North From Rome E-Book

Helen MacInnes

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

"He had reached the phase of trusting nobody. Only one thing had been decided about an hour ago. He was staying in Rome." Bill Lammiter, an American would-be playwright, followed Eleanor Halley to Rome in an attempt to mend their broken engagement. After learning that she is now engaged to an aristocratic Italian count, he is ready to admit defeat and return home. But his plans are put on hold when he saves the mysterious Rosana Di Feo from a kidnap attempt. Di Feo pleads for Lammiter to stay and help her, revealing that Halley too may be at risk - her new fiancé is mixed up in a narcotics ring with sinister Communist connections. Soon Lammiter is drawn into a hazardous game of international intrigue, where allies can be as difficult to identify as enemies, and danger and death are never far away.

Leseprobe

NORTH FROM ROME

ALSO BY HELEN MacINNES AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

Decision at Delphi (September 2012)

The Venetian Affair (October 2012)

The Salzburg Connection (November 2012)

Helen

MacINNES

NORTH FROM ROME

TITAN BOOKS

North From Rome

Print edition ISBN: 9781781163269

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781164372

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© 1958, 2012 by the Estate of Helen MacInnes. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group Ltd.

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Contents

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About The Author

1

At last, the city was quiet.

Quiet enough for sleep, William Lammiter thought as he finished his cigarette on the small balcony outside of his hotel bedroom. It was three o’clock in the morning—no, almost half-past three by his watch—and Rome was at peace. Practically. Only an occasional car now passed through the old Roman wall by the broad Pincian Gate, only a solitary Vespa roared its way up the wide sweep of the Via Vittorio Veneto. The café-table sitters, the coffee-drinkers and Cinzano-sippers had gone back to their rooms, leaving the broad sidewalks free at last. And, on the other side of the Roman wall, over the vast stretch of the Borghese Gardens, with its tall pine trees, pleasant pavilions, careful flower beds, sweet-smelling shrubs, there was now a cloak of darkness, darkness and silence, for even the night club which lay incongruously just within this entrance to the Borghese Gardens had stopped blowing its trumpets and banging its drums in steady four beats to the bar.

Time for sleep, Lammiter told himself again, but he still stayed on the balcony, a little narrow ledge of balustraded stone jutting over a street of parked cars, with a clear view over the Roman wall into the Borghese Gardens. He still watched the tall pines, with their straight trunks and massive crowns silhouetted against the city’s night sky. They seemed as grateful for this hour of rest as he was. They sighed gently, as if they felt the same cool breath of air that had touched his cheek.

He ignored the group of young men who were walking smartly home, the two white-uniformed policemen who were pacing slowly from the Via Veneto through the Pincian Gate, the woman clacking lightly along on high heels in the darkened street below his balcony. He wanted to concentrate on the pine trees, on the feeling that this had once been the limits of ancient Rome, that wild and unknown country had once stretched outside there, northward, away from the old city. Then, that red brick wall, built to keep the barbarians out, had been manned by troops; and at a gateway such as this one, there would be soldiers on guard duty. On a warm summer evening in late July, such as this, nearly seventeen hundred years ago, a sentry must have stared northward, into the darkness, and wondered what lurked out there.

What was it like, Bill Lammiter wondered, to have been a Roman sentry standing guard duty at the Pincian Gate? Would the soldier, looking northward from his post on top of the high wall—there was a path there, broad enough for two men to march abreast—have felt loneliness, fear? Would he have stared out at the vast night, and felt a premonition stir uneasily in his mind? Or was he just bored, waiting for his relief to come marching along with the squad leader, hoping no trouble would break out tonight or, any other night before he got out of the service and began farming that strip of land up near Perugia? Perugia in the Umbrian hills... That’s where I ought to be right now, Lammiter thought. There’s nothing to keep me in Rome any longer. I’ve been here a month. I haven’t done a stroke of work. And I’ve lost my girl.

He stubbed out his cigarette angrily, straightened his shoulders, and turned to go indoors. From the now quiet street, beneath his balcony, he heard a woman’s cry.

It was quick, startled, strangled into silence. He leaned over the stone balustrade. Under the shadows of the Aurelian Wall were spaced trees and streetlights, a line of parked cars and two huge empty tourist buses. For a moment, that was all he saw, patches of bright light, patches of deep shadow, the small neat cars sheltering under thick tents of green leaves. Then, by one car, already pointing its nose out from the kerb, ready to leave, waiting with its door open, he saw a woman and a man. They were standing rigid, it seemed, and then he realised it was the rigidity of force and resistance equally matched. The woman—a girl it was—drew back with desperate strength. The man, one hand on her wrist, another clamped over her mouth, was trying to draw her into the car.

Lammiter let out a yell, a loud call for help partly blotted out by the unmuffled roar of a solitary motor scooter, its rider oblivious of everything except the fine angle he cut as he swept through the Pincian Gate from the Borghese Gardens to curve down the Via Vittorio Veneto. But the two police officers, now pacing together so quietly on the other side of the wall, had stopped their earnest conversation and were looking searchingly in his direction. In a quick moment, Lammiter waved, shouted, pointed beneath him. “Here!—on this side!” He wondered if his English were understood, tried to think of the word for “Help!” in Italian, looked down once more at the startled man (who had heard the yell, all right), and shouted again. The girl broke loose as the man stared up at the balcony. She began to run, towards the brighter lights of the Pincian Gate.

