by Nevil Shute
He nodded gravely. ‘As you say, Mattani gets away with it.’ He paused. ‘It would be better for my country if he did not. It is the bad example, and makes many difficulties.’
I laughed shortly. ‘It would be better for my country too,’ I said.
He looked at me reflectively. ‘That is so,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps our interests will follow the same road. Is it not so?’
I knocked my pipe out sharply against the balustrade. ‘My interests are pretty simple,’ I said. ‘I want to see him hung.’
He didn’t answer that, but sat staring out over the courtyard, quite motionless. He seemed to have forgotten my presence; presently I heard him mutter, half to himself:
‘It is but a tool that he makes of Fascismo.…’
I lay back in my chair and filled another pipe. I could see the position clearly now. Leglia wanted to get rid of Mattani, apparently from purely altruistic motives; he thought that he was a bad influence in the country. It seemed to me that Mattani had done him no personal injury, but for the sake of his ideals and for his country Leglia was willing to see him put out of the way—possibly at some danger to himself if his part in the affair should ever come to light. I turned in my chair and smiled a little. What a queer old cuss he was, so idealistic and so foreign!
At that moment England and the life I knew seemed incredibly remote.
‘You think that he would be better hanged?’ I said.
Leglia did not answer. He sat quite motionless in his chair, staring out over his little garden from the shadow of the cloister. I was suddenly ashamed of the bantering tone in which I had spoken. I had been speaking flippantly, but this was a matter of the life or death of a man whom I had never seen, who had done me no harm. God knows, I had little enough cause to speak lightly of him. We were speaking of his death; it was just as likely that we were speaking of my own. I remembered with a start that for all the hospitality and good feeling with which I was surrounded, I was in a foreign country, a country in which Mattani’s power was pretty nearly absolute. It would be time enough to laugh when I was back in England again. I thought of England, and my mind travelled back to Stokenchurch, the crash, and the long night that we had spent in the smoking-room of Six Firs, Joan, Compton, and I, drinking and talking of what was the best thing to be done for him. And then I knew that it was up to me to see that his murderer was brought to stand a fair trial. If I could do that, I thought, my life would not have been entirely wasted.
Still Leglia was silent. I glanced at him, and my enthusiasm faded away. There was no personal bias about Leglia—of that I am positive. There was an air about Leglia; there had always been the same dignity about him even in his most irresponsible moments in the old days. I felt his dignity very strongly then. He sat there quite motionless, quite impassive, staring out on to his flowers. If ever I saw justice in a man’s face, it was then.
And presently he spoke. ‘Stenning, my friend,’ he said, ‘it is that my country stands at the parting of the ways. These years in Italy have been most difficult since the revolution, most upsetting of all order and moral behaviour. For my country when she is led rightly there stands a glorious future. Of that I am convinced. But the leading must be right, and in that there has been disappointment for us—much disappointment. I can speak, because sitting here and taking no part I have been able to watch the better. There are those of whom we had thought little before the revolution who have shown themselves of a great mind. And there are those on whom we had learned to trust, that have stood but to gain position for themselves and for their own purposes.’
He paused. ‘We had hoped much of Mattani,’ he said quietly. ‘Of all men in Italy save only Il Duce he held the imagination of the people; in Italy that is to say much, though I know it is not quite like that in England. Moreover, he was a little English, and we hoped much from that. Of all men in Italy below Il Duce we had hoped the most of Mattani. And it was all for a disappointment.…’
I could find nothing to say to that.
He continued: ‘Still he holds the imagination of the people by the power of his papers, but his influence for long has been most bad. He holds himself—how do you say?—above the law. For Italy in these times that any man should hold himself above the law I think to be most dangerous, most probably to hinder the progress of our Government, the more so for such a man as Baron Mattani.’
He glanced at me. ‘I am most happy that you should have came to see me,’ he said, ‘for I think it will be of value to my country that the law should be upheld. But the one thing I must press to you. If I can help you to secure Baron Mattani, that he shall stand a trial before the courts of your country; you shall not allow him to be killed before that. Only in that way will the example be of good to Italy.’
