed a large searchlight on a nearby ­castle and i­ magined a flotilla of German
submarines sitting offshore, waiting to ambush the fleet, and a Zeppelin loiter-
ing close to the shore that would pick up the signal from the searchlight and
relay the information by wireless to the submarines. His suspicions might have
been inspired by spy novels but w ­ ere informed by his insider knowledge of the
capabilities of new military technology: the airship and submarine facilitated a
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
seen him deliberately reading through his love-letter. As it was, he
looked into the fair, open face and knew him for a humbug; though
he could not imagine why he should have read it, nor how it could
advantage him to befriend a miserable, sordid, reprobate, and
degraded outcast such as Lucian de Saumarez.
Dr. Maude came hard on the heels of the returning Simpson; he
did not resort to Bob Sawyer’s tactics to increase the reputation of
his practice. Farquhar met him in the hall and brought him in, and the
patient overheard an edifying fragment of conversation.
“Well, I couldn’t very well leave him out in the road, poor chap, so I
had to bring him along.”
“And he will probably recoup himself from your plate-chest.”
“What a cynic you are! I never thought of such a thing,” said
Farquhar, laughing.
“Your innocence must stand in your way sometimes, I should
think.”
“I never knew it do so. I believe, myself, that trust begets
trustworthiness.”
“Ah, you’re a philanthropist,” said Maude, walking into the room.
The patient lay quiet, apparently unconscious. “I expected that it was
this fellow you’d got hold of,” Maude said, without surprise. “He came
to me an hour ago. I told him to go to Alresworth infirmary; I suppose
he had an attack while waiting for the ’bus.”
“Well, I think you might have let him wait in the surgery.”
“He’s probably a thief. I don’t profess to be a philanthropist,
myself.”
“Philanthropist, indeed!” said Farquhar. “It’s not philanthropy I’m
feeling for you, doctor.”
“I dare say,” Maude responded, proceeding with his analysis of
Lucian’s bones.
“You persist in crediting me with virtues I don’t possess.”
 “Modesty’s your great fault; every one knows that.”
“Well, yours isn’t over-amiability, anyhow,” returned Farquhar,
again laughing.
Satirical compliments are more difficult to meet than most forms of
attack, but Farquhar’s unconsciousness was a perfect piece of
acting. Lucian wondered whether Maude knew the motive of his
philanthropy. As a fact, Maude knew nothing and suspected merely
because Farquhar was a virtuous person; he would have believed
that the Apostle Peter got himself martyred for a consideration, and
canonised by a piece of celestial jobbery. Being put to rebuke, he
confined his conversation to the subject of Lucian’s illness, and in a
short time the prodigal was installed in the best room and fed with
the fatted calf under the form of tinned essence of beef.
 III

THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN

For several days Lucian was kept dumb by the tactics of his host,
who walked punctually out of the room as soon as the invalid opened
his lips. In half an hour he would return to the chafing guest; and
then, if Lucian remained silent, he heard the paper read aloud, but if
he dared to speak he was once more left to himself. As Lucian was
eminently gregarious and hated his own society, the discipline
achieved its object. He was treated like a royal guest, and repaid his
host by vivisecting his character. The ground of his suspicions
seemed trivial, but was substantial. Feeling the letter in its old place,
Lucian sometimes wondered if he had dreamed that scene. But, no,
he knew it was real; for the reason that he had seen on Farquhar’s
face as he read an expression which he could never have imagined.
What he suspected was not very clear; but Lucian had an inquisitive
disposition, and his interests at this time were limited in number.
Hence his exaggerated curiosity.
The church at Monkswell was heated by pipes which on mild days
brought the temperature up to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and in
cold weather left the air in such a condition that to uncover his bald
head was a severe trial of the parson’s faith. The weather had
changed, and Farquhar, coming in after service on Sunday
afternoon, went straight to the fire to warm his hands. He was an
exemplary church-goer.
“Cold?” inquired Lucian, who was now allowed to talk a little.
“Bitterly. The snow-wind’s blowing; we shall be white to-morrow, if I
don’t err.”
“Gale at seventy miles an hour, temperature twenty degrees below
zero; yes, I’ve tried that out in Athabasca, and it didn’t suit me,” said
Lucian, whose rebellious body appreciated luxury though his hardy
spirit despised it.
