Cesare nodded. He closed his mask. The foils crossed in midair. “En garde!” Baker called.
Baker lunged forward and Cesare deflected the thrust and stepped back. He knew at once that Baker was no ordinary amateur. He smiled beneath his mask. He waited for Baker to lead again. There might be some fun in this encounter after all.
People began to drift across the gymnasium. There was a curious kind of tension that was immediately felt in the room. Baker pressed forward with a furious kind of concentration. Cesare’s foil flashed as he parried attack after attack. Slowly, step by step, he began to fall back. The onlookers began to sense an upset. A low murmur began to fill the room.
Baker still kept pressing forward. He was beginning to feel confident. Cardinali didn’t seem to be anywhere near as good as his reputation. He slashed in and Cesare locked foils with him. Baker tried to free his foil but Cesare held him easily. Baker pushed with all his strength at the man in front of him. Cesare didn’t move. It seemed to Baker as if he were pushing against a steel coil. Suddenly he realized that Cardinali had only been toying with him.
At the same moment Cesare pushed him away. Baker fell back a few steps and recovered in time to block a simple thrust. He lunged forward in a feint, then turned his foil quickly. Cesare was waiting for him.
Cesare laughed. “Very good,” his voice came patronizingly from beneath the mask. “Maestro Antonelli?”
“Yes,” Baker answered, watching Cardinali carefully. “Rome, 1951.”
“My compliments,” Cesare said, beginning his attack. “Signor Antonelli is very careful about his pupils. He accepts only the best.”
Baker was busy defending himself now. There was no time left for him to launch an attack. “Apparently I didn’t spend enough time with him,” he managed to say wryly.
Cesare laughed again. “The sword is a very demanding master. And in our time, as I said before, there are other weapons much more in fashion.”
Cesare’s foil seemed to suddenly have a life of its own. Baker could feel himself running out of breath. His own foil seemed to weigh a ton in his hand. Cesare seemed to sense his weariness and slowed down his attack.
Baker could feel the perspiration running down his face inside his mask. Each breath began to come more labored to his throat. Every motion was an effort now and still Cesare was moving gracefully, breathing easily. There were a dozen times he felt Cesare could have scored and each time Cesare purposely turned his foil away. A little more of this and he would fall exhausted to the floor.
His rising anger brought a wave of strength back to his arms. He summoned all his reserves for a last attack. He deflected Cesare’s foil and thrust forward.
“Touché,” the sound came from the spectators.
Baker stopped suddenly and looked down. Cesare’s foil was resting on his heart. It had come so quickly that he hadn’t even seen it.
He lowered his foil and opened his mask. “You’re much too good for me, Count Cardinali,” he said, breathing heavily.
Cesare saluted him with his foil. “I am lucky that you do not have more time for practice,” he said smiling.
Baker forced a smile to his lips. “Now, you are being kind.”
“Perhaps you will join me in a drink, Mr. Baker?” Cesare asked.
“Thanks,” Baker said quickly. “I could use one right now. I’ve had it.”
They sat in front of an open fire in the lounge. Cesare’s long legs were stretched out in front of him. He looked at Baker sitting opposite him and lifted his drink. “You did not come here merely to fence, Mr. Baker.”
Baker looked at him. In some ways Cardinali wasn’t very European at all. In this, for example, he came right out and spoke his mind. “That’s true, Count Cardinali,” he said. “Actually I’ve come to warn you and offer our help.”
Cesare lifted an eyebrow. “That’s very kind of you, but for what reason do I need warning?”
“We’ve had word downtown that your life is being threatened,” Baker said.
Cesare laughed. “How very melodramatic!”
“It’s not funny,” Baker said. “Certain men want you killed.”
“Me? What men?”
Baker looked at him. “Big Dutch, Allie Fargo, Dandy Nick.”
Cesare’s face was impassive. “Who are they?”
“The defendants in the trial where the witnesses were killed. You see, they think you’re the Stiletto.”
Cesare’s laugh was genuine and clear. “In that case why should they want to kill me? If I am the one who saved their miserable lives?”
Baker leaned forward. “That’s just it. They are afraid of you. They think you might turn against them.”
“They are stupid,” Cesare said, taking a sip of his drink.
“But they are dangerous,” Baker said earnestly. “There is no protection against a bullet in the back.”
Cesare got to his feet. “I can look after myself,” he said shortly. “I have survived worse dangers in the war than those men. You must know that by now. I hear your office is very thorough.”
Baker nodded. “Yes, but we would still like to be of help.”
Cesare’s voice grew cold. “Your office has been all the help to me I want. Perhaps if you were not so eager to obtain publicity in the newspapers, these men would not even know of me.”
Baker stood up. “We’re sorry about that, Count Cardinali. I don’t know how the newspapers got wind of our conversation, but if you should have any trouble don’t hesitate to call on us.” He held out his hand.
Cesare took it. “Thank you, Mr. Baker. But I don’t think it will be necessary.”