‘I can promise that,’ I said. ‘Once we get him he shall have a fair trial.’
He threw away the cigarette and lit another. ‘You shall tell me what you want to do,’ he said.
I considered for a little. ‘Is there any hope of extraditing him, do you think?’ I said.
‘It would be difficult,’ he replied. ‘Most difficult.’
He glanced at me. ‘Is it a need to extradite him from Italy by force?’ he said. ‘It seems that you have but to wait a little time and he will come to you.’
‘You mean he’ll come to England?’ I inquired.
He nodded. ‘That there is much profit in his smuggling of drugs to England I do not doubt,’ he said. ‘That he will not give up, unless you will make it very dangerous for him.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘You mean if we leave him alone he’ll carry on with the good work. If he really did that we might be able to do something about it. But I think it seems very unlikely. He’ll drop that particular stunt now.’
‘That will be possible,’ admitted Leglia. ‘At the same time, he will have much money in his organisation in England—very much. Also he is very bold, a very bold man. I do not think that he will give up to smuggle into England, but he may change in the method.’
‘We don’t know what the method is yet,’ I said glumly. ‘We don’t know how he does it.’
Leglia stared absently at the little fountain. ‘That it should not be very difficult to find out,’ he said softly.
‘More than we’ve been able to do,’ I remarked.
He laughed. ‘It is because you have searched in England for the answer to your riddle,’ he said. ‘In England a plan to smuggle into England will not be easy to discover. But in Italy a plan to smuggle into England will not be quite of so great an importance, and may be more easy to be discovered. The more so by an Italian.’
I looked at him with an added respect. ‘That’s a pretty sound bit of reasoning,’ I said.
‘Where the murder took place,’ he said, ‘the harbour, what name——’
‘Marazan Sound,’ I replied.
‘Marazan Sound,’ he repeated. ‘They guard it now, is it not so?’
‘Put a guard on Marazan?’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard of it being done. No, I don’t suppose they do guard it. There’s really not much evidence to show that it’s ever going to be used again for smuggling. Not after what happened the last time.’
He seemed to reflect. ‘He is a very bold man,’ he said at last. ‘It would be in his nature to go back there to smuggle again, being that one would think it incredible that he should do so.’
He relapsed into silence again. I left him to his thoughts and sat smoking and dozing in the warmth, till I was roused by the sudden tinkle of the bell on the table at his side. He rang again, and I saw his old retainer come hurrying from the gate.
He slackened speed as he drew near, and came and stood deferentially by Leglia, waiting for the order. No order came, but after a minute Leglia began to speak to him confidentially. He spoke in Italian, naturally, but I was able to follow the greater part of what they were saying.
‘Nicolo,’ he said. ‘I am thinking of Luigi, the son of Elena with the goats at Estalebona. He
is at home?’
‘Excellency,’ said the man, ‘he is at sea, being a sailor by trade. In two months he may be home again.’
Leglia closed his eyes. ‘A reliable man,’ he said presently, ‘and one who knows the sea and sailors, who is discreet, and who loves me.’
The old man bowed. ‘Excellency, the cousin of Luigi, Benedetto, the son of Giacomo who lives by the gate, is also a sailor. They say that he is a silent man.’
‘It is but to go to Genoa,’ said Leglia carelessly, ‘to the wine-shops, to get a little drunk, to make others a little drunk, to be silent, and to listen. Such a man would be of service to me.’
‘Excellency,’ said the old man, ‘I will see Benedetto and I will bring him to you.’
He faded away down the cloister; Leglia sat in silence for a little, brooding with his head upon his chest. Presently he roused himself and began to talk of other things, of our old days in the Flying Corps when there was a war on.