“My faith, no! but I’m not sure that twenty degrees below isn’t
better than a hundred and twenty above.”
“That’s a nice preparation for the bad time coming,” said the
incorrigible Lucian. “Talking of which, what was that devilry you used
when you carried in my fainting form?”
“Devilry, indeed! It was massage.”
“Not the ordinary, common or garden English massage, sonny;
I’ve tried that.”
“Massage is massage all the world over, I should have said.
However, I learned mine in Africa.”
“And who was your moonshee?”
“An old Arab sheikh who wore immaculate robes, and carried a
dagger with a handle of silver filigree and a very sharp point, with
which he prodded his slaves when they failed in their duties. Are you
satisfied now?”
“No, not in the least; but I didn’t expect to be. Who’s old Fane?”
“My dear fellow,” said Farquhar, mildly, “your mind reminds me of a
flea. Mr. Fane is a farmer hereabouts, a kind of local squire.”
“Is he well off?”
“Tolerably, I believe. Why do you ask?”
“Old curmudgeon!” said Lucian. “Stingy old miserly murderer!”
“One at a time, I beg,” said Farquhar.
“Well, he may be an angel incognito, but his war-paint’s unco guid,
that’s all.”
“How has he roused your righteous wrath?”
Lucian related Mrs. Searle’s story, waxing eloquent over her
wrongs, and illustrating his points with rapid foreign gestures, as his
manner was. Farquhar compressed his lips, which already joined in
a sufficiently firm line. “I know those houses,” he said; “they are unfit
for habitation. I tried to get them condemned a year ago. Want a
copper, do they? They’ll never get it from Fane.”
“I wish he’d tried what starvation’s like, that’s all.”
“Have you?”
“Have I? I was a thousandaire till I was four-and-twenty,” said
Lucian, clasping his lean, brown hands behind his head—“but since
then, devil a penny have I had to spend! My head is bloody but
unbowed beneath the bludgeonings of Fate—W. E. Henley. I’m
proud to say I could take the shine out of Orestes.”
Farquhar sat down by the fire and pulled the tea-table towards
him. He was very useful at an afternoon party: could always
remember the precise formula for every person’s several cup. “How
did you lose your money?” he inquired, flavoring his own tea with
lemon, in the Russian style.
“Sixteen thousand in one night playing écarté, sonny. No, don’t
preach; I never gamble now I’ve got no money. Besides, on that
memorable occasion my circumstances were exceptional.”
“Exceptionally bad, I should think. What did you do?”
“What did I do? Commenced author, and I flatter myself I should
have made a decided hit, only I was overtaken by what another
distinguished author calls Bluidy Jack. The medico swore it was the
writing brought it on. I also swore, in many tongues, and had a
second go; I held on gallantly for three months, and then went to a
hospital, and a nurse fell in love with me. ‘Those lips so sweet, so
honey-sweet—’ We swore fidelity. I shared with her my fortune—we
broke a sixpence. She had three hundred a year and a large soul.
Inconstant creature! On getting my ticket-of-leave from the hospital I
introduced her to my chief pal; and would you believe it? the base
villain borrowed my first fiver to elope with her with.”
“Good Heavens, de Saumarez!” said Farquhar, laughing against
his will, “you don’t mean to tell me that all this is true?”
 “True? True? Every blessed word of it. I then tried to ’list, but
couldn’t pass the medical. So I got another pal and started as a
tomato-johnny in Guernsey. We’re Guernsey people, you know,” he
added, his voice taking a different intonation. “I’ve a certain affection
for it, too; there I’ll hope to lay these carious old bones of mine when
I’ve done with them. Mighty poor crops they’ll make, too. Well, I
thought Guernsey, being my own, my native land, might be a sort of
all-inclusive mascot for me. But, Lord bless you, sonny, it rained
thunderbolts! Give you my word, no sooner were our glass-houses
up than there arrived a record shower of aerolites; sticky, shiny, black
things they were, for all the world like liquorice. Two-thirds of the
panes went. As I didn’t want to wreck the bosom friend’s boat, we
dissolved partnership, and Jonah went off on his own.”
Farquhar could himself corroborate this story; he remembered the
meteoric shower, which had attracted some attention.
