by Eric Ambler
“Aren’t you eating to-day?”
“We have eaten,” said Zaleshoff promptly; “an hour ago.”
“Coffee?”
Zaleshoff grinned. “At a lira a cup! What do you take us for?”
The attendant laughed and began to push the trolley towards the end of the platform. We were left alone.
“That porter…” I began under my breath.
“I know,” he murmured; “but we’ll be out of it in a minute. Heavens, I could have done with a cup of coffee.” He glanced up at the clock. “Two minutes after six. It’ll probably be late.” He looked casually along the platform at the porter. “It would be our luck,” he muttered vindictively, “to strike a guy with eyes in his head. The only consolation is that he’s feeling afraid of making a fool of himself.”
“I don’t know that our luck’s been so bad.”
“If it hadn’t been for a piece of lousy luck we shouldn’t have been found in that truck. I couldn’t fasten the tarpaulin from the inside, and the wind blew it back. When we stopped in the yard they spotted it and had to climb up to pull it back. We shouldn’t have been spotted otherwise.”
I glanced sideways at him. “I wasn’t thinking about that, and you know it. Why didn’t that wheel-tapper stop us? And it was he who stopped the other man shouting, too, wasn’t it?”
“Why should he? I wish this darn train ’d hurry.”
“It’ll look better if we talk,” I said spitefully. “What sort of game were you playing in that office, Zaleshoff?”
“Game?”
“Yes-game.”
For a moment our eyes met. “This isn’t the time…” he began, then shrugged. “Back in nineteen-twenty,” he went on slowly, “a lot of the Italian workers used to tattoo a small hammer and sickle on the forearm. It was just to show that they didn’t care a hoot who knew they were Communists. Sort of badge of honour, see. When that guy was holding me, I saw that he had a round scar on his arm. I guessed then that he might have had one of those tattoo marks at some time, but that he’d found it safer since to cut away the flesh with the mark on. I thought I’d find out if I was right. I called him comrade. That scared him, because the other guy was too young to remember anything except fascismo and he might talk. But I knew I’d got him. Once a Communist always a Communist. I started humming the “ Bandiero Rossa ”-that’s the old Italian workers’ song. Then, when I was pretending to take that drink, he winked at me. I knew he was O.K. In the darkness he gave that young chap a clip under the jaw that knocked him cold. I had to do the same for him then, so that he’d have something to show when they questioned him. The poor sap!”
I thought for a moment. “You know,” I said then, “I wouldn’t call him a poor sap. and I don’t think you would either if you didn’t feel that you ought to behave like the traditional right-thinking American citizen.”
But he did not answer. The train was coming in.
Through the windows of the sleeping-cars I could see the white sheets on the upper berths. The sight made me start yawning again. I felt suddenly very tired.
There was a concerted rush for the buffet from the three third-class coaches at the front of the train. We got into a second-class coach and walked along the corridors to the front.
The three third-class coaches were very full and very hot. There were soldiers on the train, and their equipment was piled up in the corridors. Through the steamy windows of the compartments I could see weary, harassed women trying to pacify howling children. The air smelt of garlic, oranges and sleep.
“We’ll stick in the corridor,” murmured Zaleshoff.
Five minutes later the train drew out. We were leaning on the rail gazing out of the window. The blue-eyed porter was standing on the platform looking up. Our eyes met his, and his head turned slowly as the coach slid past him. Zaleshoff waved.
But the porter did not wave back. I saw him raise one hand slowly as if he were about to do so. Then the hand stopped. He snapped his fingers and turned on his heel.
“Damn!” said Zaleshoff softly. “He’s made up his mind.”
16
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
What are we going to do now?”
It was the second time I had said it; I seemed always to be saying it; but he looked as if he had not heard me the first time. He was gazing out of the window vacantly, watching the side of a cutting slip by as the train gathered speed. Again he did not answer.
“I suppose that they’ll be waiting for us at Verona.”
He nodded.
