Bond left the Bentley outside Brooks’s and walked round the corner into Park Street.
The Adam frontage of Blades, recessed a yard or so back from its neighbours, was elegant in the soft dusk. The dark red curtains had been drawn across the ground floor bow-windows on either side of the entrance and a uniformed servant showed for a moment as he drew them across the three windows of the floor above. In the centre of the three, Bond could see the heads and shoulders of two men bent over a game, probably backgammon he thought, and he caught a glimpse of the spangled fire of one of the three great chandeliers that illuminate the famous gambling room.
Bond pushed through the swing doors and walked up to the old-fashioned porter’s lodge ruled over by Brevett, the guardian of Blades and the coun