Cesare opened the door and entered the small foyer of his apartment. He began to take off his topcoat. “Tonio!” he called.
He stood there for a moment, then dropped his coat into a chair. He crossed to the kitchen door and opened it. “Tonio,” he called again. There was no answer.
Shaking his head, he crossed back into the living room and walked toward his bedroom. He would have to do something about that boy, whether or not he was Gio’s nephew. A servant should go only so far. Too often Tonio was not around when he arrived home. America had spoiled him.
He opened the door and walked into the bedroom. He turned on the light and started for the bathroom. The sound of running water came from it. He stopped. “Tonio!” he called again.
There was no answer. He started for the bathroom quickly, then stopped. Baker’s warning flashed through his mind. He moved his hand and the stiletto appeared in it. Silently he stepped to the door and flung it open.
A girl was just stepping from the shower, a towel held in her hand. She stared up at him, a startled expression on her face. “Cesare!”
“Ileana!” His voice was an echo of her surprise. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in California!”
Ileana raised the towel to her bosom. “I am taking a shower,” she said. Her eyes fell to the stiletto in his hand. “What are you doing with that knife? Who did you think would be in your bathroom?”
Cesare let go of the stiletto and it disappeared into his sleeve. Ileana ran to him, threw a moist arm around him and kissed him, holding the towel with her other hand. “Oh, Cesare, I need your help!”
Cesare looked down at her skeptically. It wasn’t Ileana who usually needed help. “What happened to your rich Texan?” he asked.
Ileana looked up at him. “You are angry with me,” she said. “I can tell. Because I did not wait for you in Monte Carlo.”
Cesare began to smile. “Ileana, you didn’t answer my question,” he said softly.
She turned away from him and went over to the dressing table and sat down before it. She looked up at his reflection in the mirror. “Be kind to me, Cesare,” she said in a small voice. “I have gone through a terrible experience.” She took a small towel from the rack and held it back toward him. “Please dry my back, I can never reach it.”
He took the towel from her. “The Texan, Ileana. What
about him?”
Her eyes were wide. “I don’t want to talk about it. It was too horrible. Do you think I’ve lost weight, Cesare?”
He was smiling now. He began to pat her back with the towel. “You look all right. What happened?”
Ileana closed her eyes for a moment. “I am relieved,” she said. “I was sure I had lost weight.” She opened her eyes and turned toward him. “The Texan, he was married.”
“You knew that.” Cesare smiled.
“Of course,” Ileana retorted. “I am not a child. But his wife was a horrible woman. Not very understanding. Really very provincial. She even reported me to the Department of Immigration. Do you know, Cesare, they are very stupid men?”
Cesare shook his head silently, still smiling.
“They could not understand,” she continued quickly, “how I could live in this country eight years without money and without working. They said if I did not have a job or a source of income they would deport me on the grounds of moral turpitude.”
Cesare put down the towel. “And what did you tell them?”
“What else could I tell them?” She shrugged. “I told them I was working for you. They did not believe it when I told them that I did not need a job in order to live. Cesare, would you give me a job?”
Cesare looked down at her. “I don’t know.” He smiled. “What can you do? You can’t take dictation, you can’t type. What will I use you for?”
She rose from the chair and turned toward him. She still held the towel precariously in front of her. Her eyes looked into his. “You are in the automobile business, no?”
Cesare nodded.
She moved very close to him. “There must be something I can do. I once owned a Rolls Royce.”
He began to laugh. He held out his arms to her and she came into them and he kissed her. “All right, we’ll see what we can do.”
“You will, Cesare?” Her voice was excited. “You’re wonderful!” She put her hands up to stroke his cheek. “I won’t be any trouble to you, Cesare. I promise. I only have to work long enough to get a social security number, I think they call it. That’s all they need to convince them that I’m legitimate.”
His arms tightened around her. “You’re legitimate all right.” He laughed. “You can always tell them I knew your parents.”
She glanced up at him quickly to see if there were any hidden meanings in his words but his eyes were laughing. Something caught in her throat and for the first time in a long while, even as he kissed her, she thought of her parents.
She remembered the expression on her father’s face the night he opened the door of her bedroom and saw them all in bed together. Her mother. Herself. And the rich American.
13
Her mother was English and only seventeen when she had married the dashing young Rumanian, Baron de Bronczki. The tabloids at the time had called it a storybook romance. Less than a year later Ileana had been born, there had been a revolution and the storybook was ended. Life has a way of dealing with romance.
Actually she never had much of a chance to know her parents while she was a child. She had a vague idea that her mother had been a very beautiful girl and her father a very handsome man, but she had spent most of her life in schools away from them.
First there had been that school in England. She had gone there when she was almost five years old when the war had begun. Her father had gone into the British Army and her mother was wrapped up in the wartime social frenzy and had no time for her.
Then when the war was over they had moved to Paris and she had been sent to a school in Switzerland. The excuse then was that her father, almost a cripple now from his wounds, would be too occupied with his struggle to regain his lands and former wealth to let them settle permanently in any one place. It never occurred to her to question her mother on her feelings about it. Her mother was always too busy with her friends and social activities. Besides there was something about her mother that made Ileana feel too awkward and out of place to dare speak with her.