“The stars in their courses came out of them to fight against me,
you see. Well, I went back to town and held horses. I fared
sumptuously every day at coffee-stalls, or at Lockhart’s when I was
in funds. I draw a veil over this period. I was submerged. Then, in
hospital, I met a very decent fellow who got me a berth in Miss Inez
Montroni’s travelling company, where I lived gaily on a pound a week
till that memorable Sawbath which I broke by knocking up. I was
discovered by a kind angel: adsum. Are you insured against fire?”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of ill-luck!” said Farquhar.
“Aren’t you, now? I detect a kind of arrogance, a sort of healthy
scepticism in your tone, my friend. I wonder what you are afraid of?
Not much, I guess.”
“Was your ill-health hereditary?” asked Farquhar, who as a
temperance advocate studied the question of transmission.
“Don’t know. My parents died ere I was born, and never saw their
son, you see. I inherited my bad luck, anyway.

‘Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!’”
 “It hasn’t depressed your spirits.”
“Oh, I don’t believe in letting trouble beat you.”
“You talk as though trouble were a living personality.”
“So it is; a force inimical, to be conquered, held down, and
trampled into the earth.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to conquer trouble. It has its way,
and that’s all.”
“It’s not all. Trouble will make a man despair, or drink, or gamble,
or go mad, or maybe even shoot himself. Well, I’d defy it to make me
deflect a hair’s-breadth from myself, come all the shafts of fate. As
long as I’ve lips I’ll grin.”
“That’s how you take things?” said Farquhar. “Well, it’s not my
way.” His face lighted up with a heady defiance, his lips shut in a
straight line, his eyes sparkled with quite unregenerate fire.
“What is your way, then?”
Farquhar’s expression went instantly out, and he lowered his
eyelids. “Well, you know, things are different for you and me,” he
said, diffidently. “I’m lucky in having a religious faith to fall back on.”
“Oh, I do like you!” said Lucian, after a few seconds, smitten with
an admiration which was not wholly admirable. He solemnly
stretched out his hand. “Sonny, you’re a great man,” he declared. “I
wish I had your cheek. Shake!”
Farquhar smiled politely, deprecated the compliment, and evaded
the point at issue; and shortly afterwards conveyed himself out of the
room on the plea that the invalid had done enough talking. It was
fortunate for him that the language of the eye cannot be put in as
evidence, for Lucian knew that he had detected, in Farquhar’s too
candid orbs, a tacit acknowledgment of all the deceit wherewith he
was desirous of charging him.
Next morning in country and city men awoke to a white, silent
world under a dome of blue, immaculate sky. There was no wind;
and the breath of horse and rider hung still in the air after Noel
Farquhar as he rode up to Burnt House. A huge sweep of bare,
white country lay outspread, sparkling in the sun; the hedges were
so thickly thatched with snow that they did not break the even
whiteness of the prospect. The miserable little group of black,
wooden cottages, Farquhar’s goal, was discernible a great way off;
they were so lonely that when Farquhar rode back an hour later only
his own tracks, black where the crushed snow had melted,
confronted him upon the road.
The day passed, and several beside, and a week later the soiled
rags of the snow still lingered under hedges and by tussocks in the
fields when Farquhar took another morning ride, this time in the
direction of Fanes. The house lay low; its E-shaped façade, built of
bright-red brick and ornamented with facings of freestone, and with
diagonal bands of dark brown crossing one another, looked across
shaven lawns and wide gravel paths to a stream formally laid out
with cascades and little islands, in summer bright with roses. Some
noble trees sprang from the lawn; in particular, a most beautiful silver
birch, whose slight, tapering branches sustained a colony of ragged
black blots, which were the nests of the rooks of Fanes. The birds
took toll from all the orchards around, and were almost as well hated
as their owners.
Mr. Fane had a thin, tall figure, with stooping shoulders and
forward-thrusting head. A pair of keen, cold eyes looked suspiciously
forth from under penthouse brows; self-sufficiency had compressed
his lips, selfish study had hollowed his cheeks, and his thin, even
voice, precise in enunciation even to pedantry, was the true index of
a steadfastly unamiable character. The Fanes enjoyed great
unpopularity; father, son, and daughter, they were all shunned like
lepers. Old Fane had married abroad; no one heard his wife’s
maiden name, and when he came back as a widower nobody cared
to ask. The two children grew up as they would. The son, Bernard,
was notoriously a poacher; the daughter was a beauty, a wild rider,
untutored and untamed, and shared, so it was said, her brother’s
heinous crimes in the preserves. It was this business which shut off
the young Fanes from the society of their peers. Once in past years
they had made their appearance at the first meet of the season, but
they never went again; and thenceforward avoided society more
scrupulously than society avoided them.
