Cause for Alarm v-2 Page 6

  “That’s bad.”

  “Bad enough. Fortunately, I’ve got other contacts. All the same, I’ve promised myself a good five minutes with young Saponi one of these days.” His jaw jutted forward. He regarded me with an expression of amiable ferocity. “I suppose you wouldn’t like to buy a French bicycle, Mr. Marlow? I’ve got the sample somewhere.”

  I laughed. “I’m afraid I shan’t have much time for cycling. There’s a lot to be done on the fourth floor.”

  He nodded. “I thought there might be. Your people in Wolverhampton were rather long about appointing someone.”

  “You knew Ferning, didn’t you, Mr. Zaleshoff?”

  He nodded and began to roll himself a cigarette.

  “Yes, I did. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular. Except that I’ve no idea what he looked like.”

  “I shouldn’t think that would worry you.”

  “It doesn’t. I’m just curious.”

  “Any special reason for the curiosity?” It could not have been said more casually.

  “No. Only so many people seem to want to know if I knew Ferning. Even the police seem interested.”

  “The police! You don’t want to take any notice of them.”

  “It’s difficult not to take notice. I spent practically the whole morning at the Amministrazione.” I launched into a somewhat spiteful account of my encounter with the signor Capitano. He listened but made no comment. By the time I had finished, the food had arrived.

  We ate in comparative silence. I was, quite frankly, more interested in my food than in conversation. This seemed to suit my companion. His thoughts seemed to have strayed. Once I noticed him gazing moodily at the table-cloth, his fork poised in mid-air. His eyes met mine and he grinned. “There’s a soup stain on the cloth that looks exactly like South America,” he said apologetically. But it was obvious that his mind had not been on the soup stain which was, in any case, shaped more like the Isle of Wight. I put it down to the late Vittorio Saponi.

  “I think,” I said when I had finished, “that I’ll have a brandy with my coffee.”

  “Have you tried Strega yet, Mr. Marlow?”

  “No, but I think I’ll postpone that pleasure. I feel like brandy. Will you join me?”

  “Thanks.” He looked at me for a moment. Then:

  “Who else has asked you about Ferning, Mr. Marlow?”

  “A man who calls himself General Vagas. Do you know him?”

  “The guy that gets himself up like a rocking horse?”

  I laughed. “That sounds like him. Apparently he’s a Yugo-Slav. He wants me to go to dinner with him and his wife next week. Do you know anything about him?”

  “Not very much.” His expression had become quite blank. He was scarcely listening to me. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and his face lit up in triumph. “Got it!” He beamed at me. “You know how it is, Mr. Marlow, when you kind of feel you’ve lost something somewhere and can’t quite think what? Well, that’s how I felt. But I’ve just remembered. In my office, I’ve got a photograph of Ferning. Would you like to see it?”

  I was rather disconcerted by this sudden interest.

  “Well, yes. I would. Perhaps I could look down some time to-morrow.”

  “To-morrow?” He looked at me incredulously. “Tomorrow nothing. We’ll call back in the office when we leave. I’ve got a bottle of brandy there. The real stuff. Not like this.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of bothering you.” I did not, in any case, feel like toiling back to the Via San Giulio at that time of night.

  But he was adamant. “It’s no bother at all, Mr. Marlow. Glad to be of assistance. I can’t think why I didn’t remember before. It’s only a snap, mind you, and not particularly good of him. He wanted some photographs for his identity card and I had a Kodak. I’d forgotten all about it until just now.” He changed the subject abruptly. “How are you getting on with Bellinetti?”

  “Not too badly,” I said cautiously. “He probably resents me a little.”

  “Sure, sure”-he nodded sagely-“only natural for a guy in his position.” He summoned the waiter and asked for the bill, which he discomforted me by insisting on paying.

