by Nevil Shute
‘By God,’ I said, ‘we’ll make it hot for them next time!’
I went back to bed. The next three days passed uneventfully; I didn’t see that I could do anything but sit still and wait for news. If it was really true that an attempt was to be made to run another cargo, the Scotland Yard people ought to know about it. Oddly-enough, my mind kept running on the man that Sir David Carter had called Norman; a useful sort of chap, I thought, and one that I could work in with pretty well if it came to anything of a rough-house. I didn’t see how I could communicate with the Yard. Anything I did might give the game away; it was even possible that a letter might be intercepted. In any case, a letter could not put the urgency of the case as I could put it to them myself. I didn’t see that the preparations to give them a warm reception need take very long to fix up. Even if we had no word of the departure of the vessel till the day she cleared from Genoa, I could still be in London four or five days before she reached the Scillies. I decided that the only thing to do was to wait.
I was much puzzled over the aeroplane. An aeroplane is a most conspicuous thing; all sorts of regulations hedge it round about, so that in England there is not the slightest possibility of concealing one’s ownership of a machine. I didn’t know of a single privately owned amphibian machine in England. An amphibian is a flying-boat or seaplane that is fitted with landing wheels to enable it to put down on land or water. I knew of two privately owned seaplanes and about a dozen privately owned aeroplanes of various denominations and vintages, but no amphibians. There are plenty of amphibians in the Air Force, but it didn’t seem likely that anyone could get hold of a Service machine for a job of this sort. No doubt one or two firms that specialised in building them would have a machine on hand for experimental purposes. It might be one of those.
We waited for three days. Then came the news that Benedetto had been killed.
I don’t think Leglia had suspected that the man was in any danger or he would have gone about the matter differently. We heard about it early one morning. I was sitting with Leglia in the cloister when his old servant came hurrying from the gate. In a minute we had the whole story. Caterina, the sister of Benedetto, was at the gate. She had been visited by a priest that morning, who had broken to her the news of her brother’s death in Genoa, It seemed that he had been killed in a tavern brawl.
Leglia asked me to go away while he saw the girl. I left him to say what he could to her, not envying him the job. I went up to the top room where we used to sit in the evenings and dropped into a chair to think what this meant for us.
I didn’t get far. It was murder—of that there could be little doubt. I sat there and remembered the man as I had seen him in Leglia’s bedroom, ‘the silent man who loved him’. The thought that we had been sending him to his death fairly made me sick. This man was dead, murdered in our service. I was pretty sick about it, but for Leglia it was hell.
I went down after an hour or so. He was sitting where I had left him, brooding in his chair. He refused to discuss the matter then.
However, he wasted no time. ‘When one has had defeat in the front attack,’ he observed, ‘one will send out to the flank, both sides at once.’ That was all he told me, but that afternoon his flankers left for Genoa.
I saw them before they went. It seemed that he was attacking from above and from below. One was the gipsy that I had seen before, the other was a puffy little bourgeois, a traveller in a line of cheap celluloid novelties. I don’t know what their instructions were, or why he chose them. I saw them passing the gate as they left the Palazzo after a long interview with Leglia. Then they vanished into the blue, and we were left to await their news.
We had a long talk about it that evening sitting in the top room looking out over the river to the hills. Leglia hardly mentioned the dead man. He said briefly and conclusively that it was certainly murder, and laughed at the idea of the murderer being brought to stand his trial. The real point of interest was—how much did Mattani know? This we had no means of estimating till the return of the two flankers.
I shall always remember the dreariness of that second period of waiting. Leglia was worried and uncommunicative; for myself, I roamed restlessly about the Palazzo and the town, wondering how much of my movements was known, wondering every time I went out if I should get a knife in my ribs, too restless to remain in the Palazzo, wishing most desperately that I could be up and doing. The evenings we spent in the top room, smoking and drinking the Madeira. During this time I saw very little of the sister or her aunt. I think they kept out of our way purposely. I don’t blame them for that; we must have been pretty poor company during that time of waiting.
My mind kept turning to Mattani. To me he was an abstraction, a force in this matter without a personality. It was like blindfold boxing. It worried me very much, I remember, that I could only conjure up the vaguest idea as to the personality that I was up against. I had to rely on Leglia’s descriptions of the man; he told me that he was short and thick-set, with a very bland manner. That tallied more or less with what Compton had told me. ‘If you ever have anything to do with Roddy,’ he had said, ‘you’ll find him very pleasant to deal with. Very good company.…’ There was something about this description of the man that simply terrified me. I say that in all seriousness. I did my best to hide it from Leglia, but during those days of waiting I was miserable. I had the wind right up.
The gipsy was the first to return. He came in the morning at the usual hour of levée; Leglia saw him in the cloister. He brought with him indisputable evidence that the murder had been committed at the instigation of Mattani, but he thought that it was not known that Leglia was concerned. He had heard no mention of me. The affair had happened in some pretty low pub in Genoa. Benedetto had entered the place and sat down with a drink at one of the tables, probably to wait for some sailor from the ship. It was a put-up job. One fellow went lurching across the room swearing that that was the man who had seduced his sister in some little inland village; two or three others had taken up the cry, shouting that that was the man. It was all over in a minute. There was a short scuffle, and in a moment the crowd were pouring out of the inn, so that by the time the keeper of the house and his daughter got to him they were the only people in the place. He died very soon.