All this happened before Noel Farquhar came to The Lilacs. He
had more than once tried to make friends with young Fane, and had
been snubbed for his pains; and thus to this hour matters stood.
Nobody knew much about them, but they possessed a fearsome
reputation, which caused nervous ladies to skip nimbly over fences
when they saw Bernard Fane approaching on his big black horse.
Eumenes Fane received in his library, a long, low room walled with
books. One case held tier on tier of novels in their native French,
both old and new; another was devoted to theology, and put a row of
Blair’s most unchristian sermons across the middle shelf as a gilded
breastplate against the assaults of modern heresies. Mr. Fane was a
ferocious Calvinist; he felt it his duty to go in for hell, and wished to
exact consent in the same beliefs from his children, his servants, and
in ever-widening circles from the ends of the earth. Over the mantel
hung an interesting old design in black and white, which represented
the Last Day: a small queue of saints in stained-glass attitudes
ascending the celestial mountains under the convoy of woolly
angels, a large corps of sinners being haled out of their tombs by
demons armed with three-pronged spears, which they used as
toasting-forks. His Satanic Majesty was gleefully directing their
operations, amid tongues of realistic flame. On the card-board mount
of the picture the following verse was inscribed in youthful round-
hand:

Perdition is needful; beyond any doubt

Hell fire is a thing that we can’t do without.
Saltpetre and pitchforks with brimstone and coals
Are arguments new to rescue men’s souls.
We must keep it up, if we like it or not,
And make it eternal, and make it red-hot.

Mirabelle Fane.
 The signature seemed to indicate that Mr. Fane was not always
implicitly obeyed by his children.
He remained sitting when Farquhar was announced, and looked
as forbidding as possible. Farquhar bowed, and looked as pleasant
as possible. The interview promised to be unconventional.
“You are Noel Farquhar?”
“That’s my name, sir,” said Farquhar, always particularly respectful
to an elderly man.
“You write to me that you have made some alterations in my
cottages at Burnt House,” continued old Fane, referring to a letter in
his hand.
“I have, sir; and I hope you will forgive my officiousness in acting
without your leave.”
“I understand that you have put in a copper.”
“It hasn’t damaged the property; I’ll answer for that; and it was
pretty badly wanted. If you’d looked at the place yourself—”
“Where is the copper set?”
“As a lean-to on the last house.”
“What are the dimensions?”
Farquhar supplied him with precise particulars. “I happened to
hear the story from one of your tenants, and I ordered the thing at
once, without a thought of the landlord’s right in the matter. When I
did remember, it was too late; the work was begun. I can assure you,
sir, that it actually adds to the value of the property.”
“So I supposed. What should you say at a guess is the rental
worth of the improvement?”
“Oh, something very small; not more than sixpence a week, sir.”
Mr. Fane made an entry in his book. “Thank you; I am much
obliged to you. Good-morning.”
“You’ll overlook my indiscretion?”
 “Overlook it? Indiscretion? I am a poor man, and you have put into
my pocket three shillings a week, Mr. Farquhar; I am greatly
indebted to you.”
“I have put into your pocket three shillings a week?”
“The additional rent of the six houses, you understand.”
“You mean to raise the rent?”
“Certainly. Indiscriminate charity is against my principles.”
“But, sir, they’ll never be able to pay it.”
“I shall, I hope, find other tenants who will.”
“And the charity is mine, Mr. Fane.”
“And the houses are mine, Mr. Farquhar. Would you be so good as
to let yourself out? The men are out on the farm. You cannot well
miss your way.”
Farquhar took up his hat and retired. He really could not attempt to
argue the matter, and was aware that he had been neatly outwitted.
So great a philanthropist should have been saddened by thoughts of
the Searles, victims of his blunder; but Noel Farquhar, as he walked
down the hall, was smiling, in candid appreciation of the nice
precision of his defeat.