  On our way back to the offices, however, he fell silent again. I concluded that he was regretting his earlier enthusiasm and suggested again that to-morrow would do just as well. The response was a stream of reassurance. He would not hear of my waiting. Besides, there was the cognac. He had been trying to remember exactly where he had put the photographs, that was all. We walked on. He was, I decided, a very curious man; not at all my idea of an American. But, then, the Englishman’s idea of what an American ought to look like and how an American ought to behave was notoriously wide of the mark. Still, he was odd. And there was a quality about him that attracted you. It wasn’t so much in what he said, but in the manner in which he said it. He had a way of disconcerting you with a gesture, with the way he timed his phrases. Yet you could not quite discover just why you had been disconcerted. You received the impression that you were watching a very competent actor using all the technical tricks in his repertoire in an effort to make something of a badly written part. There was something about him which cried out for analysis and yet defied it. I glanced sideways at him. His chin was tucked inside the thick grey muffler that he wore coiled twice round his neck; and he was staring fiercely at the ground in front of him as though he suspected the presence of a man-trap in the pavement. It was a portrait of a man with something on his mind.

  In his office, he switched on the desk lamp.

  It was a large room, larger than mine, and very neat and tidy, with a row of steel filing cabinets along one wall and a green steel desk to match. But on the wall behind the desk was a dreadful tinted photograph of the Venus de Medici. He saw me looking at it.

  “It’s a honey, isn’t it, Mr. Marlow? I keep it in memory of Mister Saponi. One day I’m going to give her a moustache and a monocle. Sit down and make yourself at home.”

  He got out a bottle of cognac, half-filled two wine glasses with it and pushed a box of cigarettes towards me. Then he went to one of the cabinets and began to go through the files in it.

  “By the way,” he murmured over his shoulder, “have you decided to accept Vagas’ invitation?”

  The question irritated me. “I really haven’t thought about it. Why?”

  But at that moment he gave vent to an exclamation of satisfaction. “Ah! here it is.” He drew a large card out of the file and brought it over to the light. “There you are. The late Mr. Ferning.”

  I took the card. Gummed in the top right-hand corner was a hard, flat head-and-shoulders photograph of a middle-aged man. Except for a fringe of hair above his ears, he was quite bald. The face was round and podgy with small anxious eyes and an indeterminate mouth that seemed on the point of framing a protest. It was a weak and ordinary face. I looked at the rest of the card. In the top left-hand corner was written “F326.” The lower half was taken up by a strip of typewritten paper pasted on by the corners.

  Sidney Arthur Ferning (I read). Born London 1891. Engineer. Representative of Spartacus Machine Tool Co. Ltd. of Wolverhampton, England, in Milan. Killed in street, Milan. (Here followed the date.) See V. 18.

  I read it through once more, then I looked at the photograph again. One corner of it had come adrift from the card. Without thinking I pressed it back into position. As it did not stick, I lifted it to moisten the gum.

  It was done almost subconsciously; to play for time. There was very obviously nothing casual, nothing unpremeditated about this formidable card. My mind went back to the restaurant. So he had forgotten all about the photograph. A few minutes ago he had been “trying to remember” exactly where it was.

  Then I had my second shock. As I lifted the corner of the photograph I saw that there was a red rubber stamp mark on it. The stamp consisted of the name and address of a London passport photographer. I put the card down. So much for the “Kodak snap.”

&nbs
p; I looked across the desk. Zaleshoff was watching my face and on his lips was a faint smile. I had a sudden desire to go. There was something here that I did not understand, that I did not want to understand. I got to my feet.

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Zaleshoff. It’s good of you to take so much trouble to satisfy my curiosity. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going. I have to be up early in the morning.”

  “Yes, of course. You have an appointment with the police, you said.”

  “I have also some work to do.”

  “Naturally. But don’t forget your brandy, Mr. Marlow.”

  I glanced at the glass. I had not touched it. I picked it up.