Lammiter turned from the balcony and raced through his room into the red-carpeted hall. Behind him he left half-querulous, half-asleep voices, matching the dusty shoes standing outside their doors. He didn’t wait for the elevator, a stately and shaky descent in a gilded cage, but ran down the three flights of steps that encircled its open shaft. He sprinted across the dimly-lit hall, half-sliding on the marble floor, giving the night porter scarcely time to look up from his desk, and was out on the wide sidewalk. He was breathless but pleased with himself. Not bad, not bad at all for a man of almost thirty, he decided. (Since his twenty-ninth birthday, he had become conscious of age.) He couldn’t have taken more than two minutes to reach the street. Then he was amused by himself for being so pleased. He slackened his pace abruptly, and felt a stitch in his side just to keep him in his proper place. Ahead of him, in front of the Pincian Gate, the running girl had been stopped by the two policemen. The car, and the man with it, had vanished.

The policemen looked at him speculatively. For a moment he had the impulse to walk on, to pretend he was out for an early-morning stroll. Now that the girl was safe, there was no need to get mixed up in any complication. But he had been running, he was still breathing faster than normal with that proud burst of speed, and he was dressed exactly in the clothes he had worn on the balcony—a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie off, neck open, thin gabardine trousers. He glanced over his shoulder, to see how clearly the balcony was visible from the street. It had been extremely visible. He wasn’t surprised when the grave-faced policeman identified him.

They were puzzled. The girl, even after she had regained her breath, was too frightened to speak sensibly. So now they turned on the stranger from the balcony.

An American, obviously. One could always tell most Americans; they had a young look to their faces, a peculiar expression of trust, a confidence in their eyes, a strange mixture of diffidence and decision in their movements. This one was no exception. They had to look up at him as they asked him their polite but puzzled questions, for he was tall, and thinner than they considered appropriate. (Strange that an American with money—his clothes were well-cut, his wristwatch expensive, he stayed at a good conservative hotel—should spend so little on food. But no stranger than the fact that he wore no tie, no jacket, and stood nonchalantly on the street, in this fashionable quarter of the city, without even being aware of how he was dressed.) His face was lean, strong-boned, with a good forehead and well-shaped chin and nose. His mouth was pleasant when he smiled. His teeth were excellent. Grey eyes under well-marked eyebrows, with a tendency to frown in concentration. His hair was brown, and—another peculiar American custom—cut short. His voice was agreeable to listen to, but his words were difficult to follow. A polite man, the policemen decided, for he was now trying to answer them in Italian. His words were still difficult to follow: his Italian was too careful, there was no natural flow to it. And he kept looking at the girl.

Why not? She might be stupid, or shy, or both, but she was extremely pretty, with shining black hair cut short, large dark eyes, an excellent figure, slender ankles, small feet in pointed-toe shoes with high Italian heels. “Thank you,” she said huskily in English to the American.

“Excuse me, signore,” one of the policemen said brusquely but tactfully, as he turned to the American. “You are staying at the Hotel Pinciana?”

“Yes. My name is Lammiter, William Lammiter.” He added that he was an American, but no one seemed surprised. And then as he tried to explain what he had seen from the balcony of his room, first in Italian, then in French, and then—defeated— in English, the two policemen tried to help him.

“No, no!” he had to insist. “The car wasn’t passing by. It had been parked under my balcony. Over there! See? It must have been waiting. When I noticed it, it had its engine running, its nose pointing out, ready to leave. So there must have been two men, one driving, one trying to snatch the girl. No, I don’t think there could have been three men. Why?—Well, there would have been two men on the sidewalk, one keeping her from screaming, one pulling her into the car. But why don’t you ask her, herself?”

He turned to the girl standing back so quietly in the shadow of the wall. It was time she did a little explaining.

But she wasn’t there.

The two policemen had turned, too. They stared at him. Then quickly, they all moved through the broad archway of the Pincian Gate to the other side of the Roman wall. There she was, running across the wide empty street towards the entrance of the Borghese Gardens. And stopping near her, braking suddenly beside one of the islands formed by the circular wall guarding the roots of a giant pine tree, was a grey Fiat.

Lammiter had just time to say, “No, that isn’t the same car. The other was smaller.” Its door opened, the girl jumped in, and it streaked down the tree-shaded road that led through the gardens to the outskirts of Rome. The policemen looked at each other, and then at the American. One of them said a couple of lines in Italian, quick, low, tense. The other laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He said, “The price must have suited her that time.”

“But—” Lammiter said, and then he, too, shrugged his shoulders and raised an eyebrow in his best Italian accent. There was really nothing else to do.

Briskly, the two policemen saluted him. They were no longer annoyed by the girl, but amused by him. It had become merely a slightly comic interlude to break the monotony of their night patrol. Now, hands clasped behind their backs, they began walking in step and grave talk of more serious matters, along the Aurelian Wall.

Lammiter went back to the hotel. The night porter in front of his honeycomb of keys looked at him without much curiosity— Americans were a nation of eccentrics, he had decided years ago, and nothing they did surprised any hotel desk. The elevator wasn’t working, anyway, so Lammiter climbed the three flights to his corridor. The shoes formed a jeering honour guard, right to his room. The voices had subsided into measured breathing and choking snores.

He went out onto the balcony. Beyond the Roman wall, the pine trees in the Borghese Gardens waited quietly for the dawn. And there it was, the first pale streak of grey, washing along the east rim of distant hills. A house swallow sounded its unmusical notes. Soon, others would form a vague chorus: they would start skimming over the mushroom-shaped, trees, filling the air with the sound of their twittering and the swoop of their wings. And soon, too, the automobiles and the motor bicycles and the scooters and the horns and the unmuffled exhausts and the screeching brakes...

He closed both the shutters, the windows, the heavy velvet curtains. Perhaps that would give him a chance to sleep. But long after he had had a quick shower and lay stretched on top of the heavy linen bedspread, he kept thinking of the girl who had said “Thank you” as if she had meant it. Eventually, to save himself from suffocation, he rose and opened all the layers of protection that covered his windows. The pale grey edge on the horizon had spread and changed to a fringe of green and gold. Above the renewed traffic, the swallows, in hundreds, were diving and soaring with their loud screams of frenzied delight.

