It was one of those leather-padded bars, bogus-masculine, and still, because of its newness, smelling like the inside of a new motor-car. It was made to look like a Tyrolean Stube by a big stone fire-place with a roaring log fire and cartwheel chandeliers with red-stemmed electric ‘candles.’ There were many wrought-iron gimmicks — wall-light brackets, ashtrays, table lamps — and the bar itself was ‘gay’ with small flags and miniature liqueur bottles. Attractive zither music tripped out from a hidden loud-speaker. It was not, Bond decided, a place to get seriously drunk in.
When he closed the leather-padded, brass-studded door behind him, there was a moment’s hush, then a mounting of decibels to hide the covert glances, the swift summing-up. Bond got a fleeting impression of one of the mos
