The Angry Mountain

by Hammond Innes

  “Yes,” I said. “Some aluminium alloy.”

  She nodded. “Then I should not take it inside the cubicle. The steam will not be good for it.”

  “The steam won’t hurt it,” I answered. My voice sounded angry and I could feel the blood coming up into my face. I hate being reminded that the damned thing isn’t a part of me.

  “Do you never take advice?” she asked, smiling.

  “Sometimes,” I answered.

  “Very well then. Do not be stupid about your leg. The steam will do it no good. When you are inside, pass it out to the attendant.”

  I laughed. “I’ll do no such thing. As for the steam being bad for it, there’s one advantage about an artificial limb, you can always go to a shop and get another if it gets rusty.”

  Her eyes were suddenly violently angry. “You have not had one of these radio baths before, no?”

  “No.”

  “Then you do not know what damage it does to metal. Anything metal—watch, cuff-links, anything—should be given to the attendant. You cannot buy a new leg here in Napoli.”

  “I’ll give it an extra polish to-night,” I said in an endeavour to allay her fears. “You’ve no idea the amount of care and attention I lavish on this leg of mine.”

  She didn’t smile. She sat and stared at me as though I were a child and she would like to whip me. Then she relaxed and gave a little pout to her lips. “You are a stubborn man.” She smiled. “I should not have tried to reason, eh? A woman should know nothing about radioactivity, she should be all emotion and no brain. Very well then.” Her voice softened. “Will you let me look after your leg for you while you are in your bath?”

  The idea of her even seeing it seemed quite horrible. It made me into a piece of machinery that unscrewed and took to pieces so that it could be passed part by part through bathroom doors. “No,” I said sharply.

  She gave an angry sigh. “You are an obstinate fool,” she said and got to her feet. “I ask you to do something and all you say is No. I shall not speak to you again unless you do as I ask you.” She left me then, cold as ice, quite remote. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. The obvious thing was to do as she said, but somehow I couldn’t. The queer contraption that was my leg was my own affair, whether it got rusty or not.

  A few minutes later the attendant came in to say that my bath was ready. “Is the Contessa having her bath?” I asked him.

  “Si, si, signore.” He leered up at me as we crossed the lounge. “She is in the next cubicle to yourself, signore, so that you will be able to talk. I arrange it myself.” Apparently his clients enjoyed bathing with only a partition between them. I gave him some lire.

  He took me through to the back of the hotel and down some stone steps. The atmosphere became hot and humid as we descended. By the time we had reached the electrically-lit cellars of the hotel I could see the steam and feel the moisture settling on the inside of my lungs and throat. He took me through to a room lined with doors. He opened one and as I entered the steam-filled interior he said, “Please pass your clothes out very quickly, otherwise they will become damp. Also anything of metal, even rings, signore. The steam is very bad for metal, you understand.”

  I passed out everyting, but I was damned if I was going to hand him my tin leg. I unstrapped it and wrapped it up in my towel. Then I got into the bath. It seemed to me much the same as any other bath. I could hear Zina splashing in the next cubicle. Then the splashing ceased, there was the sound of a door opening and a whispered conversation. I heard the bath attendant say, “No, no, Contessa.” Then the door was closed and the splashing began again. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer.

  I lay and wallowed, wondering why she had been so insistent about my leg. I even began to think I’d been a fool not to do as she suggested. After all, she knew what effect the steam would have on it. And then I tried to remember whether radio-activity could be transmitted through steam. Surely the steam would be just plain water? Anyway it didn’t seem to matter.

  After half an hour I got out, dressed and left the bath-house. My body seemed overcome with lassitude so that it was a great effort to climb the steps to the hotel. I went through to the balcony and then stopped. Seated at a table with a tall glass in front of him was Hacket. He had seen me before I had time to turn back into the lounge. “Well, well—Mr. Farrell. This is a surprise. I see you’ve been having one of their damned energy-sapping baths. Guess you could do with a drink, eh? What will it be?”