“Idiots!” he told them angrily. And yet he had to smile. Bad-tempered as he was with lack of sleep and a surfeit of noise, the swallows were a comic mixture of graceful flight and ugly sound. “See, see, see!” they screeched in their thin scratched notes as they skimmed the tall pine trees, the old Roman wall, the hotel roof. “I’ll leave Rome today,” he told himself wearily. “I’ll go up to an Umbrian hill town, and catch myself some quiet and some coolness.” He had been saying that for, two weeks, but now he knew he meant it. And either the pleasantness of the idea or his rediscovered powers of decision lulled him into sleep. Daylight or swallows or traffic or not, he didn’t awaken until nine.

2

Early, while it was still cool, he began to pack. He was travelling light: one two-suiter case and one grip besides his typewriter and camera. Yet, foot-free as he was, it was odd how he seemed to have taken root in this hotel room—every small drawer and corner turned up another belonging, or something he had bought since he arrived four weeks ago. He was trying to fit some typing paper into the typewriter’s neat case when the room waiter arrived to clear away the breakfast. It was the one Lammiter liked least, the small thin man, middle-aged, morose, who was never interested in anything except the size of the tip lying on the tray. But this morning he suddenly turned almost vivacious as he looked at the luggage. “The signore is leaving today?” The dull eyes were extremely clever, Lammiter noticed with some surprise.

“Yes,” Lammiter said, and went on packing.

“The signore is a writer?”

Lammiter nodded. If you could call a man a writer who had written exactly one play. True, it had been successful enough, and that was something both unexpected and pleasant. But if he didn’t write a second one pretty soon, and have another success, too, he would have to go back to Madison Avenue and advertising. In the last ten days or so, he had begun to wonder if he had resigned too rapidly from the steady job, the steady money, the rent and the butcher’s bill and the dry Martinis all definitely paid for.

“The signore likes Rome?”

Lammiter nodded.

“The signore stayed a long time here. He has many friends in Rome?”

“The signore,” Lammiter said firmly, “has no friends in Rome, at all.” That was accurate enough. Eleanor Halley was in Rome, but after their last disagreement two weeks ago— Disagreement? Let’s face it, he told himself: Eleanor and you have had your ultimate quarrel.

What had she called him? A man too jealous to be able to accept with any kind of grace the fact that she had decided to marry someone else. A man too narrow-minded to approve of her marrying a foreigner. A man too much of a snob-in-reverse (it had taken him a few seconds to puzzle that phrase out) to like anyone who had a title. “Look,” he had told her, “I don’t care whether this new fellow of yours has a title or not. I don’t hate him because he calls himself a count. I just want to know more about him.” But this phrase (calculated, he had to admit now)—“this new fellow of yours”—had had a most final effect. Afterwards, he had phoned Eleanor twice at the Embassy, twice at the apartment she shared with two other women secretaries. Miss Halley was not at her desk. Miss Halley was not at home. And three days ago he had loitered round the Embassy entrance, hoping to have a few minutes’ talk with her. But either she had left early or she had seen him and taken another exit.

Now he would never be given the chance to make the apology he ought to have offered in the first place, instead of letting his hurt pride sharpen his tongue. He ought to have said, “You were right. I was letting the theatre swallow me up, I was turning into the re-write machine, the rehearsal haunter, the director’s little helper, the willing autograph-signer, the luncheon speaker, the man who wanted to prove success hadn’t gone, to his head; the man who couldn’t say ‘no’, trying to oblige everybody, failing the only person who really mattered.” For a moment he was startled by the picture he had drawn of himself. Was it just his eloquence, or had he been as neglectful of Eleanor as all that?

The waiter coughed discreetly and arranged the breakfast tray’s dishes once more. Lammiter searched automatically for a tip, but he was still thinking about Eleanor. If only she had complained. Why hadn’t she spoken out, given him some warning? Instead, just as he was about to leave for six weeks in Hollywood last spring, she had taken off quietly for Rome. He ought to have followed her, right then; but the Hollywood assignment was important: it was his own play, wasn’t it, that was being turned into a film script? Then the job was postponed. Then it was scheduled for May. Then it was delayed again. Then arranged eventually for the end of June. By that time, he was ready to say, “The hell with all this, anyway,” and join Eleanor in Rome. But by that time, he had got her letter about Luigi, Count Pirotta. Goddammit, he thought in sudden anger, did she think I had arranged all these postponements, these delays? Did she imagine I enjoyed waiting in New York, when she was in Italy? She knew I loved her, didn’t she? My career was hers, too: didn’t she know that?

“Oh, forget it,” he told himself. “Forget Eleanor.” But how?

The waiter had left, quickly and suddenly, as if he had decided that the fifteen-per-cent tip on the tray was all that was forthcoming. Add to that the fifteen per cent that the management charged for all services rendered, and the waiter had a thirty-per-cent tip for one small jug of coffee, one small jug of tepid milk with skin on, two rolls (one stale), two transparent slivers of butter, and one small jar of dark brown strawberry jam.

I wish, Lammiter thought bitterly, someone would reach into a pocket and add thirty per cent on to all my royalties. Then, by God, I perhaps could afford to stay a summer in Rome, and argue Eleanor out of her titled dreams. Argue? That was a false hope: everything was beyond arguing now.

His annoyance with the waiter, he realised, was simply because the man had stirred up memories of his trouble with Eleanor. Wasn’t it enough that his mind had gone blank of creative ideas, that the play he was about to begin when he arrived in Rome had vanished into thin air? How could he work? He could neither think nor concentrate. He could only look at ruins (for he was standing at the window again) and speculate about the past—a pleasant way of spending the present to avoid thoughts about the future.

