‘And who the hell are you supposed to be?’
youM. more or less repeated Bond’s question when, that evening, he looked up from the last page of the report that Bond had spent the afternoon dictating to Mary Goodnight. M.’s face was just outside the pool of yellow light cast by the green-shaded reading lamp on his desk, but Bond knew that the lined, sailor’s face was reflecting, in varying degrees, scepticism, irritation, and impatience. The ‘hell’ told him so. M. rarely swore and when he did it was nearly always at stupidity. M. obviously regarded Bond’s plan as stupid, and now, away from the dedicated, minutely focused world of the Heralds, Bond wasn’t sure that M. wasn’t right.
‘I’m to be an emissary from the College of Arms, sir. This Basilisk chap recommended that I should have some ki