  “Have another cigarette while you’re drinking it.” He held the box out. I hesitated. I could not very well swallow the brandy at a gulp and leave. To leave it untouched would be rude. I took a cigarette and sat down again. He blew the match out and examined the stalk. “You know,” he said pensively, “I wouldn’t, if I were you, bother to go to the police to-morrow.”

  “They have my passport.”

  He dropped the match. “I’ll make a bet with you, Mr. Marlow. I’ll bet you a thousand lire to a cake of soap that the police have mislaid your passport.”

  “Good Heavens, why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just a hunch.”

  “A bad one, I hope. I won’t take your bet. It would be sheer robbery. By the way”-I glanced at the card lying on the desk-“do you card-index all your acquaintances?”

  He shook his head. “No, not all of them, Mr. Marlow. Only some of them. It’s a sort of hobby with me, you see. Some people collect sea shells. I collect photographs.”

  He leaned forward suddenly, his jaw thrust out pugnaciously. “Mr. Marlow, this evening is, to all intents and purposes, the first time we’ve met and I’ve spent most of it so far in telling you a pack of lies. You’ve probably guessed that already, because you’ve caught me out in one that I hadn’t meant you to catch me out in. I didn’t know that that photograph wasn’t fixed properly. Well, all right. That’s about as bad a way of starting up a life-long friendship as I can think of off-hand. There’s a nice atmosphere of skulduggery and mistrust about it. You realise that you don’t know who the Hell I am and decide that you don’t want to know. You’re probably thinking that I must be some sort of crook. Splendid! And now I’m going to ask you to let me give you a piece of advice. I’m going to tell you that it won’t cost you a cent, that, on the contrary, you stand to make big money by taking the advice, and you’re going to wonder what my game is. And now, the whole thing is sounding to you about as phoney as a glass eye, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I said firmly; “what is it to be, a vacuum cleaner or a refrigerator? I don’t need either.”

  He frowned. “Do you mind being serious for a moment, Mr. Marlow?”

  “I’m sorry. All this disarming candour has been a little too much for me.”

  “Well now, I’m going to ask you to trust me and take the advice.”

  “I’m always ready to listen to advice.”

  “Good. Then my advice to you is to accept General Vagas’ invitation. He might have a proposition for you.”

  I faced him squarely. “Now look here, Mr. Zaleshoff. I don’t know what you’ve got in the back of your mind and I really am not interested. Furthermore, I quite fail to see what on earth an invitation issued to me has to do with you.”

  “I still ask you to accept it.”

  “Well, it may interest you to know that I have already decided to refuse it.”

  “Then change your mind, Mr. Marlow.”

  I rose. “I feel sure you will excuse me, Mr. Zaleshoff. I’ve had a tiring day and I’m not very fond of round games, even in the morning. Thank you for your dinner and for your very pleasant brandy. Perhaps you will allow me to return your hospitality some time. At the moment I’m afraid I must go. Good night to you.”

  He stood up. “Good night, Mr. Marlow. I shall look forward to seeing you again soon and having another chat.”

  I went to the door.

  “Oh, by the way.”

  I turned. He picked the card up from his desk and flicked it with a finger-nail. “You may have noticed,” he said slowly, “that at the foot of this card there is a note. It says: ‘See V. 18.’ Card V. 18 is in one of those filing cabinets. If, after you see General Vagas next time, you would like to inspect that card, I shall be delighted to get it out for you.”

  “Why should I want to inspect it?”

  “The V, Mr. Marlow, stands for Vagas.”

  “That’s very interesting; but as I shan’t be seeing General Vagas…” I shrugged. “Good night.”

  “Pleasant dreams, Mr. Marlow.”

  I went.

  My dreams that night were far from pleasant. I remember waking up at about half-past three from a nightmare in which Bellinetti was smothering me with huge stacks of photographs of General Vagas. But when I finally went to sleep again I was thinking of Claire. It was, after all, only a question of a month or two before I would see her again. Dear Claire.

  5

  DIPLOMATIC EXCHANGES

  I did not see Zaleshoff again for over a week.

