Sable Basilisk looked up. James Bond’s eyes were glittering with excitement. Sable Basilisk smiled. ‘We were even more interested than you seem to be. You see, to let you in on a secret, our salaries are extremely modest. So we all have private means which we supplement from fees received for special work like this. These fees rarely go above fifty guineas for a piece of pretty tough research and all the leg work at Somerset House and in parish records and graveyards that is usually involved in tracking a man’s ancestry. So this looked like a real challenge for the College, and as I was “in waiting” the day the letter came in, sort of “officer of the watch”, the job fell into my lap.’
Bond said urgently, ‘So what happened? Have you kept the contact?’
‘Oh yes, but rather tenuously, I’m afraid. Of course I wrote at once accepting the commission and agreeing to the vow of secrecy which’ – he smiled – ‘you now force me to break presumably by invoking the Official Secrets Act. That is so, isn’t it? I am acting under force majeure?’
‘You are indeed,’ said Bond emphatically.
Sable Basilisk made a careful note on the top paper in the file and continued. ‘Of course the first thing I had to ask for was the man’s birth certificate and, after a delay, I was told that it had been lost and that I was on no account to worry about it. The Count had in fact been born in Gdynia of a Polish father and a Greek mother – I have the names here – on May 28th, 1908. Could I not pursue my researches backwards from the de Bleuville end? I replied temporizing, but by this time I had indeed established from our library that there had been a family of de Bleuvilles, at least as lately as the seventeenth century, at a place called Blonville-sur-Mer, Calvados, and that their arms and motto were as claimed by Blofeld.’ Sable Basilisk paused. ‘This of course he must have known for himself. There would have been no purpose in inventing a family of de Bleuvilles and trying to stuff them down our throats. I told the lawyers of my discovery and, in my summer holidays – the North of France is more or less my private heraldic beat, so to speak, and very rich it is too in connections with England – I motored down there and sniffed around. But meanwhile I had, as a matter of routine, written to our Ambassador in Warsaw and asked him to contact our Consul in Gdynia and request him to employ a lawyer to make the simple researches with the Registrar and the various churches where Blofeld might have been baptized. The reply, early in September, was, but is no longer, surprising. The pages containing the record of Blofeld’s birth had been neatly cut out. I kept this information to myself, that is to say I did not pass it on to the Swiss lawyers because I had been expressly instructed to make no inquiries in Poland. Meanwhile I had carried out similar inquiries through a lawyer in Augsburg. There, there was indeed a record of Blofelds, but of a profusion of them, for it is a fairly common German name, and in any case nothing to link any of them with the de Bleuvilles from Calvados. So I was stumped, but no more than I have been before, and I wrote a neutral report to the Swiss lawyers and said that I was continuing my researches. And there’ – Sable Basilisk slapped the file shut – ‘until my telephone began ringing yesterday, presumably because someone in the Northern Department of the Foreign Office was checking the file copies from Warsaw and the name Blofeld rang a bell, and you appeared looking very impatient from the cave of my friend the Griffon, the case rests.’
Bond scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘But the ball’s still in play?’
‘Oh yes, definitely.’
‘Can you keep it in play? I take it you haven’t got Blofeld’s present address?’ Sable Basilisk shook his head. ‘Then would there be any conceivable excuse for an envoy from you?’ Bond smiled. ‘Me, for example, to be sent out from the College to have an interview with Blofeld – some tricky point that cannot be cleared up by correspondence, something that needs a personal inquiry from Blofeld?’
‘Well, yes, there is in a way.’ Sable Basilisk looked rather dubious. ‘You see, in some families there is a strong physical characteristic that goes on inevitably from generation to generation. The Habsburg lip is a case in point. So is the tendency to haemophilia among descendants of the Bourbons. The hawk nose of the Medici is another. A certain royal family have minute, vestigial tails. The original maharajahs of Mysore were born with six fingers on each hand. I could go on indefinitely, but those are the most famous cases. Now, when I was scratching around in the crypt of the chapel at Blonville, having a look at the old Bleuville tombs, my flashlight, moving over the stone faces, picked out a curious fact that I tucked away in my mind but that your question has brought to the surface. None of the de Bleuvilles, as far as I could tell, and certainly not through a hundred and fifty years, had lobes to their ears.’
