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Wish my orders12/11/2022 ![]() ![]() 'Why the high price in India?' Bond didn't really want to know. Square cardboard boxes were being unloaded from it and put on to a short conveyor belt that disappeared into the bowels of the Bank. A trim chocolate-brown lorry with no owner's name had come into the courtyard through the triple steel gates. He was looking down into the deep well of the back courtyard of the Bank. While they waited for it, Bond glanced out of the tall window at the end of the passage. Thank you, Miss Philby.'īOND FOLLOWED Colonel Smithers to the lift. I'm sure she'll be very good - right figure and all that. Say I'll be greatly obliged if just this once. It's the only position on the field we've got for her. "Well, if Mrs Flake won't play goals, I'm afraid she'll have to stand down. The next match is on Saturday against the Discount Houses.' He listened again. 'I'm sure I sent you a note about the summer fixtures, Miss Philby. 'Smithers speaking.' He listened, irritation growing on his face. Colonel Smithers impatiently snatched up the receiver. The Gold Squad retired discomfited, our legal department decided the brown dust in the trawler's timbers was not enough to prosecute on without supporting evidence, and that was more or less that, except' - Colonel Smithers slowly wagged the stem of his pipe -'that I kept the file open and started sniffing around the banks of the world.' There were traces of gold about, of course, and furnaces to heat up to two thousand degrees and so forth, but after all Goldfinger was a jeweller and a smelter in a small way, and all this was perfectly above-board. Mark you, he may have been tipped off by his bank manager or someone, but that factory was entirely devoted to designing a cheap alloy for jewellers' findings - trying out unusual metals like aluminium and tin instead of the usual copper and nickel and palladium that are used in gold alloys. Come in." Mr Goldfinger positively welcomed them. Briefly, India is shorter of gold, particularly for her jewellery trade, than any other country.' I can't understand these dollar swindles.' 'Can you give me an example of smuggling? In gold. 'That's a lot.' Bond measured it against the Secret Service which had a total force of two thousand. Have to watch the chlorine gas, but otherwise it's a simple process. This powder can be reconstituted into gold ingots by melting at around a thousand degrees Centigrade. I won't bother you with the formula, but you see gold can be made to dissolve in a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids, and reducing agents - sulphur dioxide or oxalic acid - precipitate the metal as a brown powder. They were surprised when he said the stuff was gold. When this company started breaking the ship up and got as far as the hold they found the timbers ingregnated with a sort of brown powder which they couldn't put a name to. In the summer of 1954, his trawler, homeward bound from India, went ashore on the Goodwins and he sold the wreck for a song to the Dover Salvage Company. We didn't even hear of him until he suffered a slight misfortune. 'I'm not boring you? I do want you to get the picture of the sort of man this is - quiet, careful, law-abiding and with the sort of drive and single-mindedness we all admire. In a period of history when every tomorrow may be the evil day, it is fair enough to say that a fat proportion of the gold that is dug out of one corner of the earth is at once buried again in another corner.'Ĭolonel Smithers broke off. Fear, Mr Bond, takes gold out of circulation and hoards it against the evil day. 'The other and by far the major defect is that it is the talisman of fear. I said that gold has two defects.' Colonel Smithers looked sad. Every year, the world's stock is invisibly reduced by friction. It wears out quickly, leaves itself on the linings of our pockets and in the sweat of our skins. It is brilliant, malleable, ductile, almost unalterable and more dense than any of the common metals except platinum. Gold has extraordinary properties which are being put to new uses every day. New industries need gold wire, gold plating, amalgams of gold. All these new people will be taking tons of gold off the market every year. Others need gold-rimmed spectacles, jewellery, engagement rings. Another percentage needs gold fillings for their teeth. ![]() A small percentage of those people become gold hoarders, people who are frightened of currencies, who like to bury some sovereigns in the garden or under the bed. The population of the world is increasing at the rate of five thousand four hundred every hour of the day. ![]()
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