  “Cognac and seltz,” I said as I sat down.

  He gave the order. “Just had a bath myself. It left me weak as a kitten. Feeling better for your holiday?”

  “Much better, thanks.”

  “That’s fine. You look better already.”

  “What brings you to Casamicciola?” I asked him.

  “Oh, I just came out to have a look at the crater harbour of Ischia and this afternoon they’re taking me up to the top of Epomeo on a donkey.” He gave a fat, jovial laugh. “Imagine me on a donkey. I’ll have to get a picture of that to show the folks at home. They tell me there’s a hermit lives on the top of this mountain. I wonder what the beggar pays the local authorities for a pitch like that, eh?” Again the fat chuckle. My drink arrived and I sat back enjoying the warmth of the sun and the clink of ice in the glass. “Ever been to Pozzuoli, Mr. Farrell?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Now there’s an interesting place. I went there yesterday—a lake crusted with plaster of Paris in the hollow of a crater. I don’t reckon there’s another place like that anywhere in the world. Just a twelve-inch thick crust over liquid lava. Couldn’t understand at first why the guide said we weren’t to walk too close to each other. Then over in one corner he showed us a place where the crust was broken away and there was stuff that looked like black mud bubbling up. Guess I understood then, all right.” He chuckled. “And when you light a torch of paper and hold it to a crack, the whole rim of the crater, five hundred feet above you, begins to smoke as the sulphur gases are ignited. A very remarkable sight, Mr. Farrell. And they say it’s linked underground with Vesuvius.”

  “I see you’re not going to miss anything,” I murmured.

  “No sir. That’s why I’ve come out to Casamicciola to-day. Did you know that Epomeo is a volcano?” He showed me a little red-bound book he had with him. “This is an old Baedeker I found amongst my father’s things. It’s dated 1887.” He flipped the pages. “This is what it says about Casamicciola. The terrible earthquake of 28th July, 1883, laid it almost entirely in ruins and cost thousands of lives and most of the few houses that are still standing have suffered severely.” He waved his arm towards the town. “Do you realise what that means, Mr. Farrell? It means that when this little book was printed there was almost nothing here but the ruins of that earthquake.”

  I believe he would have gone on reading passages to me out of that old Baedeker if Zina hadn’t appeared. I introduced them and she slumped, exhausted, into a chair. “Phew! It is very relaxing, no?” She smiled. “But a little later you will feel like a million dollars.”

  “What will it be, Countess?” Hacket asked her.

  “I do not think I will drink yet.” She looked across at the American. “Are you here on business or pleasure, signore?”

  “Mr. Hacket has come here to look at volcanoes,” I said quickly.

  “Volcanoes?” Her brows lifted. “You have your wife with you perhaps?”

  “No.” He looked puzzled. “The wife is a bad sailor. She doesn’t like travel.”

  “You are here alone and you are only interested in our volcanoes?” Zina smiled.

  “I am interested in everything geological—in rock formation, everything,” Hacket said. “But down here, of course, my interest is in volcanic eruptions. Yesterday I was at Pozzuoli. This afternoon I’m going up to take a look at Epomeo. And—”

  “You have not been out to Vesuvius yet?”

  “No. I guess I’ll leave that to the last.”
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br />   “Well, don’t forget to have a look at Pompeii.” Zina gave me a quick glance. She was paying me back for my earlier obstinacy. “That will show you better than anything else what Vesuvio can do.”

  “I thought of taking a quick look at Pompeii on my way out to Vesuvius.”

  “Pompeii is not a place you can take a quick look at, signore.” Zina was smiling at him. “The Ruggiero—that is the director—is a friend of mine.”

  It was an obvious bait and the fish rose. “You don’t say. Maybe you could—I mean if you were to give me an introduction—”

  “I will do better than that.” Zina turned to me. “Are you doing anything to-morrow afternoon?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then we will all three go out to Pompeii. You have a car, Mr. Hacket? Then, shall we say three o’clock at the entrance to Pompeii?”