 IV

MY ACTIONS ALWAYS HARMONISED

WITH MY OWN SWEET VOLITION;
I ALWAYS DID WHAT I DEVISED
AND RARELY ASKED PERMISSION.

Ere he was able to let himself out, however, he was recalled.

“Mr. Noel Farquhar!”
Farquhar turned, and saw on the stairs a girl with a small head
and a crown of chestnut hair. She came leisurely down with her hand
on the balustrade, planting each foot lightly but with decision; her
gait was very characteristic. The light was from behind and left her
features dark. When she had reached the hall, “I want to speak to
you,” said she, calmly; “please to come in here.”
Farquhar held his peace and followed her into another low room,
littered with more books and with Miss Fane’s somewhat masculine
appurtenances—a pair of dogskin gloves, a hard felt hat, and a
riding-whip among them. Armorial bearings were carved upon the
lintel and traced again in silver upon the uprights of the andirons,
across which logs were lying, in primitive style. The girl went first to
the fire and stooped to warm her hands before she confronted him.
“Have you been talking to my father?”
“Am I speaking to Miss Fane?”
“Of course; why do you ask such a question as that?”
“Because I really was not sure; I thought you were younger.”
“Most people know us by sight, though we are too wicked to be
received,” returned Miss Fane, indifferently. “I don’t know whether
you mistook me for a servant. However, that doesn’t matter; have
you been speaking to my father?”
 “I came by appointment on a business matter, Miss Fane.”
“About those cottages at Burnt House. You should have written to
my brother Bernard; he manages the farm, and he is reasonable to
deal with. Does my father mean to raise the rents?”
“He said such was his intention, but I hope he will think better of
it.”
“Oh no, he won’t. Are you going to acquiesce, and let your
protégés be evicted?”
“I can hardly make Mr. Fane lower the rents, can I?”
“You could make up the difference yourself.”
As this was precisely what Farquhar had determined to do, he
was, of course, struck by her intelligence. But he did his alms in
modest secrecy. “I dare say they will find the extra sixpence,” he
said.
“They can’t. Searle drinks, and the others are as bad, or worse.
They’re helpless.”
Farquhar did not answer her. She had just moved into the sunlight,
and he was startled by her beauty. No flower-loveliness was hers,
delicate and evanescent; she glowed like a jewel with colour, the
brighter for the sunlight which illumined the rich damask of her
cheeks, the rich whiteness of her brow, the rich hazel of her eyes,
the rich chestnut of her hair. Dolly Fane possessed in its full
splendour the misnamed devil’s beauty, the beauty of colour, vitality,
youth. Her lips were virginally severe, her figure slight, girlishly
formed, not yet mature; she was not so old, nor yet so self-
possessed, as she wished to appear.
“Well, if you are giving in there is no more to be said,” she added,
with a slight contemptuous movement which was plainly a prelude to
showing him out.
Farquhar hastily cast to the winds his modest reserve. “I am not
giving in; I do mean to make up the difference,” he said.
“You do?” said Dolly, fastening her eyes upon him.
 “You’re very charitable, Miss Fane,” said Farquhar, smiling.
“Not in the least. I am sorry for Mrs. Searle; but I did not ask you
for that reason. I wanted to see what you are like. You’ve spoken to
my brother Bernard once or twice, haven’t you?”
“I have; but he did not seem interested in my conversation.”
“Oh, that’s Bernard’s way; he always thinks people mean to
patronise him. You know London well, don’t you?”
“I’ve lived a good deal in town, certainly.”
“Should I pass muster in society?”
“Pass muster?” Farquhar repeated. It was not easy to abash him,
but this young beauty, with her odd questions, contrived to do it.
“Yes. I know I am behaving in an unusual way now, but have I the
accent and the appearance of a lady?”
“Most certainly you have.”
“Do you think so? Should I get on in town? Do you think I am
sufficiently presentable to be an actress?”
“An actress? Yes, I should say you were.”
“You’ve not seen me act, of course; I can do it. And I’ve a
passable voice, and I’m fairly good-looking. Books say that theatre-
goers will put up with poor acting for the sake of a pretty face; is that
true?”
“It depends on the prettiness of the face. It would be true in your
case.”