Then came the summons to lunch, a very Italian meal, served in a long, dark hall. The sister was there with her chaperon; we made grave conversation for an hour. After lunch everybody went to bed. Leglia told me that he thought I should be quite safe if I wanted to go out and see the town; he hoped that he would be able to get some news for me in a day, or two days at the most. He knew that the English did not go to bed in the middle of the day; in summer he thought it was a mistake not to do so—but there! I should find fruit and wine in the cloister.
I found them.
Presently I got my hat and went out to see how the land lay. The old man stopped me in the gate, and in slow distinct Italian asked if I would mind if he were to send a boy to follow behind me. Il Signor Duca had not thought it necessary, but for himself he would like to send a boy with me. Things were, he said, ‘molto turbato, molto turbato.…’
His concern for me was so genuine that I agreed without a murmur, and the red-haired boy who had valeted me in the morning appeared in a plain suit of black. Wherever I wandered during the remainder of the afternoon the red-haired boy was always in the middle distance, never at hand, never quite out of sight. Every policeman saluted me. From time to time I passed people who took off their hats to me, but nobody stopped to speak. I recognised several as those to whom I had been introduced in the morning.
I went and looked at pictures all afternoon. I think at the back of my mind was the fear that one day I might be called upon to take an intelligent interest in things artistic. It was an occupation that I had never tried before; I can’t say that I derived much benefit from it. I stuck to it conscientiously for two and a half hours by my watch, then wandered thankfully to a café, where I collapsed into a chair on the pavement and settled down to watch the people for an hour. My red-haired escort sat down a few tables away; I pretended not to see him, and paid for his drinks.
Presently I got up and went back to the Palazzo.
That afternoon was typical of my occupation for the next two days. Leglia told me that evening that he had seen his messenger and had sent him to Genoa; in a day or two he would return with what news he had been able to gather. Leglia said he was putting in hand certain other inquiries, but for the moment the only thing to do was to wait for the return of the sailor from the Genoese pubs. In that two days I saw more of the artistic side of life than I have ever seen before or since; I went at it with a grim determination that it was time I picked up a little education. Leglia and his sister were vastly amused; it turned out that they had never been to half the galleries that I plodded through. When I expressed surprise, Leglia asked shrewdly whether I had ever been into the National Gallery. He had me there.
After two days the messenger returned. He came in the middle of the night—heaven knows why. I was awakened by the red-haired boy, who tapped at my door a little after midnight, with a summons to Leglia’s bedroom. I got up, put on a coat, and went with him through the dark, stone-floored passages of the Palazzo.
The night was very hot. Leglia was sitting up in bed when I entered, tastefully attired in striped pyjamas and a yellow, tasselled nightcap. His old servant was moving about in the shadows at the end of the room, and standing by the bed was the messenger. He was a tall, lean peasant, very tanned, with a straggling little moustache and with thin gold ear-rings. He was dressed as a sailor, in a blue fisherman’s jersey with a short coat over it. The room was lit by two tall candles by the bedside that were flickering and dancing in the draught.
Leglia nodded to me as I came in, and turned again to the messenger. The man was talking very quickly and earnestly, gesticulating freely with his gnarled and roughened hands. To my disappointment I could hardly understand a word of what he was saying; he spoke in some country dialect that was quite beyond me. I sat down on the end of the bed and waited.
Once Leglia turned to me and nodded gravely. ‘Of all people,’ he said, ‘you might have thought of this.’ He thought that I was following the story.
At last the tale was finished, and Leglia began asking questions. I hoped to learn something from these, but I could make nothing of the one-sided conversation that I could understand. At last the business seemed to be over. The man stood there in the wavering light as though awaiting his dismissal, a rough, queerly attractive figure, a man that one could depend on. Then he turned his head and glanced at the major-domo. Evidently there was more to come.
The old man moved softly forward from the shadows. ‘Excellency,’ he said, ‘Caterina, the sister of this man, would by now be married to the son of the harness-maker in Estalebona, had not the harness-maker intervened. He objects that the settlement that she can bring is not sufficient.…’
Leglia nodded comprehendingly. ‘How much does she bring?’
‘Excellency, she brings twelve hundred lire. But the father is a very vain man.’