He went back to his packing. It was then that he remembered his photographs. He had six rolls of film being developed and printed at that photography shop just off the Via Veneto. He was to collect them just before eight o’clock this evening, when the shop closed. How could he have been so inept as to forget all about them? He’d have to stay one more night in Rome, after all.

He called down to the hotel desk, and told them that he would not be checking out that afternoon, that he’d stay one more night. The voice replying to him was genuinely perturbed. It was sorry, extremely sorry, but his room had been assigned to someone else. All rooms were occupied. This was July, busiest month...

A sudden revulsion seized him, a quick reaction to cut all losses. “The hell with it,” he said aloud. He called the porter’s desk with instructions to get him a seat on a plane, any plane, any flight leaving Rome tonight for New York.

The chambermaid appeared as he ended his call. Without even seeing his suitcase and grip, she said smiling, “The signore is leaving today?”

“Yes.” How quickly the news got around! It was a matter of protocol in hotel work: Room 307 is checking out, get in line for the tips, pass the word along. But he had liked this middle-aged woman with the warm smile and kindly phrases. “I’m going home,” he told her.

“To America?” She looked a little startled. She came from Perugia and had known he meant to visit there some time. Then, quickly, “The signore likes Italy?”

“Yes, yes,” he told her reassuringly. It wasn’t Italy that was out of joint. It wasn’t the times, either. It was himself. If the whole trip had been a mistake, it was simply that he had been unwilling to admit failure. He was admitting it now. He had been over-confident, too sure of Eleanor. He had let her slip away from him months ago, in New York. At last, he was really facing the truth. He had lost the girl, and had deserved to lose.

“Just leave everything,” he told the maid. “I’ll be around until this afternoon, at least.” He found a thousand-lire note. She was pleased by that, and more than pleased by the careful speech of thanks he made in Italian. Then he was left in his room to wait for word about his flight to New York.

He sat down to write some letters. The first was to the man who had produced Lammiter’s play and now was eager to read a second script. Provided, of course, it was the same as the first, only different. He doesn’t want a playwright, Lammiter thought bitterly; all he wants is little Mr. Echo, who’ll be a sure investment; he doesn’t want a piece of creative work, he wants a piece of property. First, he decided, I shall write him the letter I’d like to write. Then I’ll tear that up, smother all indignation, resentment, accurate descriptions of his mentality (I.Q. probably a high 80) and of his education (progressive to the point of being perpetually retarded). And I’ll write a note saying his observations were interesting (he’ll never know how) and that I’m sorry I cannot agree with him.

How did a man like that ever get into a position of power in the world of art? He had money. But so had cigarette advertisers and buttonhole manufacturers. At least, New York wasn’t yet plagued by the problems of the London theatre, where it was almost compulsory to belong to the esoteric clique if you wanted to be produced or recognised at all.

The telephone rang.

He glanced at his watch. Only half an hour since he had ordered his ticket. His ill temper vanished. Quick work, he thought approvingly. He picked up the phone, expecting the porter’s voice. Instead, it was a woman who was speaking.

“Hallo,” the voice said in English. “Mr. Lammiter?”

“Yes,” he said, puzzled at first.

“I wanted to say thank you again.”

There was no doubt who it was. The way she said thank you made him think of last night and a pretty face turned urgently, almost pathetically, to him under the cold lights of the Pincian Gate.

“Oh, it’s you—” he recovered himself. “Glad to know you got home safely.”

She laughed. “I have allies as well as enemies.”

“So I saw. But I thought your friends were a little late in arriving last night.”

“That’s why I’d like to thank you.”

“Oh, forget it. Glad I was there to shout at the nasty men. Who were they, anyhow?”

“I told you. The enemy.” She laughed softly. He had to admit that he had rarely heard a more attractive sound. She said, “Please—could we meet?”

Startled, he blurted out, “Meet? Where? Here?”

“Oh, no! That would be dangerous.”

“At your place?”

“Still more dangerous. Meet me at Doney’s. At noon.”

“But I can’t. I’ve got to wait here until—”

“Please. At noon. I must see you before you leave.”

That made him suddenly wary. “Who are you?” he asked. How could she know he was planning to leave today? Did she or her friends have some kind of intelligence service working among the hotels? What was all this, anyway? “Who are you, what are you?” he asked.

“Someone who needs help. Badly.” Her voice was. low, fearful, but determined. Very quietly she added, “When you see me, pretend our meeting is accidental. Completely accidental. And with that tense warning, she ended the call abruptly.

After a minute’s thought, he asked the hotel switchboard to inquire where that call had just come from—was it possible to trace the number, or had the operator any idea of the district in Rome from where the call was made? At first, he thought it was his Italian that created the confusion, and then—after several long outbursts of explanation ranging from the polite to the irritated (he must have sounded incredibly stupid)— he suddenly realised it was his question. Because no one had telephoned him.

He began to argue about that, and then (as he saw the futility of all this questioning) he broke it off hastily with a “Sorry, sorry. Please excuse me,” disentangling himself from a conversation that was now beyond his powers to control. “And thank you, signorina. Thank you for your help,” he added. Politeness in Italy, politeness was the key to everything—for the annoyance in the operator’s voice vanished, and he could imagine the smile spreading over her face as she said, “Thank you, signore. And is it possible than another guest was calling you from his room?”

Yes, it could have been possible. Or the girl could have walked through the lobby to the row of house telephones near the elevator, and used one of them. But how had she known his room number? He might as well ask how she had known his plans for leaving Rome.

He went downstairs at a quarter to twelve. He hadn’t quite decided if he were going to walk past the café called Doney’s. Or not. It was just like that. He was interested, yes; and curious, definitely curious, but he was still wary. What was this girl? A confidence trickster, a prostitute as the police had suggested last night, a possible blackmailer? Somehow—perhaps he was too gullible—somehow he didn’t believe any of that. He kept remembering the pleading note in her voice. “Someone who needs help. Badly.”

