of yours. She’ll be quite concerned when she hears of this. She’s a bit of an egg-head,’ he had jokingly confided.
Barnaby had not replied. He contemplated his fellow-Briton over a handful of lint kindly provided by the consular staff and rested his bandaged left hand upon his knee.
‘Well, of course,’ the Consul continued argumentatively, ‘properly speaking it’s a matter for the police. Though I must say—however, if you’ll wait a moment I’ll just put a call through. I’ve got a personal contact—nothing like approaching at the right level, is there? Now, then.’
After a number of delays there had been a long and virtually incomprehensible conversation during which Barnaby fancied he was being described as Great Britain’s most celebrated novelist. With many pauses to refer to Barnaby himself, the Consul related at dictation speed the details of the affair and when that was over showered a number of grateful compliments into the telephone—‘E stato molto gentile—Grazie, Molto grazie, Signore,’ which even poor Barnaby could understand.
The Consul replaced the receiver and pulled a grimace. ‘Not much joy from that quarter,’ he said. Barnaby swallowed and felt sick.
He was assured that everything that could be done, would be done, but, the Consul pointed out, they hadn’t much to go on, had they? Still, he added more brightly, there was always the chance that Barnaby might be blackmailed.
‘Blackmailed?’
‘Well, you see, whoever took the case probably expected, if not a haul of valuables, or cash, something in the nature of documents for the recovery of which a reward would be offered and a haggling basis thus set up. Blackmail,’ said the Consul, ‘was not, of course, the right word. Ransom would be more appropriate. Although…’ He was a man of broken sentences and he left this one suspended in an atmosphere of extreme discomfort.
‘Then I should advertise and offer a reward?’
‘Certainly. Certainly. We’ll get something worked out. We’ll just give my secretary the details in English and she’ll translate and see to the insertions.’
‘I’m being a trouble,’ said the wretched Barnaby.
‘We’re used to it,’ the Consul sighed. ‘Your name and London address were on the manuscript, you said, but the case was locked. Not, of course, that that amounts to anything.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘You are staying at—?’
‘The Pensione Gallico.’
‘Ah yes. Have you the telephone number?’
‘Yes—I think so—somewhere about me.’
Barnaby fished distractedly in his breast pocket, pulled out his note-case, passport and two envelopes which fell on the desk, face downwards. He had scribbled the Pensione Gallico address and telephone number on the back of one of them.
‘That’s it,’ he said and slid the envelope across to the Consul, who was already observant of its august crest.
‘Ah—yes. Thank you.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Done your duty and signed the book, I see,’ he said.
‘What? Oh—that. Well, no, actually,’ Barnaby mumbled. ‘It’s—er—some sort of luncheon. Tomorrow. I mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m enormously grateful.’
The Consul, beaming and expanding, stretched his arm across the desk and made a fin of his hand. ‘No, no, no. Very glad you came to us. I feel pretty confident, all things considered. Nil desperandum, you know, nil desperandum. Rise above!’
But it wasn’t possible to rise very far above his loss as two days trickled by and there was no response to advertisements and nothing came of a long language-haltered interview with a beautiful representative of the Questura. He attended his Embassy luncheon and tried to react appropriately to ambassadorial commiseration and concern. But for most of the time he sat on the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico among potted geraniums and flights of swallows. His bedroom had a french window opening on to a neglected corner of this garden and there he waited and listened in agony for every telephone call within. From time to time he half-faced the awful notion of re-writing the hundred thousand words of his novel but the prospect made him physically as well as emotionally sick as he turned away from it.
Every so often he experienced the sensation of an abrupt descent in an infernal lift. He started out of fits of sleep into a waking nightmare. He told himself he should write to his agent and to his publisher but the mere thought of doing so tasted as acrid as bile and he sat and listened for the telephone instead.
On the third morning a heat wave came upon Rome. The roof-garden was like a furnace. He was alone in his corner with an uneaten brioche, a pot of honey and three wasps. He was given over to a sort of fretful lassitude and finally to a condition that he supposed must be that of Despair itself. ‘What I need,’ he told himself on a wave of nausea, ‘is a bloody good cry on somebody’s bloody bosom.’
One of the two waiters came out.
‘Finito?’ he sang, as usual. And then, when Barnaby gave his punctual assent, seemed to indicate that he should come indoors. At first he thought the waiter was suggesting that it was too hot where he was and then that for some reason the manageress wanted to see him.
And then, as a sudden jolt of hope shook him, he saw a fattish man with a jacket hooked over his shoulders come out of the house door and advance towards him. He was between Barnaby and the sun and appeared fantastic, black and insubstantial but at once Barnaby recognized him.
His reactions were chaotic. He saw the man as if between the inclined heads of two lovers, and to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning. And whether the sensation that flooded him was one solely of terrified relief, or of a kind of blessed anticlimax he could never determine. He merely wondered, when the man advanced into the shade and drew an attaché case from under his jacket, if he himself was going to faint.
‘Mr Barnaby Grant?’ asked the man. ‘I think you will be pleased to see me, will you not?’
IV
They escaped from the Gallico which seemed to be over-run with housemaids to a very small caffè in a shaded by-way off the Piazza Navona, a short walk away. His companion had suggested it. ‘Unless, of course,’ he said archly, ‘you prefer something smarter—like the Colonna, for instance,’ and Barnaby had shuddered. He took his attaché case with him and, at his guest’s suggestion, unlocked it. There, in two looseleaf folders, lay his book, enclosed by giant-sized rubber bands. The last letter from his agent still lay on top, just as he had left it.
He had rather wildly offered his guest champagne cocktails, cognac, wine—anything—but when reminded that it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning settled for coffee. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘at a more appropriate hour—you will let me—and in the meantime I must—well—of course.’
He slid his hand inside his jacket. His heart still thumped at it like a fist.
‘You are thinking of the reward so generously offered,’ said his companion. ‘But, please—no. No. It is out of the question. To have
