The Venetian Affair (44 page)

In silence, Fenner made a cautious detour once they had left the Piazza, choosing a
calle
that seemed to lead them away from Arnaldi’s shop. But in Venice there was always another
calle
to lead back. The crowds had thinned out: most Venetians were already home, thinking of tomorrow’s early start to work. The visitors still window-shopped or wandered leisurely in a happy daze. No one was following them, except Mike Ballard. Of that, Claire was sure. And somehow it worried her. She remembered Bill’s good reason why Mike hadn’t been trailed from Ca’ Longhi: they knew where he could be found. That same reason could apply to us, she thought. As they came back on to the street that would lead them over the bridge, she said, “Is our hotel safe, Bill?”

“If I see anyone hanging around watching for us, I won’t leave Mike there.”

“Then what?” We can’t take him near Arnaldi’s. That is definite. We don’t even know if his story is true: there may be no letter inside that map. And yet we’ve got to assume the story is real; and hurry; and act, perhaps even rashly. Because
of Sandra, because of what she may be suffering.

“I’ll think of something,” Fenner said worriedly. Perhaps I’ll send him off with Zorzi, and let them drift around the lagoon for a couple of hours. “First, I’ll see you safely into the shop. You know what to do?”

“Telephone Chris, and have him contact Rosie. When Rosie comes, I hand over the letter.”

“If there is a letter,” Fenner said quietly.

“Be careful, Bill,” she said, remembering the approach to the hotel’s courtyard. By night, there must be patches of pitch blackness in that narrow alley. She opened her handbag. “Take this,” she said, slipping her small automatic into his jacket pocket.

“What—?” Then he knew. So she had been thinking, too, of that dark approach to the hotel’s back door.

“The Little Comforter,” she said, half-smiling. She was looking at the camera shop, no more than forty feet ahead of them. “If it’s closed, there’s a back entrance on an alley. We’re just passing it, Bill. See it?”

It was a narrow strip of darkness, wide enough for a lean Venetian to squeeze his way through. He hoped they wouldn’t have to use it. You could waste a lot of time searching for the right doorway, or courtyard, or whatever particular whimsy the ingenious architects of Venice had thought up. “We’re in luck,” he said thankfully. The shop ahead, about to close, was still half-open. The boy, Luigi, was fastening a strong grille over its window, already darkened. Fenner’s pace slowed, so that Ballard caught up with them. “Walk on,” he told him, “to that shop window over there. Keep inside its doorway. I’ll be with you in one minute.” He watched to make sure that Ballard didn’t look back at them, before he steered Claire quickly into
the camera shop. Luigi’s broad face brightened as he saw them, but he went on with his job.

Inside, there was one dim light shining down on the counter where Arnaldi, in shirt sleeves, was checking the day’s earnings. The rest of the shop was in deep shadow. Fenner chose a corner hidden from the street by a display of photographs. He said, “We have to make an emergency ’phone call to our friend. Urgent. Most urgent. Can you get him for us? The signora will talk to him. I’m leaving. But I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Arnaldi nodded—perhaps in his life he had seen so much that was unexpected that he had reached the limit of surprise—and limped toward the back sitting-room.

“Take this.” Fenner gave her the map. “Check the letter before you talk with Chris. Tell him Ballard’s story, too.” He gripped her arms.

“Highest urgency.” She looked at his face in the half-darkness. “I know, Bill. And they’ll get Sandra out of that house, somehow.” She felt his hands tighten on her arms.

“I’m worrying about you,” he said quietly.

For a moment, she said nothing. “I’ll be safe.” Safer than you, she thought miserably.

“Take care—”

“And you take care—”

His arms went around her, holding her close, crushing her body against his. He kissed her, a long kiss, deep and strong, that took her life and gave her his, a plea and a promise, a beginning. Just as suddenly, he freed her, and was gone.

She heard the door close gently. She stood very still. Then she flung her arms wide, threw her head back, and laughed with sheer joy.

Behind her, Arnaldi cleared his throat. “Your friend is waiting.”

She turned, still smiling, but in control of her emotions again, to slip quietly into Arnaldi’s back room. He had got that call through quickly, she thought. She still had to check on the letter inside the map. She halted abruptly. “Chris!” she said unbelievingly.