The lobby, large, dark, and cool, shaded rigorously from the glare of the brilliant Italian sun, was filled with young people returning from their morning pilgrimages. Students clustered in groups: girls in cotton dresses with wide skirts and neatly bloused tops, flat heels, large handbags, and short white gloves; young men in seersucker jackets and crew cuts. It seemed as if half the college population of the United States was visiting Rome this summer of 1956.

He handed over his room key at the porter’s desk. “Any word of a reservation?”

The senior porter shook his head. “Not yet, Signore Lammiter. We do not expect to hear anything definite until four o’clock.”

Ah yes, Lammiter thought: now is the time for everyone to shut up shop for lunch. And after lunch, the siesta. Half-past four might be a more accurate prediction before any business would be done on that hot July afternoon. He turned towards the door, leaving an anxious group of schoolteachers from Ohio inquiring about seats for Traviata at the Baths of Caracalla. He halted at the entrance, hesitating behind the heavy curtain of white sailcloth which cut off the sunlight at the threshold. For a moment he watched the crowded hotel lobby; for a moment he listened to the babel of tongues. He could recognise at least six foreign languages being spoken in addition to occasional Italian—Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, French, English, Swedish, or Danish (he wasn’t quite sure, and Austrian German. Labels on neat piles of luggage near the doorway came from practically every country in Western Europe; from Egypt and Israel and Syria; from Ceylon, Hong Kong, Australia. For a moment, the noise and movement added to his indecision as if they hypnotised him. Then he noticed the large clock over the porter’s desk. Five minutes to twelve.

He pushed aside the gently blowing screen and stepped through the open doorway into the brilliant blinding light. The light breeze puffed its hot breath into his face. He turned sharply left and entered the broad sweep of the Via Vittorio Veneto. He walked at an even pace on the wide sidewalk, as the other foreigners were doing. He was a man on his way to Doney’s for a drink and a pleasant view of the world strolling by.

3

The Via Vittorio Veneto is the main promenade in Rome, a wide curve of a slowly descending hill, edged with trees, sweeping down from the old Roman wall to the more commercial streets of the modern city, covering no greater distance than half of a brief mile. But it contains much. It is the street of big hotels and sidewalk cafés, of small expensive shops for perfume and pretty shoes; of banks and imposing buildings; of lovely bareheaded girls strolling, breasts out, waistlines in, between the rows of café tables; of the Capuchin church with its coarse-gowned tonsured friars welcoming visitors to view its crypts filled with dead brothers’ bones—skull and ribs and pelvis laid out in patterns like a carefully arranged flower bed or a burst of fireworks. It is the street of thick trees giving dappled shade to broad sidewalks; of crowding taxis, smart cars, white-uniformed traffic policemen; of young men swerving on flatulent Vespas, foreigners on foot, young Italian soldiers on wide-eyed leave in ill-fitting uniforms; of crisp, khaki-suited tourist police with a protective air; of the United States Embassy sitting placidly among walled gardens and ornamental balustrades; of grave-faced, tall, handsome carabinieri with gold braid, black cavalry boots, and carefully held swords, pacing majestically in matched pairs; of the Excelsior, where Texas oil men and Hollywood stars scatter largesse and perpetuate the myth that every American is a millionaire; of neighbouring Doney’s, where the chic and the odd, the dramatic and the beautiful, the bad and the vicious, the known and the strange, the quiet and flamboyant, the tragic and the farcical, the enchanted and the charming, all gather before the midday and evening meals to eye and be eyed.

The girl couldn’t have chosen a meeting place more favoured by foreigners, Lammiter thought as he reached Doney’s. The pre-luncheon crowd had started to gather. The little round tables, which edged the sidewalk like a guard of honour, leaving a centre path for the pedestrians (and it was surprising how many people would saunter past, not only once or twice but three times and more), were already half-filled. In another fifteen minutes they would all be occupied.

He kept his pace slow, untroubled, his eyes seemingly looking for a table where a gay umbrella would provide sufficient shade. He had the sudden fear that she wouldn’t arrive, that this little incident would end as a dreary, hour of waiting, of false alarms, of fading hopes, and a sudden angry retreat to a lonely meal. Everything had gone so badly for him in the last four weeks that he had begun to expect nothing but disappointment. And then he saw her. He didn’t have to try very hard to look surprised.

“Hallo!” he said, stopping abruptly. She was alone at one of the tables that lined the grass edge of the sidewalk. Behind her was a row of parked cars, and then a stream of steady traffic. One table, to her left, was still empty; the other, on her right, was occupied by a handsome red-haired Italian, who was too openly interested in the girl to be anything but what he seemed—someone who admired a pretty woman. Pretty? She was beautiful. Lammiter stared down at her in amazement. “Well,” he added, beginning to smile, “well—”

“It can’t be!” she said, startled, smiling, delighted. It all seemed a natural succession of emotions. “But in Rome, everyone meets,” she added. “Sooner or later, everyone meets.”

“Are you waiting for a friend? Or may I join you?”

“Please do.”

So he pulled round the other wicker chair to the side of the small round table, and sat down to face her. Behind him, he heard almost a sigh of disappointment from her Italian admirer.

“Have I changed so much?” she asked as he kept looking at her. She was wearing a sleeveless white linen blouse, low-necked. Her bare arms were tanned, rounded, firm.

“In a way, yes. Last time we met, you weren’t so cool-looking.”

“Cool? In this temperature?”

“It’s hot,” he agreed. “And I hear it’s going to get hotter.” Behind him, a chair scraped as it was pushed back. A waiter hurried forward to lift the money that had been left to pay for the Italian’s Cinzano and to take Lammiter’s order.