Ileana was almost fourteen then and the school in Switzerland was different from the one in England. In England the emphasis had been on the academic, in Switzerland the emphasis was on the social. The school was filled with rich young ladies who had been sent from England and America to have superimposed on their youthful freshness a finishing polish that was available nowhere else in the world. Ileana learned to ski and swim and ride. She also learned how to dress and dance and make small talk.
When Ileana was sixteen, she had already begun to fulfill the promise of her beauty. Her complexion and eyes were English, her figure and grace came from her father. And right across the lake from her school was a similar school for young men. Close contact was kept between the two schools for they needed each other to complement their work.
There had been an outing that summer when she turned sixteen. Her partner had been a tall dark young man who was heir to some throne in the Middle East. He had a long name that no one could remember so they called him Ab, short for Abdul. He was a year older than she, and darkly aquiline, blue-eyed and handsome. Their canoe had taken them to a small island away from the others and now they lay, stretched out in their swimming suits on the sand, soaking up the bright midday sun.
He rolled over on his side and looked at her for a moment. She looked into his eyes and smiled. His face was serious, then he leaned over and kissed her.
She closed her eyes and put an arm up around his shoulder and held him closely to her. She felt good. The sand and the sun and the warmth of his mouth. She felt him open the straps of her thin bathing suit, then his fingers on her naked breast. A pleasurable excitement began to grow inside her. A bubble of happy laughter rose into her throat.
He raised his head and looked at her, still serious. The young strong breasts and awakened nipples. Slowly he traced them with his fingers and kissed them.
She smiled at him. “I like that,” she said softly.
His eyes were unwinking as he looked at her. “You’re still a virgin?”
She couldn’t tell whether he was making a statement or asking her. She nodded silently.
“Why?” he asked her. “Has it something to do with your religion?”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t know why.”
“They call you ‘the cold one’ in my school,” he said. “None of the others in your class are virgins.”
“That’s silly,” she said. She could feel her heart beginning to pound inside her.
He stared at her for another moment. “I think, then, it’s about time, don’t you?”
She nodded silently.
He got to his feet. “I will be right back,” he said and walked down to the canoe.
She watched him go down the beach to the water’s edge and reach into the canoe. She put her hands up under her bathing suit and pushed it down her legs and kicked it off. The sun felt good on her body. She turned her head to see what he was doing.
He had taken something from the pocket of his trousers and was walking up the beach toward her. He stopped when he saw her. He held something in his hand.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He opened his hand so that she could see what he held in it. “So you won’t become pregnant,” he answered.
“Oh,” she said, without surprise. Everything had been very carefully explained to them in school. It was part of the curriculum, one of the important finishing touches so their young ladies would be completely equipped to venture forth in the world. She turned her face away as he slipped out of his trunks.
He knelt in the sand beside her and she turned back to him. She stared at him for a moment. Her voice filled with wonder. “You’re beautiful,” she said reaching for him. “Beautiful and strong. I never knew a man could be so beautiful.”
“Men are naturally more beautiful than women,” he said matter-of-factly. He bent to kiss her. “But you’re very beautiful too.”
She pulled him closer to her, a sudden demanding fe
ver leaping in her veins. Unexplainably she began to tremble.
He raised his head, thinking she might be frightened. “I’ll try not to hurt you,” he said.
“You won’t hurt me,” she said hoarsely, aware now and knowing of the capacity for delight within her. “I’m strong too!”
And she was. Much stronger than she thought. It took a doctor in Lausanne to complete her defloration on the surgical table.
She was eighteen when she appeared at the door of the de Bronczki apartment in Paris. Her education had been as complete as any girl in the school and in many ways she had surpassed most of the students because she was more beautiful and her capacities were greater. She pressed the bell and waited for the door to open.
Her mother opened the door and looked at her without recognition. “Yes?” she asked, in the tone of voice she kept for servants and inferiors.
Ileana half smiled to herself. She didn’t expect much more from her mother. “Hello, Mother,” she said in Rumanian.
A look of surprise came over her mother’s face. “It’s you,” she said in a shocked voice.
“That’s right, Mother,” Ileana said. “May I come in?”
Flustered, her mother stepped back from the door. “We didn’t expect you until next week.”
Ileana picked up her suitcase and walked into the apartment. “I sent you a telegram last week.” She asked, “Didn’t you get it?”
Her mother closed the door. “The telegram. Oh, yes,” she said vaguely. “Your father did mention something about it before he left on a business trip.”
For the first time Ileana felt a sense of disappointment. “Daddy’s away?”
“He’ll be back in a few days,” her mother said quickly. “Something came up with his estate claims.” For the first time she really looked at Ileana. “Why, you’re taller than I am,” she said in surprise.
“I’m all grown up, Mother,” she said, “I’m not a little child anymore.”
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