  “That’s very kind of you, Countess. I’ll look forward to that with great interest. In the meantime perhaps you will do me the honour of being my guest at lunch to-day?”

  Zina accepted at once and there was nothing I could do about it. For a solid hour I had the two of them talking volcanic eruptions across me. Zina seemed remarkably well informed on the history of Pompeii so that I began to wonder if this Ruggiero fellow had been her lover at some period.

  At last we were back at the boat. As we left Casamicciola Zina looked at me and said, “You do not like our American friend, no?”

  “It isn’t that,” I said quickly, remembering how kind he had been to me in Milan. “It’s just that he will go on talking.”

  She laughed, “Perhaps he does not get any opportunities to talk when he is at home.” She sprawled back on the cushions with a little sigh. After a while she said, “Do you wish to hear Rossini’s Barbiere to-night? It is at the San Carlo. I have a box.”

  So I went with her to the opera that night and that was the end of my idyll in Naples. Sitting in the box with the crystals of the chandeliers ablaze with lights and the orchestra tuning up, I looked down on a sea of faces, a constantly shifting mass of colour stretching from below the crimson red of the curtain right back to the dim recesses of the theatre. And in all that eddying mass, my gaze was caught and held by one pair of eyes staring up at me. It was Hilda Tuček. I saw her nudge her companion and then he, too, looked up and I saw she was with John Maxwell.

  “What is the matter?” Zina’s hand touched my arm. “You are trembling, Dick. What has happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all. Just someone I know.”

  “Where?” I didn’t answer and she said playfully, “A girl?” I still didn’t say anything, but she must have seen the direction of my gaze, for she focused her opera glasses on the centre of the stalls. “An English girl—in a white frock?”.

  “No—Czech,” I corrected. “Why did you think she was English?”

  “She look so damn’ superior,” she answered venomously. Then I heard her suck in her breath quickly. “What is the name of the man who is with her? I think I have met him before.”

  “John Maxwell,” I answered.

  She shook her head. “No. I do not meet him.”

  The lights began to fade as the conductor took his place on the platform. Then they were out and the overture had begun. I was glad to sit back in the darkness and absorb the gaiety of Rossini’s music. But somehow it failed to lift me out of the fit of depression that had enveloped me. Maxwell’s arrival in Naples had shaken me. I had a queer feeling of being trapped and in imagination I felt unseen eyes watching me across the dark pit of the theatre. The knowledge that Maxwell was down there in the body of the theatre stood between me and the music and I got no enjoyment out of it.

  “You are cold?” Zina’s lips almost touched my ear. Her hand closed over mine.

  “No—I’m quite warm, thank you.”

  “But you are trembling, and your hand is like ice.” Then her fingers closed violently on mine. “What is it you are afraid of?” she hissed.

  “Nothing,” I answered.

  “Is the girl an old love affair?”

  “No,” I answered frigidly.

  “Then why do you shiver? Or is it the man who frighten you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said irritably and got my hand out of the clutch of her fingers.

  “So. I am being ridiculous, am I? But it is you who tremble.” She leaned suddenly close to me again. “What does he want, this Maxwell?”

  “Do you mind dropping the subject, Zina.” I turned away towards the stage where the curtain was just rising.

  “You are obstinate again.” Her voice sounded petulant. I found myself thinking of the ridiculous scene at Casamicciola when she had tried to get me to give my leg to the attendants I was still thinking of this and listening to the music at the same time when a hand came out of the darkness of the box behind me and gripped my shoulder. I spun round to see the gleam of a white shirt-front and Maxwell leaning down towards me.

  “A word with you, Dick.”

  I hesitated, glancing at Zina. She’d noticed the interruption and was looking up at Maxwell. He bowed, a slight inclination of the head. “Signorina Zina Bestanto, isn’t it?”