‘Ah,’ said Bond, running over in his mind the Identicast picture of Blofeld and the complete, printed physiognometry of the man in Records. ‘So he shouldn’t by rights have lobes to his ears. Or at any rate it would be a strong piece of evidence for his case if he hadn’t?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, he has got lobes,’ said Bond, annoyed. ‘Rather pronounced lobes as a matter of fact. Where does that get us?’
‘To begin with, added to what I know anyway, that makes him probably not a de Bleuville. But after all’ – Sable Basilisk looked sly – ‘there’s no reason why he should know what physical characteristic we’re looking for in this interview.’
‘You think we could set one up?’
‘Don’t see why not. But’ – Sable Basilisk was apologetic – ‘would you mind if I got clearance from Garter King of Arms? He’s my boss, so to speak, under the Duke of Norfolk that is, the Earl Marshal, and I can’t remember that we’ve ever been mixed up in this sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff before. Actually’ – Sable Basilisk waved a deprecating hand – ‘we are, we have to be, damned meticulous. You do see that, don’t you?’
‘Naturally. And I’m sure there’d be no objection. But, even if Blofeld agreed to see me, how in hell could I play the part? This stuff is all double Dutch to me.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know the difference between a gule and a bezant and I’ve never been able to make out what a baronet is. What’s my story to Blofeld? Who am I exactly?’
Sable Basilisk was getting enthusiastic. He said cheerfully, ‘Oh that’ll be all right. I’ll coach you in all the dope about the de Bleuvilles. You can easily mug up a few popular books on heraldry. It’s not difficult to be impressive on the subject. Very few people know anything about it.’
‘Maybe. But this Blofeld is a pretty smart animal. He’ll want the hell of a lot of credentials before he sees anyone but his lawyer and his banker. Who exactly am I?’
‘You think Blofeld’s smart because you’ve seen the smart side of him,’ said Sable Basilisk sapiently. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of smart people from the City, industry, politics – famous people I’ve been quite frightened to meet when they walked into this room. But when it comes to snobbery, to buying respectability so to speak, whether it’s the title they’re going to choose or just a coat of arms to hang over their fire-places in Surbiton, they dwindle and dwindle in front of you’ – he made a downward motion over his desk with his hand – ‘until they’re no bigger than homunculi. And the women are even worse. The idea of suddenly becoming a “lady” in their small community is so intoxicating that the way they bare their souls is positively obscene. It’s as if’ – Sable Basilisk furrowed his high, pale brow, seeking for a simile – ‘these fundamentally good citizens, these Smiths and Browns and Joneses and’ – he smiled across the desk – ‘Bonds, regarded the process of ennoblement as a sort of laying-on of hands, a way of ridding themselves of all the drabness of their lives, of all their, so to speak, essential meagreness, their basic inferiority. Don’t worry about Blofeld. He has already swallowed the bait. He may be a tremendous gangster, and he must be from what I remember of the case. He may be tough and ruthless in his corner of human behaviour. But if he is trying to prove that he is the Comte de Bleuville, you can be sure of various things. He wants to change his name. That is obvious. He wants to become a new, a respectable personality. That is obvious too. But above all he wants to become a Count.’ Sable Basilisk brought his hand flat down on his desk for emphasis. ‘That, Mr Bond, is tremendously significant. He is a rich and successful man in his line of business – no matter what it is. He no longer admires the material things, riches and power. He is now 54, as I reckon it. He wants a new skin. I can assure you, Mr Bond, that he will receive you, if we play our cards right that is, as if he were consulting his doctor about’ – Sable Basilisk’s aristocratic face took on an expression of distaste – ‘as if he were consulting his doctor after contracting V.D.’ Sable Basilisk’s eyes were now compelling. He sat back in his chair and lit his first cigarette. The smell of Turkish tobacco drifted across to Bond. ‘That’s it,’ he said with certitude. ‘This man knows he is unclean, a social pariah. Which of course he is. Now he has thought up this way of buying himself a new identity. If you ask me, we must help the hair to grow and flourish on his heel of Achilles until it is so luxuriant that he trips on it.’