“The bearer of joyful tidings, I see, all rosy and wreathed in smiles and properly tousled. Come in, sweetie, and share this pew, and tell Uncle Chris all about it.” He was sitting on the bottom step of a narrow staircase that climbed up the back wall of the room to the bedroom overhead, dressed in wildly striped pyjamas and a bright dressing-gown, both too loose and long. “Vincente,” he addressed Arnaldi, “you go back to your counting-house. And thank you for wakening me so effectively. A cold-water sponge,” he explained to Claire. “Never fails.” He was making conversation until Arnaldi closed the door.

She took his cue. “Asleep at this hour?” She opened the map and found the letter. She glanced through it quickly, raising an eyebrow as she saw the name of Major Christopher Holland. He wasn’t going to like that. She shook her head.

“What else was there to do? I’ve been quarantined, put out of sight for twenty-four hours. Seemed safer for all of us. I’m hot, my dear; I’m a wanted man. But I scored a little bullseye, I think. I hope so. If I guessed wrong, I’ll be rusticated permanently—back to the old Finance Division, tracking down dead Nazis’ loot.” He paused, watching her replace the letter carefully. “All right,” he said most seriously. “What’s up?”

“Get Rosie here.”

“Rosie is having a very busy night, my pet. Must we—?”

“Get him, Chris. We have the letter.”

He stared at her. “Good God,” he said slowly. Then quickly, “How?”

“Telephone, first. I’ll explain, once you’ve tracked down Rosie.”

He got up and padded over to the telephone in his bare feet. He hadn’t been able to borrow slippers that would fit. As he waited for his call to go through, he eyed the map she held most firmly in her hand. “I couldn’t pinch-hit for Rosie, could I?”

She smiled at the mixture of phrase and accent, and reciprocated. “That wouldn’t be cricket. He is my boss.”

“I can read, too, you know.”

“You can’t expect to hit the bullseye twice in one night.”

“Why not?” He conceded his defeat with a grin. “It was a nice try, anyway. Where’s your devoted American?” He started to talk into the receiver, something about a fishing boat having docked with a full catch; immediate delivery advisable in this warm weather.

The call was over. “Rosie is on his way,” Chris told her. “He won’t take long. Is Bill all right?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, “he’s all right.” She was thinking, our job is over. Bill and I are free. The job is over. I give this letter to Rosie, and the job is over.

Chris Holland, watching the emotion on her face, said quietly, “Come along, Scheherazade. Tell me the end of this story. How did you get that letter?”

Fenner found Ballard mesmerised before a window of velvet slippers, beaded and bejewelled, red, blue, green, pink. “Can’t make up your mind? Take the blue.”

“Sharks,” Ballard said, walking on with him. “Three dollars here. I know a place I can get them for two.” He sounded more like himself now. “That was the longest minute I ever lived through,” he said reproachfully. “Spooky place, Venice, when the crowds leave the streets. Chilly, too.” He turned up the collar of his silk tweed jacket.

“The minute stretched a little,” Fenner admitted with a grin. “You’re lucky I didn’t take ten.”

“You sound pretty cheerful.”

“I am.”

Ballard relaxed still more. “You know, Bill—if you had only tipped me off when I met you at Orly, everything would have been simpler for all of us.”

Fenner didn’t answer. They were starting up the steps of the bridge over the canal. Three men were standing together on its other side, one of them a gondolier. They interrupted their talk as the two Americans came up and over the bridge, and in that brief look, Fenner could feel their surprise. Surprise? I’m getting too damned sensitive, he thought.

As he and Ballard came down the steps, and left the street to turn on to the quay, he saw that the gondolas which usually clustered there were all out on hire except the one that belonged to the gondolier at the bridge. No Zorzi? It was five minutes before ten. Zorzi had possibly picked up another fare. And yet Zorzi had struck him as a man who’d keep his word, just as he’d expect others to keep theirs.

“Something wrong?” Ballard asked, nervous again. On the street, there had been strolling footsteps and talking voices. Down here on this empty quay, which ran briefly along the canal and then dodged under the cover of overhanging houses
to become a
sotto portico
, there was nothing but the sound of water slapping idly against stone.

“It’s all right,” Fenner said reassuringly. He paused beside one of the heavy squat pillars that supported the low, ill-lit arches of the
sotto portico
, to watch a gondola come gliding up from the Grand Canal, floating out of the darkness, passing them silently, the gondolier not even breaking the slow rhythm of his oar as he bent low to slip under the bridge and vanish. Not Zorzi, anyway.

“Come on,” Ballard urged. “What has got into you?”