“I don’t in the least want compliments. I want the plain truth.”
“And I’m giving it.”
“Oh,” said Dolly, evidently disconcerted. He had checked her for
the minute, and she remained silent, though fresh questions were at
her very lips.
“Are you fond of acting?” Farquhar asked, to loosen her tongue.
“Are you burning to play Juliet?”
 “Juliet? Oh no! I’d like to be Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth, though.
Some one powerful and perhaps wicked; but not like La Dame aux
Camélias, or Iris, or Agnes Ebbsmith. If I threw the Bible in the fire, I
should keep it there.”
“And make it eternal, and make it red-hot,” suggested Farquhar.
“Did you read those lines? Aren’t they good? Years ago I wrote
them there, and father never could make me rub them out, though
he tried with his riding-whip. But that wouldn’t interest you. On your
honour, do you think I should have a chance on the stage?”
“On my honour, I do. But why do you want to go? I should have
thought you’d too much sense to be stage-struck.”
“I’m not stage-struck, but I want to leave this place, and that
seems the simplest way. We are badly off. I never see any one
except my brother. I do not know how to behave. I have never had
the chance of speaking to a gentleman before: which was why I
called you in and asked you these questions. I expect no girl you
know would have done it, would she?”
“You’re right—she wouldn’t; the more fool she, if she wanted the
answer as badly as you did.”
“Exactly,” said Dolly; “for, after all, it doesn’t matter what you think
of me.”
Farquhar slightly altered his whole bearing. He leaned against the
chimney-piece and looked her in the face. “My opinion does matter,
you know,” he said. “I’ve some influence, which I could use either to
promote or to frustrate your interests. I know plenty managers, and
so forth, and I’m popular.”
“It does not matter,” Dolly corrected swiftly; “for I would under no
circumstances consent to be beholden to you for anything beyond
the piece of truth you’ve already given me.”
“You’re independent.”
“I hope so.”
“I’d much like to teach you to obey.”
 “Mathematicians have always wanted to square the circle.”
“You’ve a will of your own; you’re worth talking to.”
“Is this how a gentleman speaks to a lady?”
“No, it’s how a man speaks to a woman.”
Dolly glanced out of the window. “That’s my brother Bernard with
his dogs. He stands six foot three, and he’s the best wrestler in
Kent.”
“Meaning you’d set him to turn me out? He’d never do it.”
“Do you think you’re as strong as Bernard?”
“Stronger,” answered Farquhar, stretching out his arm. Pride of
strength was in that gesture, and more than pride—arrogance.
Dolly had a primitive admiration for strength, and his self-
confidence tingled through her veins. She liked him the better that he
was dangerous to handle; she was more at her ease that they were
outside convention.
“At least, you’re not stronger than Bernard plus half a dozen men
whom I could call in a minute,” she remarked, evenly. “Wouldn’t it be
wiser to make no fuss, but go?”
Farquhar started, passed his hand across his eyes, and looked at
her earnestly, as though her words had wakened him. “Miss Fane, I
believe I’ve been saying the most outrageous things!” he exclaimed.
“Haven’t I? I don’t know what possessed me. What have I said?”
“A little harmless nonsense, that’s all,” Dolly assured him.
“I must ask you to forgive me. To tell the truth, I’d a touch of
sunstroke out in Africa, and since then I’m not my own master at
times. I’m literally out of my wits. I don’t know what I’ve said, but
nothing was farther from my mind than any rudeness to you—to any
lady. You will believe that?”
“Perhaps. Good-bye.”
“You won’t punish me by declining to speak to me?”
 “We aren’t likely to meet. Your friends don’t know me.”
“We shall meet, if you allow it. Will you?”
“Will I, now?” said Dolly. She went and threw open the door.
“Good-morning.”
Farquhar pleaded, but his words were wasted. Not a word more
would Miss Fane say, and at last he took up his hat and walked out.
When she had watched him out of sight, Dolly went bareheaded
across the lawn to a tool-shed under the trees, round which circled a
numerous company of dogs, ranging from a smart terrier up to a
huge grave brute, half bloodhound, half Great Dane, of the breed
which Virginian planters used in the good old days for tracking down
their runaway slaves. Within, Dolly found the tall young fellow whom
she had pointed out to Farquhar. He was darker than his sister, and
not so handsome, but the two were plainly slips of the same tree.