  The gods, like most other practical jokers, have a habit of repeating themselves too often. Man has, so to speak, learned to expect the pail of water on his head. He may try to side-step, but when, as always, he gets wet, he is more concerned about his new hat than the ironies of fate. He has lost the faculty of wonder. The tortured shriek of high tragedy has degenerated into a petulant grunt. But there is still one minor booby-trap in the repertoire which, I suspect, never fails to provoke a belly-laugh on Olympus. I, at any rate, succumb to it with regularity. The kernel of the jest is an illusion; the illusion that the simple emotional sterility, the partial mental paralysis that comes with the light of the morning, is really sanity.

  The morning after that first curious evening with Zaleshoff was fine. It was cold, but the sun was shining and lighting up the faded green plush hangings of my room so that they looked more tawdry than they really were. The effect heightened the deception, coloured the illusion that now I was seeing clearly. Over my coffee I cheerfully pooh-poohed my sneaking apprehensions of the night before. The card index, this American’s mysterious hintings-what a lot of nonsense! I must have been crazy to think of taking it seriously. It was all, I assured myself, due simply to my ignorance of the Continental business atmosphere. I must not forget to make allowances for that factor. Fitch had warned me of it. “Over there,” he had said, “they approach business as if it were a particularly dirty game of politics. They’d sooner play politics really; but if they can’t do that they play business in the same spirit.” Zaleshoff the American had evidently caught the infection. He was probably working up to a proposal that Vagas should introduce me to a man with an order to place, and that a substantial commission (payable in advance) would secure adequate representation of Spartacus’ interests. Well, he wouldn’t get the chance. I had too much real work to do to permit me to waste time with such childish nonsense.

  I see now that it was a piece of self-deception that was very nearly conscious; but semi-conscious or not, it was thoroughly effective, almost too effective, for I forgot General Vagas and the fact that I had to put off my appointment with him until practically the last minute.

  After an acrid morning with Bellinetti and his files, I went to the Amministrazione to collect my passport. After half an hour in the waiting-room, I wrung an admission from the attendant policeman that the signor Capitano was not in the building, and that he had left no instructions about either my identity card or my passport. If I would return later, all would arrange itself. I returned later and waited for a quarter of an hour. This time the policeman was more helpful. The signor Capitano had not returned, but he himself had made inquiries. The passport had been sent to the Foreign Department. It would, doubtless, be available on the following day. If I could call in then…

  But I did not call in
on the following day. I did not call in until the following Tuesday. The reason for this was that on the Thursday night I went to Genoa.

  As Pelcher had explained, one of my principal duties was to maintain personal contact with the users of Spartacus machines. Thursday’s post had brought a letter from one of these users, a big engineering firm with works near Genoa, and, as the letter raised points of technical importance, I had decided to make it an excuse to visit them. I should, in any case, have gone, as I had found that my Italian, though equal to most ordinary demands upon it, was as yet far too sketchy to permit me to commit my thoughts on technical subjects to paper.

  I spent Friday, Saturday and Monday in the customer’s works, and arrived back in Milan early on the Tuesday morning.

  It had been my first direct contact with a customer, and I had been impressed by the evidence I had had of Mr. Pelcher’s earlier activities. There had been some trouble over Bellinetti’s lack of attention to their interests, but they had been notified by signor Pelcher of my arrival and all was now well. On Sunday the works manager had driven me to Portofino in his car, and had permitted me to buy him a very expensive lunch. There had been talk of an order for six more S2 machines. I had received veiled but precise instructions concerning the method of paying the secret commission, and learned that my German competitors were obtuse and parsimonious when it came to the arrangement of such affairs. It was understood, however, that Spartacus were a sympathetic company to deal with. Their machines, too, were of the best. The Government inspectors would be in the works on the Monday. If I could spare the time to meet them, it would be to my advantage. I had spared the time, and found the inspectors as tractable as, if rather more discreet than, the works manager.