“Then there’s nothing we can do?”
“Sure, there’s plenty we can do; but not yet.”
“I don’t see…”
“Shut up; I’m thinking.”
I shut up and lit a cigarette. I had a pain in my stomach and could not decide whether it was nerves or hunger. Then I noticed that he was examining my face.
“You’re pretty filthy,” he said.
“You don’t look any too clean yourself.” For some reason, I felt suddenly very wide-awake and very quarrelsome. “I’ve always heard,” I added venomously, “that the Russians are a very dirty race. But then, of course, you’re an American, aren’t you?”
I saw the muscles of his face tighten beneath the grime. “I should not have believed, Marlow, that the schoolboy could persist to such an absurd extent in the adult. I wonder if you are typically English. Maybe you are. One can see, then, why the Continental mind fails to understand the English. I have often suspected it. The Englishman is no more than an intellectual Peter Pan, a large red-necked Peter Pan with a grubby little mind and grubby false wings. Sublimely ridiculous.”
I made some angrily cumbersome retort. We bickered on. We snapped and snarled at one another steadily for a good five minutes. It was childish, absurd; and it was Zaleshoff who put a stop to it. We had lapsed into a sulky silence. Suddenly, he turned to me and grinned sheepishly.
“Well, thank goodness we’ve got that out of our systems.”
For a moment I frowned sullenly at him, then I was forced to grin too.
“O.K.?” he said.
I nodded. “O.K.”
“Good. Then let’s get down to brass tacks.”
“Do you really think that porter’ll do anything?”
“I’m afraid so. He was suspicious, all right. I must have made a bloomer somewhere. It was the mention of Udine that got him. They probably don’t send goods trains up direct from Udine. Anyway, we can’t afford to take a risk. Somehow we’ve got to get out of these clothes and make ourselves look different between here and Verona. We haven’t got much time to do it in.”
“But how…?”
“Listen.”
For a minute he talked quickly. At the end of it I pursed my lips.
“Well, I suppose we shall have to try it. But I must say that I don’t feel very happy about it, Zaleshoff.”
“I didn’t think you would. I don’t. I shan’t feel happy until we’re across the frontier.”
“If we ever do get across the frontier. If they catch us now, they’ll…”
“Forget it.”
“Yes, I know, but…” I broke off helplessly. I was past caring what happened to me. All I wanted was food and more sleep. “I suppose that we just wait now for the ticket inspector.”
“Yes, we just wait.”
We waited. It takes just under an hour by train from Brescia to Verona, and half that time had gone by the time the ticket inspector came round. As the minutes went by Zaleshoff became increasingly anxious.
“Perhaps he doesn’t inspect the tickets on this run,” I suggested.
“If he doesn’t,” he retorted grimly, “we’re sunk anyway, because that means they’ll be inspected at the Verona barrier.”
When at last we saw the inspector appear at the end of the corridor, Zaleshoff gave a sigh of relief. “Keep your face turned away from him as far as possible,” he murmured.
I gazed steadfastly out of the window. But the precautio
n was unnecessary. The man passed us with no more than a casual nod. We waited until he was a few compartments away. Then Zaleshoff nudged me.
“O.K. Let’s go.”
We strolled slowly to the end of the corridor out of sight, then we increased our pace and walked rapidly through the second-class coaches. When we reached the leading first-class coach we slowed down again as we walked through it. At the end we stopped.
“There’s a hat and an overcoat in the third compartment from the end,” Zaleshoff reported under his breath; “but there’s a woman passenger in there. The man’s probably in the restaurant car having coffee. We’ll try the next one.”
We walked on again. Half-way down the next corridor I heard Zaleshoff stop behind me.
“Stand where you are,” he muttered; “and don’t look round.”
Ten seconds later, he prodded me in the back.
“Let’s go back.”
We returned to the end of the corridor and stopped outside the lavatory. I opened the door. As I did so I felt Zaleshoff push a soft bundle under my arm. A moment later I was inside the lavatory and had locked the door.
