They didn't know a word of any civilized language so they weren't any security risk. He set up a little factory called "Thanet Alloy Research" in the grounds of his house and staffed it with a German metallurgist, a prisoner of war who didn't want to go back to Germany, and half a dozen Korean stevedores he picked up in Liverpool. He also invested in a wellfound Brixham trawler and an old Silver Ghost Rolls Royce - armoured car, built for some South American president who was killed before he could take delivery. He bought himself a house, pretentious sort of place, at Reculver, at the mouth of the Thames. Then, when peace broke out, Goldfinger got moving. Must have done well out of the GIs who generally travel with a Gold Eagle or a Mexican fifty-dollar piece as a last reserve. He tucked himself away in a machine-tool firm in Wales during the war - well out of the firing line - but kept as many of his shops operating as he could. It was fifty ounces for the whole chain - just enough of a working stock to keep his shops supplied with ring setting and so forth, what they call jewellers' findings in the trade. I looked up his figure in our old records. Well, the war came and Gold-finger, like all other jewellers, had to declare his stock of gold. So they are, but they mount up if you've got twenty little shops, each one buying perhaps half a dozen bits and pieces every week. 'You may think these lockets and gold crosses and things are pretty small beer. He let his managers run that as they liked.' Colonel Smithers looked quizzically at Bond. He wasn't interested in the jewellery side. He lived in London and toured his ?shops once a month and collected all the old gold. Never touched stolen goods and got a good name everywhere with the police. Always chose good sites, just on the dividing line between the well-to-do streets and the lower-middle. Nothing too Large, Nothing too Small", and he had his own particular slogan: "Buy Her Engagement Ring With Grannie's Locket." Goldfinger did very well. Then he turned the shops over to selling cheap jewellery and buying old gold - you know the sort of place: "Best Prices for Old Gold. He put in his own men, paid them well and changed the name of the shops to "Goldfinger". Well, soon after he'd been naturalized - he was a harmless sort of chap and in a useful trade and he had no difficulty in getting his papers - he started buying up small pawn-brokers all over the country. He had a little money and probably one of those belts of gold I was telling you about. He was a jeweller and goldsmith by trade, like his father and grandfather who had refined gold for Faberge. He was only twenty when he arrived, but he must have been a bright lad because he smelled that the Russians would be swallowing his country pretty soon. He said, 'There's a man who came over to England in 1937. Of those at least five hundred, including my little outfit, are engaged in controlling the illicit movements of valuta, the attempts to smuggle or to evade the Exchange Control Regulations.'Ĭolonel Smithers's eyes took on their hard, foxy look. We employ three thousand staff at the Bank, Mr Bond, and of those no less than one thousand work in the exchange control department. Well, to begin with, and taking only England and the sterling area, it's a very big business indeed. How ever' - Colonel Smithers waved these minor irritations aside - 'as you say, time to get on to the smuggling. As if I hadn't got enough to do with the annual gymkhana coming on. I've just had the women's hockey team thrown into my lap. Sports and welfare are becoming almost too much of a fetish at the Bank. He thought M might ask him.Ĭolonel Smithers took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. 'Why the high price in India?' Bond didn't really want to know. Briefly, India is shorter of gold, particularly for her jewellery trade, than any other country.' Isn't there enough to go round? Isn't it just like any other black market that disappears when the supplies are stepped up, like the penicillin traffic after the war?' 'Isn't all this only a temporary phase? Why should this shortage of gold go on? They seem to be digging it out of Africa fast enough.
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