“Beer: Danish,” he told the waiter, watching the Italian walk away. “Too bad. I spoiled his plans for a pleasant luncheon.” And possibly a cosy siesta, he thought. He studied the girl’s face, and he was smiling again. He hadn’t felt as relaxed as this, or as little unhappy, for a whole month. Was he beginning at last to get over Eleanor? If so, this girl might be the pleasantest cure he could find. Her dark eyes were wide-spaced, richly lashed under excellently marked eyebrows. The forehead was broad and intelligent. Her features were classical, as Roman as one of the pretty stone girls in the Campidoglio museum. And, most startling against the honey colour of her glowing skin, she wore no make-up on her lips. They were soft, natural. It was a current fashion among the Roman girls, he had noticed. With a white face, it would have had a drab effect. With their deeply tanned faces and skilfully mascaraed eyelashes, the natural lips were startling.

“At least we can talk now,” she said, “and quickly. Before someone else sits down. Or perhaps the sun will discourage them.”

He realised then that only their table was shaded at this time of day by the small tree behind them. Other tables had their sheltering umbrellas or awnings. But here, the three tables usually depended on the tree. He looked at the girl speculatively. It was always difficult to remember that anyone as decorative as this could also be clever. But it was necessary to remember that. More guardedly, he said, “Why did you want to see me?”

“To thank you.”

He shook his head, smiling. Try again.”

“To warn you.”

“Me?”

“We must keep smiling. We are talking about America— about Harvard in 1950—just before you went off to Korea.”

“Look—” he said.

“Please smile,” she urged, her voice low. The waiter brought a bottle of beer, opened it, poured it, and left. Lammiter said, as if there had been no interruption, “How do you know about Harvard? Or Korea? And who is watching us now so that we’ve got to keep this bright and breezy merriment stuck all over our faces? And why should I be warned? I’m in no danger. I’m just a peaceful guy who has been minding his own miserable business for four weeks. I’m leaving Rome today, anyway.”

“Yes, we know that too. And that worries my friends.”

He looked at her, startled. “Friends” had been bitterly spoken.

“They don’t like your plan to visit Perugia, not after your interest in me last night.”

“Perugia? Your friends aren’t quite up to date on all my plans. I’m going back to America.”

“Oh no!”

“You are forgetting to smile,” he said. She stared at him. She looked, suddenly, so young and defenceless that he relented.

“What’s this all about, anyway?”

She shook her head.

“Come on, tell me,” he urged gently. “You didn’t come here just to advise me to avoid Perugia.”

“It was my friends who didn’t want you to go there.”

He noticed again the bitterness with which she emphasised the word “friends.” “But you wanted me to go there?” She was silent, watching him. It seemed better to concentrate on her so-called friends. “Why did your—friends not want me in Perugia?”

“They think you could very well be an agent, an American agent.” He stared at her. But she was serious. “You were in Army Intelligence, weren’t you?”

He began to laugh. “Oh, I burned the bits of paper in the trash basket for a month or two. Then the office caught fire one day, and I was demoted. I held the door open for the big brass when they visited my colonel.”

She wasn’t persuaded. And she wasn’t amused, either. She said slowly, “You’ve been in Rome for four weeks. Without any apparent purpose.”

“I am a writer. At least, that’s what my passport says ‘writer’.”

“That is always a very good cover.”

“Not since Somerset Maugham wrote Ashenden.”

“You have friends in Washington. In Intelligence work.” She was trying to fight down some major disappointment.

“They stayed on in the service. Why shouldn’t they get promoted to Washington? You can’t expect them to live in foxholes or army tents forever.” He looked at her with curiosity. “Did you hope I was connected with Intelligence?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “Or the F.B.I. Or the C.I.A. Something like that...” She looked at him quickly, as if to surprise the truth.

“No,” he could assure her frankly. “I’ve even lost touch with most of my friends. I never seem to meet them nowadays.” He frowned, as he suddenly realised that was not quite accurate. Three days ago, right here in Rome, Bunny Camden had thumped on his shoulder blade and practically given him curvature of the spine. But Bunny was probably in Naples right now, and you didn’t talk about Bunny without Bunny’s permission. Bunny was the type who knew what he was doing even if no one else ever did.

“Yes?” she asked quickly, noting the frown.

He said, “I’m puzzled. How did your ‘friends’ do all this research on me?—Just how did they learn—”

“They have a good source of information on you.”

“They have?” He was suddenly annoyed. “And who are ‘they’?”

“We must keep our voices low,” she said. Her eyes flickered briefly towards a table under the café awning, where two men were seated. It lay opposite theirs, divided from them by a stream of passers-by. He noticed, now, that she always seemed to speak when people passed in front of them, as if their movement would hide her expression from the opposite table.

“All right,” he said. “Who are ‘they’, anyway?” He studied her face. “You don’t really like them very much, do you? Then why call them friends?” She looked away, as if absorbed by the three American movie stars who were walking so slowly along the aisle between the tables, “Did they tell you to meet me here?”

She nodded.

“Then, if they expected us to meet, why were we to pretend it was all accidental? Who else is watching us?”

“I can’t be sure,” she said. “But it is likely I am being watched by other people, too.”

She shrugged her shoulders, but she was worried. She took the cigarette he offered her with a strained smile of thanks.

“Weren’t you afraid to come here?” he asked.

“I’m well guarded at this moment. And besides, the two men of last night are—” she hesitated “—they are dead.”

“What?” He was incredulous, and then frankly disbelieving.

“Please,” she said, “we must keep our voices low.”

“Who killed the men who attacked you? Your friends?” He began to smile a little. What a story, what undiluted hogwash! Either that, or she’d better change the company she keeps, he thought.