I said “phew!” very loudly to restore my self-possession and looked round. Then I jumped violently. A man was looking at me, and he was one of the ugliest-looking customers I had ever seen. Then, I saw that I was looking at myself in the mirror. I could understand now the blue-eyed porter’s uncertainty. I have a dark beard and there was the growth of two nights on my face. I was filthy-Zaleshoff had been right there. The dust of the previous day, the grease from the shells, transferred by my fingers together with the soot from the roof of the cattle truck, the sweat-all had contributed. Beneath it all, my face was haggard. My eyes were red and bleary with fatigue. The dye from the muffler, soaked out by the sweat, had made a dark ring round my neck. The greasy driver’s cap completed the effect. No, it was not surprising that I had not been identified with the picture in the newspaper.
But I had work to do. I stripped off the driver’s coat and hat, rolled them up in a ball and threw them out of the window. Then I took off my jacket, waist-coat and shirt, retrieved the safety razor and shaving cream from the jacket pocket and set to work on my face.
Following Zaleshoff’s instructions, I left a thin line of moustache and side-whiskers that descended down my jaw to the level of my nostrils. When I had washed I combed my hair straight back.
I was surprised by the result. As Zaleshoff had predicted, the long side-whiskers altered the proportions of my face. My mouth and chin looked somehow smaller. My forehead had become high and narrow. The hair brushed back accentuated those tendencies. The slight moustache made the nose more prominent.
I put my shirt, waistcoat and jacket on again and turned to the bundle Zaleshoff had stolen. It consisted of a good soft hat and a raincoat. Both were grey. I put them on and looked at myself again. Except for my dirty white collar and crumpled tie I looked “respectable.” Cheered by this and by the wash, I unlocked the door and stepped into the corridor.
Zaleshoff was lolling against the window outside. He looked round and I saw his shrewd eyes travel quickly from my head to my feet.
“Not bad,” he commented; “but you’ve been a helluva time. We’ll be in in another ten minutes. Give me the razor and comb and get back inside there until we begin to slow down.”
I gave him the razor and comb.
“What about your clothes?”
He tapped his stomach and I noticed that there was an oddly shaped bulge to the blue tunic.
“While you’re waiting,” he said, “you’d better do something about your boots. Polish them as best you can. They’re the only part of you that doesn’t look right. And your hat’s a bit big. Put some paper in the band.”
“What about suitcases?”
“Leave that to me. I’ll tap three times on the door when I want you to come out. You’d better wait for that.”
He vanished along the corridor in the direction of the second class. I retired once more to the lavatory and attacked my boots. I had let the turn-ups of my trousers down in the engine shed, but now that I had to turn them back again the uppers looked bad. They were of crude and unpolished leather and were much scratched. I rubbed at them furiously with the muffler, but without much result. The top part of me was that of a respectable Italian business man; the bottom that of a labourer. I gave it up after a bit, and having let out my braces so that my trousers covered as much of the boots as possible, I lit a cigarette and composed myself to wait.
After a seemingly interminable eight minutes, I felt the train slowing. I pitched my cigarette away and prepared for Zaleshoff’s knock. I was in a fever of anxiety. The thought that was gnawing at my mind was that Zaleshoff had been caught taking the suitcases or that the owner of the hat and coat which he had stolen and seen him wearing them and given the alarm. The train had nearly come to a standstill, and I could hear the station bell tolling and people moving along the corridors to get out, when there were three quick taps on the steel panels of the door.
I wrenched it open and nearly fell over a suitcase standing just outside. Zaleshoff was standing by the exit door; but for the moment I did not recognise him.
He had on a dark green overcoat and a green Alpine hat; but it was his face that had altered. He was clean shaven, but the shape of it was different. It was rounder. His upper lip projected slightly over the lower in an odd way.
He was handing down a suitcase to a porter below. Then, for a moment, he half turned and his eyes met mine. Then they dropped meaningly towards the suitcase at my feet. The next moment he was gone. I picked up the suitcase and went to the door.