Bernard’s manners needed attention. When his sister appeared he
did not lay down his saw, which produced an ear-piercing rasping
and ratching such as denied conversation. Dolly put her hand on his
and arrested his work by force.
“Well, what did that chap Farquhar want?” asked Bernard, without
resentment.
Dolly related Farquhar’s doings at Burnt House, and the sequel.
Bernard’s comment was: “I guess he must be an ass,” and he took
up his saw to resume work, but was once more summarily stopped
by his sister. These incidents were stages in the conversation; as
people of quick wits often do when they live together, these two were
in the habit of expressing themselves by signs.
“He’s going to pay the difference himself, and not let father know,”
Dolly explained.
“Then I guess he’s only a soft. But how did you hear?”
“I called him into the parlour and asked. I asked him whether I
should succeed on the stage.”
A pause, during which Bernard framed, and discarded as useless,
a reproof. “What did he say?”
 “He said I should.”
“I don’t see you can count that. I guess it wouldn’t be good
manners for him to tell you you wouldn’t.”
“He did mean it. He wasn’t particularly polite.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing actually rude. It was odd,” said Dolly, reflectively. “At
first he was—oh, Bernard, you know what I mean: turned out on a
pattern and polished, like all the other gentlemen we’ve seen. I was
rather nervous; but I meant to go through with it. Then his manner
seemed to break in half. He was almost brutal. I must say I rather
liked that; it was raw nature. And quite at the end he apologised, and
said that he’d had sunstroke in Africa. Do you think that likely to be
true?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Bernard. “I know he’s been in Africa.”
“What! out at the front? How painfully ordinary!”
“You do it very well,” said Bernard, with admiration. “That was just
like the woman in the black frills at Merton’s. You’d soon be as good
as they are. Farquhar wasn’t volunteering, though; he was up farther
north, where they get miasma.”
“Oh,” said Dolly, leaning her elbows on the bench and her chin on
her clasped hands. “Do you like him, Bernie?”
“Not if he was rude to you; though I guess swells generally are
cads, like in books.”
“He wasn’t exactly rude. He was primitive. I should say he was
very strong, and rather wicked, and subtle; not like us. We’re quite
simple, simplex, one-fold; we mean what we say and do what we
mean, you and I.”
“I should hope so,” said Bernard, who was not troubled by
uncertain ethics.
“Noel Farquhar doesn’t, then; I’m sure of it. He is very strong. He
says he is stronger than you are.”
 Bernard stretched out a brawny arm. “He’s six inches shorter,
anyway. At that rate he’d have to be a Hercules to lick me.”
“I’d like you to wrestle with him. I’d like to see him thrown.”
“Hullo, Dolly!”
“And I mean to meet him again.”
“I know that isn’t the proper thing. You ought to get introduced
first.”
“I can take care of myself. He interests me.”
“You’ll be falling in love with him if you don’t look out.”
“That I never should do. But he might fall in love with me.”
“Shouldn’t think that was likely.”
“Why not? We Fanes are as good a family as any in England. And
I’m handsome: Bernard, you said I was.”
“Yes, but you aren’t like the woman in the black frills,” said
Bernard, measuring his sister by the only standard of taste he knew.
“Besides, I guess Merton’s morally sure you were out poaching last
time with me, and he and Farquhar are as thick as thieves. Girls
oughtn’t to poach.”
“There are some people who don’t class that among the seven
deadly sins, and he’s one; I know it. He has wild blood, as we have.”
“But would you marry him if he wanted you to?”
“I’m not sure. I might. He could give me what I want—experience.”
“I don’t see why you aren’t contented here,” said Bernard, bending
to his work again.
“I dare say not,” retorted Dolly, pacing the shed. “You’re
phlegmatic. You’re content with the rind of life. Bitter or sweet, I
mean to taste the core.”
“I expect, you know, you’ll come to awful grief.”
“Perhaps. But so I’ve lived my life first, I’ll not complain.”
 “Well,” said Bernard, “I never saw you in heroics before, and I
guess I don’t care if I never do again.”
Then he returned to his work, and drowned Dolly’s aspirations in
the harsh duet of squeaking saw and dissentient wood.
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