The innkeeper had denied all knowledge of the men, and it seemed that the police had not exerted themselves more than was necessary for the sake of appearances. As Leglia observed, it was in Genoa that it happened, and in Genoa Baron Mattani ‘had the press’. The murderer had not been identified. According to the gipsy he was one of three men, all of whom had been present, all of whom were Fascists of the lower type and strong partisans of Mattani.
Suspicion was certainly aroused, but the indications were that Benedetto had been considered to be an agent of the Americans, anxious to discover the date of the next appearance of the vessel in Rum Row. He had drawn suspicion on himself by his eager curiosity; I think he had probably been very careless. He must have found out something of importance, or they would hardly have flown to extremities to secure his silence.
There was no information about the departure of the vessel to be gleaned from the gipsy. He had been able to discover nothing of that, judging it wiser, I suppose, to let things simmer down a bit.
That was all he knew. He stood by while we talked it over in English, leaning against the balustrade in the sun, a picturesque, rather a dirty figure. Presently, tiring of a conversation that he could not understand, he began to whistle a little tune between his teeth, very softly, over and over again. It had a plaintive, eerie sort of lilt to it; I never think of that day but I recall that little tune. I could whistle it now.
Presently it drew Leglia’s attention.
He glanced at the man. ‘That is a sad song,’ he said in Italian.
The man smiled broadly, expansively. ‘Lord,’ he replied in his vile dialect, ‘it is one of the songs of my people.’ Then he began to sing, very softly and distinctly, to the tune tha
t he had been whistling:
‘I am not of this earth,
Nor born of mortal mother,
But Fortune, with her turning, turning wheel,
Hath brought me hither.’
Leglia eyed him keenly. ‘My friend,’ he said in Italian, ‘you shall tell me the meaning of your song.’
The man laughed cheerfully. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘there is no meaning. My father sang that song to me, and my father’s father. Many of our songs are such.’
He stopped laughing and glanced slyly at Leglia. ‘Yet, Lord, there are other songs? …’
He began to whistle some air that I had never heard before. He stopped after the first bar or two; there may have been something in Leglia’s eye, I think, that told him it would be unhealthy to proceed.
‘That is a song that one does not sing aloud,’ said Leglia sharply.
The man looked abashed. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I am thinking of Benedetto.’
For a minute Leglia was silent. Then, ‘I, too, am thinking of Benedetto,’ he said quietly, and dismissed the man.
Finally, after two more days, the little black-coated commercial traveller returned.
His story was quite explicit. The date when he came to us was the 8th of July. His information was to the effect that there was certainly no guard on Marazan, and that a cargo was to be transhipped there on the night of the 16th–17th. He told us, beaming, that while primarily engaged upon obtaining this information he had been successful in obtaining an order for some incredible number of celluloid serviette-rings. One thing, he said placidly, always led to another.
That evening I left for England. The Leglias bade me farewell each in their own way.
‘For Giovanni,’ said his sister, ‘you will search diligently for a bride English, is it not so? I do not think that he will want for her to be very pretty, because already I have brought to him all the most pretty girls of Florence and he is—pah! Not at all interested. Like suet.’
‘Captain, old thing,’ said Leglia, ‘next year I come to England for a certain, and I shall enter you to fly me in a two-seater in the King’s Cup race, and we will have the perfectly marvellous time.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I GOT to Paris at midday on the 9th and went out to Le Bourget. My luck was in here; a machine was leaving for Croydon in half an hour’s time. A touch of blarney with Kerret in the aerodrome office secured me the mechanic’s seat, and I crossed with Bluden as pilot in a little under two and a half hours. We were telling each other stories most of the way. It wasn’t until we landed that we realised that he had given the passengers palpitations by switching off the engine while we were over the Channel in order that he might listen the better to one of mine. At the time it never struck either of us, but we heard later that there was a fine to-do in the cabin when the engine stopped.
It was about half-past four when we put down at Croydon. I had some tea, and was in Whitehall by six. It was a Saturday afternoon and Scotland Yard looked pretty barren, inhabited solely by unintelligent and asthmatic sergeants recruited from the more remote parts of the country. One of them received my inquiry for Norman with an air of polite finality. It was, he said, Saturday afternoon.
‘Do you expect him back here to-day or to-morrow?’ I asked.
The sergeant ruminated, grunted, and rubbed his chin. ‘Well,’ he rumbled benevolently, ‘Monday morning. He might be in Monday morning, and then again he mightn’t. It’s like that, you see, sir.’ He beamed at me.
‘Is Sir David Carter here?’ I asked.
He looked troubled at that. ‘Strangers ’ave to ’ave an appointment to see Sir David,’ he said. ‘If you’ll just put down your business on this form I’ll lay it on Major Norman’s desk. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll lay it on his desk, and then he’ll see it first thing Monday morning.’
‘Sir David will see me,’ I said. ‘Here’s my card.’
