When Bond left the bar he walked purposefully along the pavement flanking the tree-lined boulevard towards his hotel a few hundred yards away. He was hungry.
The day was still beautiful, but by now the sun was very hot and the plane-trees, spaced about twenty feet apart on the grass verge between the pavement and the broad tarmac, gave a cool shade.
There were few people abroad and the two men standing quietly under a tree on the opposite side of the boulevard looked out of place.
Bond noticed them when he was still a hundred yards away and when the same distance separated them from the ornamental porte cochère of the Splendide.
porte cochèreThere was something rather disquieting about their appearance. They were both small and they were dressed alike in dark and, Bond reflected, rathe