  She gave a slight nod of assent. “That was my name before my marriage. But I do not think I have met you before, signore?”

  “No,” Maxwell answered. “I know your name because I happened to see a photograph of you—at the Questura.”

  Zina’s eyes narrowed. Then the lids dropped and she smiled. “One day, signore, I hope you are very poor, then perhaps you understand many things that seem strange to you now.” She turned back towards the stage. Her face looked very white in the glare of the footlights and for an instant I thought I caught a gleam of intense anger in her eyes. Then Maxwell touched me on the shoulder and nodded towards the door of the box.

  I followed him out. He shut the door and produced a packet of cigarettes. “You certainly do have a way of picking trouble, Dick,” he said.

  “How do you mean?” I asked him.

  “That girl.” He nodded towards the closed door of the box.

  “Well? What about her?”

  “She’s dynamite. The photograph I saw of her was in a dossier about an inch thick. It was shown to me by one of the AMG police at the Questura in Rome during the war.”

  “You mean she was a German agent?” I asked.

  “There was no definite proof, but—” He shrugged his shoulders. “The Field Security Police kept a close eye on her.”

  “If there was no proof, then—”

  He stopped me with a quick movement of his hand. “I didn’t come to see you about your girl friend,” he said. “Why did you skip out of Milan like that?”

  “Reece was getting on my nerves,” I answered quickly.

  He drew on his cigarette until the point of it glowed. “I don’t think that was the reason,” he said softly.

  “Then what was the reason, since you know?” I found it difficult to keep the tremor out of my voice.

  In the same quiet tone, he said, “I think you were scared.”

  “Scared?” I tried to laugh it off, but it didn’t sound right and I let it trail away uncertainly.

  “Suppose you tell me what scared you so badly that you sent a cable to your firm saying you were under doctor’s orders to take a rest?”

  I didn’t say anything and after a moment he said, “Where does that girl come into it?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “She comes into it somewhere. What’s her name now?”

  “Zina Valle. She’s a contessa.”

  “Valle’s wife? I wonder.” He stroked his chin. “Where did you meet her?”

  “At Sismondi’s flat.”

  “And then?”

  “She came and saw me at the Excelsior. Later I met her again.”

  “Where?”

  “At Shirer’s suite in the Albergo Nazionale.”

  “Was that the night before you left for Naples?”


  I nodded.

  He frowned. “You’re holding something back. Suppose you give me the whole story?”

  I hesitated. But I knew it was no use. He and Reece were in the thing together. Reece would never believe it and therefore Maxwell wouldn’t. “I’ve nothing to tell you,” I said.

  “I think you have.” His voice suddenly had a bite to it. “For a start you could tell me what made you leave Milan like that.”

  “Look,” I said. “If I could help you over Tuček’s disappearance I would. Damn it!” I added angrily. “You surely believe that? The man was a friend of mine. He saved my life once during the Battle of Britain. Just leave me out of it, will you.”

  “I wish I could,” he said “But somehow you’re a part of it whether you like it or not. Somehow it’s all connected with you.”

  “What do you mean by—”

  “Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But—” He stopped and looked at me. “The morning you left Milan you were hinting to Hilda that Shirer had something to do with her father’s disappearance.”

  “That’s not correct,” I answered. “There was a carabinieri captain with her. He was investigating her father’s disappearance. I showed him a photograph I had of Sansevino, the doctor at the Villa d’Este.”

  “You told him to go and interview Shirer.”

  “Yes. Did he go?”

  “I don’t think so. There was an American doctor with you who told them you were balmy. However, Reece went along, but Shirer had left Milan.” He gripped my arm. “What do you know about Shirer? Why did you tell Caselli to interview him?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said. I had been on the point of telling him that Walter Shirer didn’t exist, that the man he thought was Shirer … But in the moment of putting it into words I was assailed by doubts. He’d only think I was crazy. And here in Naples the reason for my suspicions seemed vague and unreal.