I don’t know, Fenner thought, but the sooner I deposit Ballard safely in my room, the sooner I can find out. So quickly he led Ballard away from the canal and the vaulted porch, into the narrow dark alley lined with two rows of shuttered windows. People lived here, for there was music from one room, faint laughter from another, and an occasional ribbon of light where a shutter was left one inch open. But he kept his hand in his pocket.

Ballard was mumbling in a husky whisper, as if the privacy around him was closing in on his voice too. “As I was saying, if you had only tipped me off when I met you at Orly—”

“About what?”

“That you were with Intelligence.”

“But I wasn’t.”

Ballard laughed shortly. “That’s what they all say. But if you had told me, then we wouldn’t be prowling down this godforsaken alley. Because I wouldn’t have come to Venice—” He tripped and clutched Fenner for balance. “What’s that?”

“A cat. Or your own big feet.”

They entered the courtyard. By night, it had a look of theatrical gloom—a compact stage-set, dimly lighted, for even
here the heavy walls seemed to eat up the brightness of the lamps set high on the surrounding houses. By contrast, the hotel’s wide doors, opened and welcoming, showed an empty lobby ablaze with gleam and glitter. Fenner’s grip on Claire’s small automatic loosened, and he took his hand out of his pocket. “Walk straight ahead and use the staircase. Wait for me on the floor above. I’ll get the key and take the elevator.”

Ballard nodded obediently, and entered the hotel. Fenner followed watchfully. No one around except the night porter, alone at his desk, and an elevator boy. Everyone else was in the bar or the dining-room, or out on the town. He could relax a little as he took the slow elevator, and ponder over Ballard’s new amenability. Either Ballard felt the edge of danger on which they were all balancing so precariously or he had stopped worrying that Fenner was after his job. Was that what he meant when he said, in his own peculiar form of reasoning, that Fenner had been to blame for his arrival in Venice? Because Fenner was in Venice, and a story was in Venice. But if Fenner was working for Intelligence, he could never use the story and so Ballard could stop worrying. Was that it? Fenner shook his head in wry amusement. He was relieved, at least, that Ballard had stopped glooming around.

But he could wish, when he met Ballard upstairs and noted his rising euphoria, now that they were safe in a brightly lit, comfortable hotel, that Ballard had stayed a little more scared. The edge of danger was a slippery place.

He hurried Ballard into his room, with no one to see them enter. The bed had been turned down, the light left on to welcome him. “Stay here. Keep the door locked. If the telephone rings, wait for an identification before you speak.”

“What’s the password?” Ballard was highly amused.

“Florian,” said Fenner on the spur of the moment. “You won’t forget that.”

“No,” Ballard said abruptly. He chose a comfortable armchair and looked around the room. “So I wait here.”

“You wait here.” Fenner turned back to the door.

“I could use a drink and a sandwich.”

“You’ll have them. Just wait, meanwhile.” Fenner was getting impatient. “That’s little enough to—”

“Do you know who was in the bar? Drinking brandy with his coffee, lucky stiff. Tarns. Sir Felix Tarns.”

Fenner halted. “Did he see you?”

“No.” Ballard was irritated. “Would that matter?” Tarns was a stinker, but not the Jan Aarvan type. His mood was back to high amusement. “You know, I was thinking how we could shake him a little. Just enough to—”

“You keep away from that telephone!” Fenner said angrily, making a quick guess.

“Okay, okay.”

“All set?”

“Any cigarettes? I’m all out.” Ballard caught the pack that Fenner had tossed over on his way to the door. “Stay for a couple of minutes, Bill. Claire has given the alarm about Sandra, hasn’t she? So what’s the rush?”

“You are part of it,” Fenner reminded him, opening the door.

“When do I get bailed out?”

“Soon.”

“How soon is soon? One hour? Two? Am I just to sit—?”

“You’ll find a couple of books on top of the dresser,” Fenner said.

“Hey!” But Fenner had closed the door firmly. Ballard heard its lock snap tight. He stared angrily at the door, lit a cigarette. Not that he wasn’t grateful to Bill for getting him off the streets. But all those cloak-and-dagger boys were too damned mysterious. Part of the act, no doubt. Made them feel important. It wasn’t as difficult a job as they made it seem, though. Hadn’t he talked his way very neatly out of Ca’ Longhi? Hadn’t he brought them the letter? He, a rank amateur, had done what they couldn’t do. Not bad for old Mike, not bad at all. Finesse and quick wits, a little daring, that was all you needed in this or any other sport.