Leglia seemed to consider for a little. Then he turned curiously to the messenger.
‘The son,’ he said. ‘Is it that she loves him?’
The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘it is necessary that my sister should marry to be happy, and this man has offered, and all would have been well but for the father.’
Leglia nodded slowly. ‘I go very soon to Estalebona,’ he said, ‘as soon as this matter is decided. Then I will talk with the father, and they shall marry with my goodwill and with the blessing of the Church.’
The man knelt and kissed his hand.
Then the major-domo shepherded him to the door. They went out, and the door closed silently behind them. I was left alone with Leglia.
He stretched himself, and reached out for the cigarette-box by his bedside.
‘Well, old bean,’ he remarked, ‘so that is that. You have understood what he has said?’
‘Not one ruddy word,’ I replied. ‘It didn’t even sound like Italian to me.’
He laughed and lit his cigarette. ‘The dialect!’ he said. He threw away the match.
‘It is by aeroplane that they land the drugs in England,’ he said quietly. ‘Of all people, to you that will be familiar. He has said that it is by a flying-boat, with the wheels, that can land on the earth or on the water.’
‘Hell!’ I said. ‘I might have thought of that.’
The whole thing became obvious. I sat on the edge of his bed and stared into the great shadows of the room while the bits of the puzzle fell together into the pattern. That was the meaning of the rag and pliers that I had found on the beach at Marazan. Where the sand was soaked in oil was where they had beached the machine to load her up; it was possible that they had refilled her tanks there. The pliers to undo some portion of the cowling round the engine, the rag to wipe up the spilt oil.
That was the only thing that Marazan Sound was any good for, for the operation of seaplanes. Drawing no more than a couple of feet of water, the machine could go anywhere in the Sound at any state of the tide. It would be easily possible to take off from the water in the Sound itself between White Island and Pendruan; in rough weather the Sound would a
lways be calm enough to enable them to run the amphibian up on to the beach to load the cargo. The stuff would be brought to some point off the Scillies by the steamer. There it would be transferred to the motor-launch and taken to Marazan in the early part of the night, to meet the machine.
It was very silent in the room among the wavering shadows.
‘Does the boat fly out from England?’ I asked.
Leglia nodded. ‘From England they fly in the early part of the night, to land at the islands in the darkness with the little lights. On the water they land, and to embark the goods—cargo. And then to fly inland into the middle of England, but never twice to the same place. Always it is many miles into the middle of the country that they will land with the cargo, where one would not think to smuggle.’
‘The machine comes out from England?’ I asked. ‘Where does she come from?’
‘An English machine—yes,’ he said. ‘But from where—I do not know. They are the sailors who have talked, and they have only seen that which happens in the islands.’
‘I see,’ I muttered. ‘They load her up at Marazan, and then she flies back again—well inland somewhere.’
He nodded. ‘That is so. Benedetto has told me that the load is not big, not more than two men can carry or that one man should carry on his back for a little way. That does not seem a great quantity.’
‘Eighty or a hundred pounds,’ I muttered. ‘God knows how much that’s worth. They mix it with some white powder generally before they sell it—to make it go farther. Boracic or something. The girl I used to know.… They sniff it up from the end of a spatula. You don’t need much of it.’
‘Benedetto has told to me that there is no guard upon the islands,’ he said placidly. ‘It is that they will recommence to smuggle on the next voyage.’
I sat up with a jerk. ‘When’s that?’
He shook his head. ‘It is not yet known. By the crew it is not known at all that they return to the Scillies, but by the—the officer below the mate. I do not know the name. He has told to Benedetto in the osteria that the crew would not voyage if it was that they knew that it was to England that they go again. The officer has said that there was trouble the last trip, with shooting. The crew of the ship have been frightened for prison, and for himself he is a little frightened and would like not to go back. But it is not yet known when they will sail. Perhaps in a week, perhaps a fortnight. Benedetto returns to Genoa to-morrow. In a few days we shall know more.’