“So they told me. This morning. But perhaps it may have been a lie—to make me feel all is safe. But—” She took a deep breath. Her lips trembled for a moment. Suddenly, watching the fear she was trying to hide, he believed at least part of her story.

He said, “Do your friends know that you are working against them?”

Her face went rigid with surprise at his guess. Quickly, with a pathetic smile, she said, “Please—please pretend I’m finding out about you, instead of your finding out about me.”

“And what do your friends want to learn about me?”

“Why you are in Italy? Are you dangerous to them?”

“Dangerous?” He was now amused. Her sense of the dramatic was more Italian than American, although her accent was practically regulation Miss Hewitt’s Classes. She must have lived for a number of years in the United States, been to school there. Her manners were the recognisable pattern of the well-brought-up Eastern girl. “Wellesley or Smith?” he asked suddenly.

“Please take me seriously,” she said sharply. “And my college was Radcliffe.”

“Then we’ve got Cambridge in common.” That was always a useful point of departure in any friendship. In a way, he thought, it was a pity that this one was going to be so short.

“Take me seriously,” she repeated, her voice dropping. Her eyes were unhappy. Her smile was pleading.

“How can I? I don’t know who you are. Or what you are really trying to tell me.”

“Don’t leave Italy,” she said, turning her head to look at the traffic behind them in the busy street. If anyone had been lip reading her remarks, this little move would have defeated him neatly. “Please don’t go. I need your help.”

“I don’t think your friends would approve of that suggestion. What’s their line of business, anyway?”

She considered her answer for a long moment, and in the end she didn’t give it. “The sun is moving around,” she said, her voice as unhappy as her eyes. She pulled back her arm into the shade, and moved her chair a few inches into the narrowing shadows. “Soon we shall have to leave.” She glanced over once more at the table with the two men. One was a middle-aged English-looking type: he still sat there, reading a book. The other, a handsome dark-haired Italian in an expensive grey suit, had left. But his drink was unfinished. He could be visiting another table. Lammiter found himself suddenly, unexpectedly, sharing the girl’s tenseness. He looked at the reading Englishman—the thin haggard face and shadowed eyes seemed vaguely familiar, so did the lock of long wayward hair falling over the narrow upraised eyebrow—and then back at the girl.

“Something wrong?” he asked her quietly.

“I’ll soon know,” she said, watching the waiter approaching them. “Mr. Lammiter, can I say you’ve asked me to luncheon with you?”

“Yes, you can say that.” But to whom? “And I hope you’ve accepted.”

The waiter said, “Signorina Di Feo? Telephone for you, if, you please.”

“Ah yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She looked at Lammiter, and rose slowly.

“What comes before Di Feo?” he asked.

“Rosana,” she said. She had a proud way of carrying her head, a most attractive and tantalising way of turning to give a glancing smile over her shoulder.

“I’ll wait here until you get back. Don’t be long, or I’ll get sunstroke.”

Then, as he settled down to wait, he wondered whether she would come back. If she really needed help, she would. And yet, where did that place him? He was leaving Rome tonight. What help could he give? It would be kinder if he walked away, so that when she came back to this table—if she did come back—she would know that he couldn’t give any help. Then she’d have to begin looking for some other obliging idiot. Yet he didn’t start counting out money to cover the two paper tabs that the waiter had left under the ashtray. He didn’t make one move to leave. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, felt the warm sun play on his spine, and watched the parade of handsome Romans mixing with the eternal tourists.

4

As he waited for Rosana, Lammiter again noted the preponderance of young America: the college girls; and the high-school boys; and the young men just out of service, their hair still close-cut, their shoulders still squared away, and the G.I. savings in their pockets. There were older Americans, too, mostly family men shepherding their flocks back to their hotels: the grey-haired and bald-headed fathers, in button-down collars and the new drip-dry jackets posing as seersucker, patiently accepting a summer vacation spent in museums and churches while dissembling their worry about the low evaporation point of money; the wives, who had read the guide books and provided the enthusiasm, now harried and hurried but still determined on culture in spite of the problems of food and drink for the children, of nylon laundry all over the bathroom, of the chore of keeping a family neat while it lived from suitcases; the children themselves, remarkably good-natured, who must have had better ideas on spending a hot summer day than by breathing the petrol fumes of a modern city. The English tourists were mostly middle-aged. The men wore high-waisted trousers held up by taut suspenders over transparent nylon shirts open and neatly folded back at the neck. And their choice in holiday shoes was odd: criss-crossed, leather sandals displaying lots of heavy wool sock. Their women weren’t what Lammiter expected, either: they didn’t look like the Englishwomen he met in New York or Washington: these Roman tourists were more solidly constructed, sensible in shoes and ankles, more like Brussels sprouts than the well-advertised roses, nice and wholesome and all so very much alike. With some pepper and salt and butter, they’d probably taste alike, too. Once outside of the buses which had brought them across Europe, the English couples kept together, in tight phalanxes of four or six, as if they distrusted the friendliness of the natives. Perhaps they were new to travel, and were still worried about white-slave traffic, unmentionable diseases, and pickpockets. The thin middle-aged Englishman sitting at the table opposite Lammiter seemed both horrified and fascinated by his own countrymen: he kept looking up at them in pained disbelief. Not one tie, far less an old school tie, among them.