Another porter was standing on the platform looking up at me expectantly. The suitcase was heavy, and I grasped the rail to swing it out for him to take. The next moment I nearly dropped it on his head. Standing on either side of the porter and looking up at the train were two blackshirt militiamen.
I could have hesitated only a fraction of a second; but in that moment my brain worked overtime. I saw that their hands were resting on their Mauser pistols and knew that it was no use turning back. They would shoot me in the back, and even if they missed there were probably more of them on the other side of the train. Had Zaleshoff got through, or had they caught him too? I felt the sweat start out from the pores of the skin.
The porter grasped the suitcase and I swung myself down to the platform. Then the unbelievable happened. I looked at the faces of the militiamen. They were not looking at me but past me up into the train. For a moment I stopped, hardly able to believe my eyes. Then:
“Where to, Signore?” said the porter.
I was gaping. I pulled myself together. “To the cloakroom,” I muttered.
My legs trembling, I followed him along the platform. There were two militiamen posted at every exit from the coaches. As the last of the alighting passengers left the third-class coaches at the front, I saw two of them, accompanied by an officer, board the train. Heads were being thrust out of the windows. The other passengers had realised that something out of the ordinary was happening.
Ahead of me I saw Zaleshoff, preceded by his porter, disappear through the door leading to the street. There were three more militiamen standing by it. I walked on. I was acutely conscious of my boots. They seemed to be making as much noise as a regiment on the march. They made a clumping, hollow sound as they touched the asphalt. I noticed for the first time that one of them squeaked. To take my mind off them I tried to decide what I should do if the owner of the suitcase, which the porter was carrying, were to identify it from a window of the train. It was a large, expensive-looking thing and easy to recognise. Should I run or attempt to brazen it out? But no! If I did that they would notice my accent. They might want to see my passport, they…
But I was approaching the exit. There were only a few yards to go now. I could see the faces of the militiamen turned towards me. I was sure that one was looking at my boots. Their faces came towards me and, in my panic, I coul
d not make up my mind whether I was approaching them or whether they were coming towards me to seize me. My feet felt ungainly and awkward, as if I were wearing snowshoes. Instinctively I altered my direction slightly to bring the porter ahead of me between myself and them. He passed them. I felt the calves of my legs go taut as I walked. The militiamen stared at me. I was almost level with them. I could see the details of their uniforms, the texture of the black cloth, the shape of the black leather revolver holster, the shiny brass stud that secured it. I waited for a black arm to go up blocking my path. I prepared to play the farce out to the end. To be indignant. Instinctively, my face screwed up into an indignant scowl. A moment later I was past them.
For a moment I could scarcely believe my good fortune. I walked on, expecting at any moment to feel hands grasping my arms, pulling me back. But no hands came. Then I was standing in a dream by the cloakroom counter and the porter was standing there waiting for a tip. I plunged my hand into my pocket and pulled out the first coin my fingers touched. I saw the porter stare at it as I dropped it into his hand and realised, too late, that I had made a mistake. I had given him ten lire. He would remember me. I waved away his thanks irritably and turned to go. The cloakroom attendant called me back. I had forgotten my counterfoil. I took it and, sweating profusely, clumped towards the station yard.
Zaleshoff was waiting for me a little way away. I told him what I had done. He shrugged.
“It can’t be helped. Have you got your cloakroom check? Well, tear it up and throw it away. I picked suitcases with name and address tags on them. The owners’ll get them back eventually. Now let’s go and have some breakfast. The shops won’t be open for an hour or so yet.”
By the time we had established ourselves in a caffe some distance from the station, reaction had set in. I was trembling from head to foot. The last thing I wanted was food. Zaleshoff grinned sympathetically.
“You’ll feel better when you’ve had some coffee. It wasn’t so bad as all that. Don’t forget that they were looking for a couple of guys in drivers’ uniforms.”