He laughed pleasantly. ‘Not this afternoon, he won’t,’ he remarked. ‘He’s not here.’
My patience began to wear a little thin. He stopped laughing when he caught my eye.
‘My business is urgent,’ I said. ‘If you can give me Major Norman’s private address I’ll go and see him there.’
He stiffened at once. ‘All business to be passed through the proper channels,’ he said. ‘We don’t give no private addresses at the Yard. If you’ll tell me what it is you wants done I’ll see to it myself.’
He had my card on the table before him. ‘See here,’ I said. ‘You see who I am?’
He took up the card in an enormous hand and spelled it out. ‘P. H. Stenning,’ he said. It didn’t seem to convey much to him.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘You remember the Marazan murder. I’m the man who was on board the yacht when Compton, the convict, was shot. I’ve got some urgent information about that to tell Major Norman. That’s my business.’
He looked terribly worried. ‘I don’t rightly know what to do about that,’ he said. ‘Did you want to make a statement?’
‘I can tell you what you’re going to do,’ I said tersely. ‘You’re going to give me Major Norman’s address. If you don’t I shall go and see Sir David Carter. I can get his address out of Who’s Who. I tell you, this matter is urgent.’
He moved ponderously to the door. ‘What you want to do, sir,’ he said definitely, ‘is to make a statement.’ I realised that he was about to summon witnesses.
I stopped him. ‘I’m going to do nothing of the sort,’ I said. ‘I’ve got valuable information about the murder of Mr. Compton. If you’ll give me Major Norman’s address I’ll go and see him now. Otherwise I shall walk straight out and go to Sir David Carter’s house. I must see one or other of them to-day.’
He capitulated, and in five minutes I was on my way to Charing Cross, bound for Chislehurst. I reached the house at about half-past seven. It stood back a little from the road, a small house with a large garden. I asked for Major Norman at the door, and was shown into a morning-room to wait.
The room opened on to the lawn. It was getting on for dinner-time, but there was a game of tennis going on on the lawn, two men and two girls. I saw the maid go out and speak to one of the girls.
She turned to the others. ‘We’ll have to chuck it,’ she cried. ‘There’s a bloke come to see Reggie.’ I learned later that she was his wife.
They gathered together on the court; I recognised Norman as he was putting on his coat. ‘About time we stopped, anyway,’ said the other man. ‘I could do with a bath, and the odd spot of dinner.’
‘Bags I first go at the bath,’ said the other girl.
I had to pinch myself to realise that I was awake. It all seemed incredibly remote from the violent business that I had come upon. It seemed a shame to break in on Norman in this quiet suburban atmosphere with a talk of dope and murder. I could see Norman whispering with his wife, and as he broke away from the group she called after him that there was plenty of supper. He came up to the window and entered the room.
‘Good evening, Captain Stenning,’ he said. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ve been having trouble with the Italians.’
I laughed shortly. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It means they’re going to have trouble with me.’
He slipped into a chair, and it was half an hour before we stirred. I told him everything that had happened in Italy, and I told him as much as I could remember about Leglia’s talk about Fascismo. He listened attentively, making very little comment till I had done.
At the end he remained staring into the sunlit garden. ‘Marazan again,’ he muttered. ‘On the 16th.’ He turned to me. ‘You surprise me very much, Captain Stenning,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I know. At the same time, it seems quite likely that he should try it again. It means that the place is an integral part of the whole scheme, that the success of running a cargo depends on the use of Marazan. I take it that it’s true that there is no guard there?’
He nodded absently. ‘There is no guard. I didn’
t mean that when I said that you surprised me. By going to Italy you ran a very grave risk.’
He eyed me steadily for a moment, and then laughed. ‘As you know.’
I was well protected,’ I remarked.
‘That’s obvious,’ he said dryly. ‘This friend of yours, the Duke of Estalebona, did you say? …’
I nodded. ‘You’d better make some inquiries about him, to satisfy yourself,’ I said. ‘But you’ll find him all right.’
He sat drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair for a minute. Then he got up.
‘If you’ll stay and have dinner with us,’ he said, ‘I’ll come up to Town with you afterwards. Good.’ He stood in the window for a moment rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
‘It’s a better line than we’ve been able to strike,’ he said at last. ‘We’ve not been able to do much up to date.’
We went up to Town together after dinner; I parted from him at Charing Cross with an appointment to meet him and Sir David Carter at the Yard at eleven o’clock next morning—Sunday. I got back to my flat in Maida Vale at about half-past ten, and I must say I wasn’t sorry to be back. I was relieved that I had managed to see Norman. At the back of my mind had been the disturbing thought that if Mattani had got to hear that I had been in Italy, it was to his interest to prevent me getting to Norman with my news. It had not been altogether a sincere devotion to duty that had made me eager to see Norman at the first possible moment. Till my tale was told I could only regard myself as a possible target for people to shoot at, or to hit on the head with something blunt. Now that anxiety was removed. If Mattani was clever enough to find out that I had been to Italy, he was probably clever enough to find out that I had already seen Norman—in which case there was no longer any point in hitting me on the head.