If the English stiffened into set moulds when they travelled, the French became as shapeless as a melted candle. Not for them was the clean shirt, and the trousers at least pressed under the mattress, or the dainty afternoon frock; they dressed for a comfortable journey (which usually meant five packed into a small beetle-like car with bits and pieces of luggage strapped all around): crumpled shorts and hairy legs, wrinkled skirts and soiled blouses, bare feet in equally dusty sandals. They sauntered slowly, carelessly, dropping into a ragged single file as often as not, like a column of Bedouins cautiously straggling into rival territory. If they were impressed, it was well disguised. And the worse a French tourist dressed, the more contemptuously he looked at others. The carefully washed, brushed, and dressed Italians—even those who could afford only one meal a day— refused to be scorned. They ignored the tourists (after all, Rome had been invaded by barbarians for centuries) and watched the pretty Roman girls with national pride. From sixteen until twenty-two or so, they were beautiful, as beautiful as any Lammiter had ever seen anywhere. But what happened after twenty-two, he wondered? Then he saw Rosana Di Feo coming towards him at last. She was an exception to the general rule, he considered. She must be twenty-three or -four, and she was still a beauty.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “to have been so long.” But she didn’t sit down.

So he rose. “I was watching the tourists,” he explained.

Her voice was very low. “I’ve watched them for three days, watched and watched and wondered. Did you see anyone who looked as if he’d risk danger?”

He glanced at her curiously, and counted out the money and the tip for their drinks. “Shall we lunch now?”

“I can’t.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. She stood with her back to the other tables, to the café windows. “They’ve learned you are leaving Italy tonight.”

“Oh?” He hoped his face was under control. “So you’re under orders to leave me alone now. I’m no longer dangerous?” He had spoken half-jokingly. But she faced him, her back to the crowded tables, her face unguarded for a moment, and he suddenly realised that she was both afraid and hopeless.

“Yes,” she said. “Those are the orders.”

“And did the orders come by telephone, or by that handsome black-haired Italian in the grey suit? The one who sat opposite us for a while with the thin Englishman?”

“How did you know?”

“Because he is standing at the café door, watching you, right now.” She said nothing to that. He said, suddenly serious, “Perhaps it would have been safer for you not to come back to this table.”

“I told him it would be very suspicious if I left you without saying goodbye.”

“Who is he?” The Italian was a tall man, about thirty-five or so, with dark hair, thick, carefully brushed. He had a superior air, as if he were accustomed to behave correctly. He was obviously well fed, but also well exercised. He was most carefully dressed. Handsome, yes. Attractive to women, definitely. Now he was going forward to another table, to spend a few minutes in conversation with an ageing beauty, exquisitely dressed, her white face sheltered from the sun by an elaborate hat, her vanity bolstered by the adulation of the two young men who kept her company.

Rosana hesitated. But she didn’t answer his question. “If you change your mind about leaving,” she said, holding out her hand to shake his, “it would be safest to keep it a secret.” She pressed a small wad of paper into his palm, “Goodbye.”

“Safest for whom?”

“For both of us.”

He shook hands solemnly, but the amusement quickened in his eyes. He was convinced that a good deal of dramatics had gone into persuading him to stay. There was too much emotion, too much play-acting around here for his taste. He’d stick to the theatre for that kind of thing, keeping it safest in a world of make-believe. But the day stretched out in its lonely fashion before him till he’d got on that homebound plane, and he tried to prolong the goodbye.

“Have a safe journey,” she said, a little bitterly, as if she had read his thoughts and she turned away.

Quickly, he started after her. He raised his voice to normal, “I’m sorry we can’t lunch together.”

She said urgently, quietly, “Don’t follow me. Stay at your table!”

“Let me walk you to the corner,” he said. “Even acquaintances do that.”

“There’s no need.”

“None. But I want to. Besides, if I didn’t walk a pretty girl to the corner, it would look odd.”

They were passing the table now where the ageing beauty, her two young men, and the handsome dark-haired Italian were sitting.

“Oh, Rosana!” It was the older woman speaking, her white face cracking delicately round the lips and eyes. “You never come to see me any more,” she said chidingly.

“I shall, Principessa,” Rosana promised, halting unwillingly but politely as the three men at the table rose to their feet. Lammiter walked on slowly for a few paces, plunging his hands into his pockets as if he had nothing to do but wait. It was a relief to let the small wad of paper drop free from his palm into safety. Then he halted, looking at the traffic, while he lit a cigarette.

The princess’s voice held Rosana. “We move soon to the hills. So come tomorrow, Rosana. The boys want to go to Ischia”— Lammiter could almost hear the flutter of their eyes and the pouting of their lips as they mimed their disappointment— “but I refuse to have anything to do with the Bay of Naples in August.” And then there was a new inflection in the clear-carrying voice, one of subtle sarcasm. “Luigi, do let me introduce you. Luigi Pirdtta—the Signorina Di Feo.” Lammiter almost swung round to face the dark-haired Italian. “But of course,” the princess halted the introduction half-way, “you have met. How stupid of me! Wasn’t Luigi a great friend of your brother’s, my dear?” Her voice was elegiac now, hinting at disaster. Lammiter glanced casually around. The dark-haired Italian was very much at ease, sympathetic, regretful. Was it the charm of his manners that had caught Eleanor Halley so surely? Or his profile, or his shoulders? They were all good. Lammiter threw away the cigarette, which had suddenly turned bitter. “How sad it all was, my dear, how indescribably sad!” the princess told Rosana, and then the girl, with a small bow and a fixed smile, walked on to join Lammiter.

He said nothing until they had passed the last table on the sidewalk. There was still something of shock and disbelief in his voice when he said, “Pirotta? Luigi Pirotta?... Or was she lying?”

“The princess may be tactless, malicious, even rude. But she never lies. Yes, that is Pirotta. He has a title, too, to impress his American fiancée.” Rosana glanced at him swiftly. “I’m sorry,” she added.

He didn’t speak. He was still trying to accustom himself to the idea that the dark-haired Italian was Eleanor Halley’s choice for a husband.

She said, “All right, I’ll be honest. I’m not sorry. Except that the princess played my trump card. I was going to tell you his name before we parted. So that you would stay.”

“Why?”

“I am offering you revenge.”

He began to smile without much humour. He shook his head.